You’re really not that aesthetic

What is it with everyone being so determined to make their lives aesthetic?

I get it—there’s something deeply appealing about fitting into a niche, about curating a life with a distinct, recognizable flavor. A fun little calling card.

“I’m a coastal granddaughter.”

“I’m dark academia.”

“I’m a clean girl, a balletcore girl, a tomato girl—whatever’s trending this month.”

Aesthetics give us a language, a shorthand for who we are or who we want to be. They help us find community. They offer belonging in a digital world that often feels too large, too fast, too fragmented. But at what cost?

Because when you really step back, it starts to feel less like self-expression and more like self-containment. Like we’re not just choosing aesthetics—we’re shrinking to fit them.

There’s something quietly dangerous about this trend toward identity-as-brand. About labeling every emotion, every outfit, every desire, until we are less people and more Pinterest boards. If you feel nostalgic, you’re “a thought daughter.” If you like soft sweaters and books, welcome to romantic academia. If you bake and wear linen, you must be cottagecore. Every quirk gets a name. Every mood gets a color palette. Every version of ourselves gets boxed and tagged and made legible.

But here’s the thing: human beings aren’t legible. Not really. We are layered and contradictory and ever-changing. And the more we try to become a specific “brand” of ourselves, the more we risk forgetting that.

It’s comforting, in a way, to slip into a defined mold. A neat little aesthetic promises safety, clarity, admiration. But it also demands consistency. Suddenly, your identity becomes something to maintain, not explore. You begin curating yourself—not just for others, but for your own expectations.

And in doing so, something vital is lost.

Walt Whitman once wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

It’s one of my favorite lines in all of poetry. Because it gives us permission: to change, to expand, to make no sense at all. To be free from the performance of coherence. To be messy, human, and whole.

But online, it feels like we’re doing the opposite. We’re flattening ourselves into categories. We’re afraid to contradict ourselves, afraid to step outside the role we’ve claimed. Afraid of being unreadable. So we pick a lane and stay in it. Not because it’s who we are, but because it’s who we’ve decided the algorithm will reward.

We become easy to understand. And in doing so, we become strangers to our own complexities.

Sometimes I want to wear a vintage dress and read Dorian Gray in a coffee shop. Sometimes I want to wear pajamas all day and binge-watch Miraculous Ladybug. Sometimes I want to be mysterious and poetic. Other days I just want to be loud and weird and annoying. Is that allowed?

Do I need an aesthetic to feel real?

Real life isn’t curated. It’s chaotic. Sometimes ugly. Often contradictory. And maybe the most honest way to live isn’t to brand ourselves, but to resist the urge to. To say: I don’t fit a box, and I don’t want to.

I want to live a life that can’t be summed up in a TikTok caption. I want to wear things that don’t match. I want to like things that don’t align. I want to change my mind.

And I want that to be enough. I mean, everyone reading this is a writer or some sort of creative. The entire point of that is to break the societal mold and make something distinctive and unique. 

So maybe instead of asking, What aesthetic am I?, we start asking, What truth do I need to honor today?

Because if we’re so focused on sticking to whatever aesthetic we’ve labeled ourselves as, we lose sight of the meaning. We’re supposed to be finding ourselves, not forcing our personality into a cage disguised as a group identity. 

Maybe we remember that we, like Whitman, contain multitudes.

And we don’t owe anyone an explanation for how we show up—only the courage to keep showing up, unfiltered, unbranded, fully alive.

K. Love you all.