Cottagecore: the good and the *really* bad

[Music] all writers my name is alice and welcome back to my channel today we are digging deep into an aesthetic that has been around for quite some time but gained a lot of popularity in the past year on social media it's all about country life simple living producing your own food using traditional farming methods but also flower dresses picnics and goats wildest aesthetic is taken on by progressive people inclusive people but for some people cottage life means very different things that's what we're going to talk about today why is cottage course so popular it's a convergence of many different things one of them being them pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it every time there's been a spike in cases there's a spike in cottage core right along with it trapped at home people developed a better appreciation of small things like cooking baking just walking outside credit card became a way to virtually escape something that is physically inescapable redecorating a bedroom creating a new wardrobe make the virtual more real by turning your image's environment into something cottagy and cozy yet the rise of cottage core started way before the pandemic it was a response to increasing violence to dependency on technology to hustle culture and just constant anxiety in regards to what will happen in the future finally that something is going to be very interesting for later on in this video is the cottage call is very much associated with sustainable living and so as sustainable living gained momentum well cottage core also became very popular cottage life in general is very sustainable cottage core is a rejection of modernity the aesthetic appeared in the 2010s but cottage life has been a recurring trope in films like brook black mountain little women emma but also in books in poetry and very recently taylor swift i want to put the studio ghiblis in the cottage core aesthetic as well because i've seen some people joined it in the past and i truly believe that miyazuki used a lot of the themes that are the essence of cottage core namely the romanticization of rural life authors writers have continuously described a country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban these works target a urban audience since they present real life in a very idealized way it depicts what used to be known but is now disappearing it is a rejection of the modern the cottage core aesthetic draws back to the pre-industrial era where people live very differently at a very small scale they produce locally they interactive with a very small number of people everything was very small scale and manageable people live in harmony with nature with seasons today's cottage tour is filled with tender nostalgia cottage core influencers will wear long flowy dresses they go around with a little weaker basket picking up flowers and playing with lumps while this aesthetic is very much a political i can see you writing your little comments like oh no you don't understand aesthetics it just meant for fun yes it's totally true the majority of people involved in cottage core are just interested by the trend and some actually want to make it more inclusive and less eurocentric yeah i'm very curious about the people who actually decide to live that way and do so as a political choice i wanna know how they benefited for the best or the worst from the popularity of this aesthetic how cottage core is politicized school digital life has been continuously associated with anti-capitalism anti-globalization and it's true going back to a very simple cottage life is an affront to the globalized world it reduces your carbon footprint tremendously and turns you into a an active producer instead of just a lazy consumer yet i want to add another entire to the list of unties and it's anti-big government moving away from cities also means moving away from governing authorities the words free and self always appear in conjugal videos when they explain you why they chose this lifestyle and for example the cutted fairy on youtube explained that she recently quit her job to live a more simple life in the countryside by doing so she reasserted her power over her life herself her independence so katico is both a slight liberation from capitalism because it gives you the opportunity to kind of become your own boss something that is quite difficult to achieve in a traditional urban setting but still requires a certain financial stability and a certain amount of privilege to be able to fully take on the contextual lifestyle on top of that it's also a liberation from the state since it's very much about figuring out by yourself surviving by yourself without much help from the government or just people in general and finally when looking at the kurdish corps community online it appears that most of those people most of the influencers are female which led some to argue that it's also a liberation from men izaben sloan wrote in the new york times that cottage core offers a vision of the world where men are not consciously excluded they are simply enough for thought but there are women who go in a completely different direction now look at this food it looks very cottage cool doesn't it well this is the darling academy and elena is what you now called a hashtag tried wife the idea is that women need to care for their home they need to care for their husband for their kids they emphasize on the fact that being a traditional wife is a choice and some even go as further as calling it a liberation going back to a traditional way of living is not about self-discovery anymore it's a reversal in time to binary dynamics and family values in that sense traditional living is inward looking it's about your family but it also has an outward dimension it's about like carrying on traditional national state values strider tend to be very patriotic therefore their use of the cottage core aesthetic a nostalgic aesthetic is a way for them to get younger audiences that are interested in cottage core and to get them to listen to what they have to say and potentially expand the movement um before i start this last part i just wanted to reiterate that most people who like the cottage core aesthetic are good people who are conscious about the environment who just want to live a better life or just want a bit of escapism so bear with me for this one there is this commonly held view that's been spreading faster in 2020 guess why it's the idea that our planet is overpopulating and that's what's causing climate change that there simply isn't enough resources or energy to provide for our modern 21st century human needs while all of this is completely false and it's been proven to be false it had led some to adopt the view that we need to prioritize certain groups over others to prioritize ourselves our nations which isn't really current when you think about the fact that global warming is a global problem when your constants are limited to yourself to your family to your immediate environment your country well it tends to exclude the people who will be the most affected by the consequences of climate change people in warmer third world countries or people in your own country won't have the money or privilege to adapt to the issues generated by the climate crisis many of these will be immigrants people of color or just people that often included under the umbrella term multiculturalism now here's the problem this is all very convenient for the far right who generally oppose multiculturalism and just have a problem with anyone who's not a pure blooded white western male and here we reach the point of eco-fascism when we say that the world is overpopulated we are actually playing into their hands because for them it means that some people will have to disappear we would have to prioritize one race or another some talk of themselves as ethnic nationalists they'll talk about deep ecology and they use words like forefathers homeland ethnostate or blood and soul as dog whistle for white nest so the eco fascist aesthetic is closer to the norse tradition yet they have adopted the language an aesthetic that embraces nature that romanticize and actually invent a time during which the only race was direct race so here's a comment from daniel savoy she is replying to a tweet from anne duncan a democrat who worked with barack obama during his presidency simply offered to start a conversation whiteness and that's what daniel civil replied about how beautiful it is yes now here's her profile two years ago there are little trees there's a little sun a reference to sunnah a north goddess and savoy describes herself as vegan in the style of savitri devi who happened to be both a nazi and an eco-fascist in this tweet she uses the hashtag evola radical traditionalism which was the name of evolus ideology that still inspires fascists today and you get that extra outright for the win civility was banned from twitter two years ago but now she's on gab an outright friendly platform [Music] so again eco-fascists are very much a minority but you know it's it's just something to look out for in our communities just to make sure that the cottage core aesthetic remains something fun positive and inclusive okay we went from taylor swift to eagle fascist that's pretty interesting so that's it um if you have time i'd really like to know how you discovered cottage core and what does that actually mean for you otherwise i would be extremely grateful if you could like subscribe to this channel really helps me and yeah i'll see you next week

Channel: Alice Cappelle

Views: 113,629

Keywords:

Id: QOGYt1lSbw0

Length: 10min 38sec (638 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020