Mob Wives and Personal Style (and You!)

Something has shifted.

TikTok’s latest “mob wife” aesthetic seems to have been the catalyst many young women needed to realize that the chasing of microtrend-based identities is a losing game. The backlash has been swift—though, plenty of girlypops have run out to acquire the fur coat that seems to be the main crux and, indeed, only real characteristic of the look—and the masses are finally starting to really question the point of all this. I haven’t even seen the usual cries of “let people enjoy things”—it seems, finally, people aren’t enjoying it, or even pretending to.

The evolution of the “aesthetic” has been interesting to watch as someone who’s too old for all of it (“too old” by choice…and also by birth). It started out as a descriptor in and of itself. Muted tones, cups of latte art held by sweater-covered hands, and aspirational loft apartments bathed in sunlight were all considered “aesthetic” and flooded the tag on Tumblr. The VSCO girl aesthetic came into being soon thereafter, though, all I ever really deduced about it was that it required you to own a Hydroflask and subscribe to Emma Chamberlain on YouTube (I think). In a flash, there was dark academia and Y2K and coastal grandmas and tomato girls—which may or may not have been satirical—and, of course, the everlasting “clean girl.” These “aesthetics” weren’t just trends, they came with an entire ethos and, once adopted, required an almost complete overhaul of one’s wardrobe, makeup routine, and lifestyle.

There’s a common misconception that “social media killed personal style,” and that’s not true. Personal style, the way is exists, today, is a relatively new concept that’s only been proliferated by social media. Historically, while people have always had their own preferences when it comes to aesthetics, the sheer amount of options and access to clothing we have today has made the idea of wearing entirely different silhouettes, or different types of garments or even different fabrics than the person next to you—simply because you like them—a perfectly normal thing, when, for most of history, people have dressed fairly homogeneously.

In decades past, when people chose a different “aesthetic” than the norm, it was for a reason. When flappers cut their hair short, it was a rejection of traditional standards of femininity. When “Bills” in Belgian Congo dressed like the cowboys they saw in American Western films, it was because they saw those images as symbols of freedom. When “Preppies” wore their prep-school uniforms outside of school hours, it was to set them apart from the anti-establishment movements exploding among less privileged youth in the 80s. Politics, values, and ideals evolved into lifestyles, into ways of dress, and into communities that went against mainstream culture. This was subculture. Social media killed the subculture, and replaced it with aesthetics.

In the interest of not sounding like a bitter old millennial, I do remember what it was like to be young, particularly in the early days of social media. Through middle school, I took a “weird on purpose” approach to getting dressed and consuming media that stuck with me until well into my high school years. But, I remember when the switch flipped, and I began to covet something more than just being that girl in the knee high socks in the middle of Texas summer: I wanted an identity. I didn’t want to create one, though—some would argue I already had. But, what I had wasn’t enough. I wanted to emulate the coolest identity I could find. I wanted to be like the Scene Queens on MySpace.

I started listening to the same music as them. I begged my mom to let me dye my hair with red box dye and begged again for money to go to the shows where other people like them would be. I folded their style into my own: I couldn’t afford an all new wardrobe of band tees and plastic diamond necklaces, but I could sew my jeans from last year skinnier and cut thumbholes into my Old Navy clearance rack hoodie. I wore dark eyeliner like them and straightened my bangs to within an inch of their life. I wasn’t The Most scene but there was a beauty in the subculture that allowed for you to do your own thing, as long as you checked all the other boxes—the music, the big hair, the thousands of MySpace “friends” and top-down selfies. Above all else, though, there was time.

While “scene” is not that deep of a subculture, it’s one of the first (if not the very first) to exist on both the cusp of “real” subculture and Internet subculture. Scene was an offshoot of emo which itself was an offshoot from punk, essentially making it a subculture that started from economic disadvantage and anti-establishment ideals to a section at Hot Topic. This evolution happened over the course of decades, through many progressions of technology and how we connect and through the shifting of an artform (music) into multiple genres with their own scenes and regional variants. It shifted as its subscribers both grew older and became younger, and it spread in real life via collective gathering at shows just as much as it did through collective gathering online. But, eventually, it came to a head: as the anti-conformist ideals behind punk faded, they were replaced with consumerist assimilation. The movement was replaced with the moodboard.

I say all this to say that it would be disingenuous to blame the youth for their willingness to follow trends. We all went through a phase of wanting to fit in, we all have to find our identities somewhere. I would never blame young, mostly teenage girls for how they seek to find a sense of belonging. I do, however, blame influencers for preying on that desire, corporations for rewarding those who push overconsumption, and social media for providing the platform for it all. Dedicating your entire internet presence and, by extension, your life to selling things requires constant newness. Algorithms love constant newness—short attention spans won’t stick around for the same old, same old, but a new aesthetic to subscribe to will keep you on the platform. Brands love constant newness, too: they’re making money hand over fist selling the products that you “didn’t know you needed.” But there’s only so much newness in the world. Eventually, newness looks, not just to the past, but to the fringes: to the subculture.

Where subcultures, historically, were based on dissatisfaction with mainstream culture and society at large, aesthetics are based on dissatisfaction with the self, but, is that really so different from how the fashion industry has always functioned? Is the idea of taking an “alternative” or even just a cool, unique style of dress and flattening it into its most commercial version to sell it to people as the thing that will make them look cooler/hotter/younger really so new? It’s not, but what is new is the sheer speed at which it all happens, not to mention how accessible it all is.

When my journey through my personal style took me from scene to hipster, I couldn’t just hop online and buy a bunch of American Apparel miniskirts and Urban Outfitters cloth Mary Janes, I still had to sit with my clothes and adapt them to what I wanted them to be. And that’s what social media has killed: not personal style in and of itself, not just subculture, but the act of taking the time to figure it all out, and the need to be resourceful and create a look. With every new aesthetic coming pre-packaged with an “edit” on fast fashion sites and a hashtag on social media showing you exactly how to achieve it, it’s never been easier to give in to the feelings of inadequacy that marketers have preyed on for decades and buy something new and shiny to fill the void. But, this only leads to an even bigger void once something newer and shinier comes along.

As we navigate this era of rapid trends and constant newness, I have hope that this “mob wife” backlash will influence us all to slow down; to question who really wins when we’re fighting for our right to fit into labels that make it easier for us to buy endlessly; and, above all else, to rediscover the joy of figuring it out. We’ll never achieve a more sustainable fashion industry, otherwise.