Immaterial Girl

Defining our identities through consumer goods

If it weren’t obvious from my other posts, or my near hourly lamentations about my lack of direction in life, I’ve been a bit stagnant as of late. I heard somewhere (read: saw a Tik Tok where someone said) that being 23 is kind of like being 0 years old. Free from the walls of school, I’ve been thrusted into adulthood, forced to navigate this new world with the wobbly legs of a newborn giraffe. 

In an effort to exercise any semblance of control over my future, and subconsciously avoid the more pressing tasks, I’ve taken to wardrobe updating - filling up various online carts in hopes of molding the person I want to be from the shoes up. They say money can’t buy you happiness, but no one ever said anything about spending it. An unexpected upside to my late work hours is that I can spend some afternoons in relatively desolate thrift stores, and with every overpriced pair of sunglasses from 2006 comes the exciting prospect of a new persona. Y2k princess or aloof French girl? 70’s flare or Matrix extra? The possibilities are truly endless.

But after the excitement and wonder subsides, I struggle to suppress the cynical part of myself that recognizes the bleak undertones in trying to shop for a sense of self. 

In our rampant consumerist society, we’re fed an idea that personal evolution is only achievable through a predetermined set of goods to be purchased. And once you notice it in your own outlook, you begin to see that it has infected every facet of the internet.

Visual mediums like Instagram and Tik Tok feed us aesthetics like the “It Girl”, with her wired headphones and collection of vintage vinyls, and the “Clean Girl”, who has a Solidcore membership and a fridge full of green juice. For some reason, both genres of girl have a closet made up entirely of basics that cost the GDP of a small nation. Subfactions and variations on these categories exist, but no girl is impervious to being boxed in.

Some thoughts I shared whilst particularly grumpy.

Each genre of performable femininity is necessitated by constant consumption of material goods. You can not be an “it girl” without the latest overpriced pair of boots, can not be a “clean girl” without a 9 step skin care routine and an unending supply of hair wax. The person you are, or want to be, has nothing to do with your current values or future aspirations, and everything to do with how much you are willing to spend in order to embody this ideal.  

A current trend on Tik Tok encourages users to look at a carousel of curated aesthetics, then ask their friends which one they think best reflects them. I’ve sent countless of these to my friends, and been both bemused and deeply impacted when they chose a different Polyvore style slide of items than I would have chosen for myself. Perhaps my self perception is too fragile that I’m unable to untangle it from the possessions I own, but I believe that when our media constantly tells us to associate basic personal adjectives - cool, sexy, clean, etc. - exclusively with objects that can be shilled and purchased, we develop a collective mindset that is fundamentally flawed. 

“Ask Your Friends Which Founding Father You Are”

In the West, where young women make up an increasingly larger share of the workforce yet still receive less on average than their male counterparts, this is one of the primary hurdles to our economic advancement and self sufficiency. That we have to shave, wear makeup, and dress a certain way to ascertain respect in the workplace, and maintain that delicate respectful-likable balance is a given, but now it has permeated our private lives too: our outfits on nights out and personal social medias must also present a coherent picture, and that requires a constant stream of spending.

American identity is inherently consumerist - we are a nation of guns, beer, and a McDonald’s on every highway exit. Myself, and many other young women may believe ourselves to be above this baseline way of life, but we’ve really just found a prettier casing for the capitalist underbelly. 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to perform a persona in certain conditions - donning the “corporate girlie” identity to cope with the soul crushing nature of a 9-5 is both humorous and completely understandable. But the more we edit our public presentations to fit within these narrow categorizations, the more our senses of self become inextricably linked with objects. 

To be human is to be composed of endless contradictions - our very nature should lead us to rebuke the confines of categorization. And when I think of the people I believe to be cool, I seldom think of the clothes they wear, the drinks they order, or even the music they listen to - I think of who they are as people. Our ideas, our values, and our passions will forever be more important than our external presentations, and they will forever exist in a nebulous fashion that is unable to be purchased. 

So, I’ve decided to get back into writing, dance classes, and volunteering, in hopes that direction comes from the connections I make to myself and others, and not from a store. And if I do buy a new pair of shoes, that’s merely an added bonus.