Does the 'coquette' aesthetic represent a step backwards towards traditional *white*standards?

A topic which has intrigued me so much that I wrote about it in my dissertation! This essay pulls from multiple essays that I wrote throughout my masters.

The Coquette aesthetic has many names, sometimes dubbed the “waif” “dollette” or the “sad girls” aesthetic. This aesthetic has existed in some form since the early 2010s. Coquette in its literal definition is  “a women who flirts”. Which indicates that a core theme or tenant of the aesthetic is to be flirty in a conventional feminine sense. They aim to redefine femininity in the 21^st century, not as something that is archaic, but as something that is in fact feminist because of its unabashed representation of stereotypical femininity. The coquette aesthetic has millions of tags on tiktok. Tiktok has helped bring this underground Tumblr group into the mainstream, they are almost exactly like the sad girls except now they have greater reach with tiktok. The aesthetic rose to prominence shortly after the pandemic, where we saw great shifts in cultural trends and the beauty standard.

The coquette aesthetic can be summed up as “feminine, idyllic, dainty, soft, and angelic. From pink miniskirts to lace blouses, silk, knitted stockings, and chunky heels,” (Rodríguez, 2022). The coquette aesthetic borrows inspiration from the popular Japanese Lolita subculture which has the same characteristics mentioned above but more maximalist. The inspiration for the fashion is rooted in hyper femininity- having a white or pale pink colour palette. These examples show the hyper femininity of the coquette aesthetic signifying is how women are soft and fragile in this depiction and leaning into femininity is something to be celebrated and not shamed.

The coquette aesthetic is reactionary to the  postfeminist/girlboss, who believes that the only barriers women face is internal and to do with their own work ethic. They reject girlboss feminism because as “(white) Sad Girl suggests, the privileged can-do girl does not fully address the effects of sexism and patriarchy, even when protected by whiteness and normative gender/sexual comportment” (Mooney, 2018). The oppression of neoliberal patriarchy has led to these sad girls wanting to return to a period of perceived safety. By admiring this weakened version of womanhood, we can see that this doesn’t challenge gender norms, it in fact embeds them even deeper. This has similar ideology to the growing tradwives and right-wing antifeminist backlash. There has been rise in what is called the ‘manosphere’ which is a space on the internet where men engage in misogynistic discourse (Han and Yin, 2022). In conjunction to the manosphere, there has been a growth in their female counterpart of the manosphere which is part of this growing antifeminist backlash.

This rise of the thin white women back into the beauty standard is a part of the growing right-wing backlash. As Ophir et al. (2022) points out “Feminist and progressive achievements in the second half of the twentieth century were perceived by…[white nationalists] as a crisis of identity”. They blame the current economic crisis on the identity crisis, where white masculinity is no longer centred because “the idea that women no longer need men poses a threat to white masculinity, white femininity and the white race as a whole” (Ophir et al., 2022). The flames of this are often fanned by the ‘manosphere’. They have emerged as part of the wider antifeminist backlash and often link their female counterparts known as “TradWives” (Love, 2020). They are women who have “hyper-feminine and submissive personalities who recruit males to the white-nationalist cause by framing racist politics as heroic and romantic” (Ophir et al., 2022). This backlash in the form of the coquette aesthetic is in response the trends of the previous decade. These trends were embodied by the Kardashians- which is a racially ambiguous women who has a voluptuous hourglass figure. However, as problematic as the Kardashian beauty standard is, this objective to bring back old standards looks like white women wanting the beauty standard to be unequivocally white again. The coquette aesthetic do the work of the patriarchy by further cementing gender roles through posting these images, they add to the online culture of racist beauty standards. The coquette aesthetic is centred about white female innocence and essentialised ideals of what it means to be a woman. They reaffirm the ‘sex difference’ by posting these images online of this traditional version of femininity (Dworkin, 1974).

The performance aspect of social media allows for women and girls to perform womanhood and girlhood in a new way. By posting about the woes of girlhood women are bombarded with different ways to perform femininity. However, it is important to emphasises how racialised the coquette aesthetic are. Their version of feminism is either denouncing it all together or feminism which prioritises looks above actual intellectual integrity. This points to how patriarchy rewards women who objectify themselves, there is a rewarding feeling internally for being able to perform gender correctly (Butler, 1999; Lloyd, 2016). The coquette girls’ subversion is rooted in whiteness, consumption, patriarchal femininity. This point is developed further by suggesting that these girls reinforce hegemony through digital spaces by an “affective performance of whiteness” (Schwartz, 2020). These spaces tend to exclude women of colour in their understandings of girlhood as Schwartz (2020) points out “Racialized women, especially Black women, have historically been excluded from the Western definition of womanhood and femininity”. This is because the yearning for a patriarchy of a bye-gone era is one that is rooted deeply in white femininity. They use aesthetics from that era, often posting extremely pale and thin women under the tag of  #girlhood. This demonstrates how exclusionary these online spaces can be in the depiction of girlhood and womanhood, more specifically in deciding who is a ‘sad girl’. Women in these spaces end up reinforcing these racist beauty standards. The white sad girls have been, as what Kate MacKinnon dubbed, “thingified” (MacKinnon, 1989). They are presenting themselves as weak for the male in their head because our patriarchal culture socialises women and girls from a young age that traditional femininity is the natural way to be. These girls internalised and regurgitated this culture.

There has been a rise again in the sad girls but instead now they say they’re a part of the ‘coquette’ aesthetic except now they have greater reach with tiktok. As Schwartz (2020) argues the soft aesthetics often centred whiteness with “Racialized women, especially Black women, have historically been excluded from the Western definition of womanhood and femininity” (Schwartz, 2020). This tells us that they want to go back to a softer version of femininity which is more traditional, rejecting the girlboss ideal or even the mainstream influencer who co-opts black aesthetics. Furthermore, in their ambitions to redefine femininity, they denounce liberal girlbosses and want women to be feminine without shame. However, as problematic as the Kardashian beauty standard is, this aim to bring back old standards looks like white women wanting the beauty standard to be white again. This demonstrates how social media and the internet has been used to entrench power relations even further (Megarry, 2018).

In conclusion, the coquette aesthetic might be a well-meaning way to ‘reclaim’ femininity from its critiques. But it cannot be ignored that the aesthetics’ rise in popularity overlapping with the rise in antifeminist backlash is not a… coincidence. Though there are efforts by some to put black, other women of colour and fat women into the aesthetic it is always an afterthought. One cannot deny the origins of the aesthetic which romanticises a traditional version of white femininity. In this essay I have shown the shift from the Kardashian era of beauty standards on social media to the rise again in thinness and traditional white femininity is part of the new right-wing backlash.  The recent developments of the return to an unhealthy thinness shows the growing antifeminist backlash of the fourth wave feminist movement. So does this represent a shift? I think so, the timeline of the growth of the aesthetics and downfall of other trends fits seamlessly. Alongside the ‘girlmath’ and ‘I’m just a girl’ discourse, we can see how the antifeminist, racist backlash can manifest in many different forms.

Bibliography

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