How ‘cottagecore’ made a bunch of 20-somethings pine for the countryside.
It’s the aesthetic movement that has captured the imagination of a generation, but why do so many young people dream of country living?
‘Cottagecore’ is an aesthetic movement that was first brought to my attention by ye old Tumblr.com, aka heaven on Earth. Yes, I know back in its supposed ‘heyday’ it was a toxic cesspool of terfs, pro-ana and edgy teens who thought they understood politics, but thankfully that baton has been passed to Twitter and my old faithful Tumblr has returned to the nerds and the lesbians.
The website has grown up a little, thanks to its userbase aging (it happens to the best of us) and it has become quite the pleasant little corner of the Internet, full of people who are genuinely passionate about the weirdest stuff. Cringe culture is officially dead. Twilight is gay, Furbies are long and if you like something you can just shove a ‘-core’ on the end and make it your identity.
There are a lot of these ‘aesthetics’ that I’d love to dive into and perhaps decipher because some of them are just baffling. ‘Goblincore’, ‘dark academia’, ‘crypticcore’ and ‘grandmacore’ are some of my favourites, and also some of the most popular, and one day I’ll write all about them but for today I’m going to be delving into the wonderful world of ‘cottagecore’.
Unfortunately, as is the way with all good things that come from the internet, mainstream media has latched on to ‘cottagecore’ as sort of the fashion buzzword of the summer. Apparently it’s big on Tiktok, I’m not a child so I wouldn’t know. Sorry, that was condescending, I always hated it when elder millennials would tear into Vine, oh wait they never did, everyone loved Vine. Sorry again. Not sure what came over me. I really have become the grumpy 20-year-old who hates change and acts like they’re 80. It was inevitable. Time, it comes for us all. Anyway, as I was saying, ‘cottagecore’. It’s hit the mainstream, and I’d like to try and break down exactly why.
First, what is it? I’d be surprised if you hadn’t at least heard of it, but I know my Dad reads these and he for sure doesn’t have a clue. So for him, I’ll break it down.
‘Cottagecore’ is an aesthetic movement. Mostly it’s just pictures of the British/ European countryside; fields of wheat and meadows of wild flowers. It’s frolicking in puffy sleeved dresses and wellington boots. It’s frogs and flowers and summer days. It’s log fires and thick cardigans and messy braided hair. It’s romance and cute cows and cottages (obviously).
It’s just pictures.
Just pictures on the internet.
It’s a ♥ 𝒗𝒊𝒃𝒆 ♥.
But it has captured the imagination of a whole generation.
So why did a bunch of 20–30 year olds (and I suppose quite a few teens) latch on to the idea of country living (albeit a very romanticised fantasy version of it)? Normally the stereotype is that young adults all want to move to the big city (unspecified which big city, but I guess it’s irrelevant). They want to party, and drink and take drugs and shag about. They want loud nights baby!
Well no.
No we don’t.
Not anymore.
Because frankly the days are quite loud now and we’d rather go home to a good book and a cuppa tea. We don’t need to cause anarchy and paint the town red of a night because let’s be honest here, that’s already what’s happening all the time. We live in a hellscape: politics is just getting progressively more terrifying; white supremacy is popular again for some reason and we’re clawing to save the eco-system before we quite literally kill the planet. So do you really think we want to go into cities and add fuel to that fire? Hell no. And by that I don’t mean we want to ignore politics. We protest, we do the marches and rallies, we’re trying. We just don’t want to then, after a long day of all that, have to go into town and get all crazy and wild just because we’re young and that’s what’s supposed to be fun.
In a world that force feeds us the high speed aggression of capitalist consumerism, the ‘WORK TILL YOU’RE OLD AND THEN WORK SOME MORE’ mentality, all young people really want is a bit of bloody peace and quiet. Teens and young adults have become disillusioned with the buzz of the city because we’ve come to see the detrimental effects of this lifestyle we’ve been told is the ‘correct’ way to live. That word ‘productivity’ gets thrown around a lot. But it no longer means what it originally did. Productivity is now working yourself into a stress addled coma for money to spend to pay someone else to then spend and so on and so forth. It’s a vicious cycle. People don’t have hobbies anymore. I’ve seen my Mom angry at herself for wanting to be pottering about in the garden instead of working on some spreadsheet (honestly I have no idea what my Mom’s job is but there seems to be a lot of Excel involved). And she’s doing this on a Saturday. One of her two days off. I, myself, have been making some kind of clay thing (I decided pottery was the best way to pass lockdown) and I’ll look at the jug I made and think ‘well that wasn’t a productive use of my time at all’. Yes it was! You just didn’t monetise it! You made something, be proud!
We all love ‘cottagecore’ because to us that’s the dream. Living off the land, no worries, no stress, no one telling you to write an essay you don’t care about or make a spreadsheet for a faceless corporation. It’s just you and the trees baby.
Obviously, living in the country has it’s own stresses and difficulties but we’re townies we don’t know about those. All we see is tranquillity, and people eating homemade cake. So, while we’re stuck in shitty student flats or our parents houses because we can’t afford anything else, we’ll just carry on dreaming about owning a little patch of land in a random unnamed wood, drinking tea, reading classical literature and thinking about how great it is to own a cute cow.
Simply, because it makes us happy.
