The TikTok Trend Cycle: how the commodification of womxn’s identities and behaviours has deradicalized feminism

Who

Hey! My name is Summer (she/her), and I have always been interested in the intersection of feminism (theoretically and as a movement) and how it fits into the digital age. Growing up with magazines such as Vogue, Elle, J-14, and TeenVogue, I have seen how the “ideal womxn”, ideal body type and style, and ideal behaviour has been pushed onto us. The allure and mystery of the people of magazines have consumed young womxn, including me, for ages, pushing us to pursue specific trends, interests, diets, and consumption habits. However, as I’ve gotten older, I have also seen that we, as a generation, have become more subservient to social media as an all-knowing guide to not only trends but how we think about ourselves and the world.

As a perpetual doom-scroller, this page is for myself and others like me who may be caught up in the trend cycle, looking for a way to re-grasp what exactly we are being told to think and why.

What

With platforms like TikTok hyper-promoting influencers and increasing the time we spend consuming the information it feeds us, we have seen a massive acceleration of the trend cycle. Popular trends that may have remained in dominant culture for a few years in the 2000s/10s, may now only last a month or a week in the 2020s, and are often rebranded as aesthetics or cores. Trad-wife, mob wife aesthetic, clean girl, stay-at-home girlfriend, girl-math, and leaning into your feminine energy are only some of the vastly different trends and buzzwords I have seen rise in the past year. As a user of TikTok and as a member of a generation whose values are being shaped by what they see online, I have begun to think about how exactly these trends are influencing how I conduct my life, see myself, see other womxn, and how feminism is being understood on a global scale.

What I’ve noticed is that these trends tend to share one thing in common: they commodify womxn’s identities and behaviours into easily digestible and diluted content for likes and engagement, ultimately losing focus on the initial goals of the feminist movement that sought to challenge patriarchal systems of power.

Why

I wish to explore how TikTok’s burgeoning trend cycle, driven by an obsession with constant consumption, not only commodifies womxn’s bodies into trends but also harms overall feminist goals, distracting us from more meaningful issues. With this push to consume more and more to keep up with the latest fashion, diet, body type, and lifestyle trends, I find that many womxn are being served diluted forms of feminism through TikTok and may only adhere to these values for as long as they trend for.

Through this SubStack, I wish to focus on how this digitally commodified version of feminism and the intersection of TikTok culture and consumerism has deradicalized feminism, pushing womxn to focus on how to keep up with the latest trend rather than how to challenge misogynistic forces oppressing them. I wish to explore varying topics, for example, the trad-wife and stay-at-home girlfriend aesthetic; how the trend cycle is perpetuating overconsumption, leading to environmental damage; and how the reliance on TikTok and influencers to tell us how to think has eroded our overall critical thinking abilities.