We Are Human Label Makers
By: Allison Riffe
Gremlin Core
Sealth Wealth
Rat girl summer
Barbiecore
Rot Sunday
Short King Spring
Clean girl aesthetic
Coquette
Dark Coquette
Hot girl walk
Hot girl summer
Dark/Light academia
Granola girl
Coconut girl
Lead paint stare
Dark femininity
Disney knees
Range rover mom
Ralph Lauren girl/boy
Old money aesthetic
Quiet luxury aesthetic
Vanilla girl
“that” girl aesthetic
Utah curls
Ipad kid
Book girly
Y2K
Sunday reset
(insert children’s TV network here) kid
Millennial pause
We’ve been taught all along not to label or stereotype those around us. We know that’s rude, and small-minded, and wildly unfair. We feel offended by labels like a ditsy blonde or dumb jock. Sure, labeling people is taboo.
But TikTok’s favorite pastime is labeling everything else.
So we slam the door to our cottage core house in a coastal grandma outfit and to “make money” off a clothing return (girl math).
Certainly, the easy availability, recall, and association of these labels with stereotypically feminine attitudes and aesthetics is unignorable. Unsurprisingly, it creates instant shared experience, commonalities, and connection for those who identify with the labels and use them fluently. There seems to be a relationship between the easy availability of self-prescribed labels and understanding (and expressing) yourself.
People love to label, but not to be labeled.
Labels infuse us with a little B-12 shot of identity, so people want the label that they can choose. You aren’t trapped in one. You can carry several at a time. You can peruse new ones on TikTok while you eat your girl dinner.
It’s a revolving door of traits and personas, celebrating our common idiosyncrasies and gently roasting our shared peculiarities. We label our food, our math, our clothes.
TikTok drives this phenomenon onwards, pushing labels to be fabulously more evocative, eccentric, and ever-expanding. Even with the increasing inventiveness and sheer number of the labels floating about us, we want the label to be in first person; we want to put the nametag on ourselves.
Humans have been hurt by labels from other humans ad nauseum. But somehow we feel empowered when we give them to ourselves.
Labels as Social Hush Money
Perhaps it’s too challenging to answer why we're still single (aka in my revenge era) or why we didn’t get out of bed and workout (aka rot Sunday) or why we’re wearing a fur coat in 85 degree weather (aka mob wife aesthetic). A pithy little phrase can speak volumes when we would prefer not to explain. Or when we can’t. It creates immediate understanding, a social hush money of sorts.
Labels tell us that this current moment, this dinner, this afternoon, this outfit… it’s not really that serious. We try it on for size, and then own it for a temporary moment. Labels are a safe word that force people to stop double-clicking. They announce “this is my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Maybe we use labels to keep things simple, but it’s still complicated. Classifying our possessions, preferences, and parenting styles into bite-size descriptions does some heavy lifting when it comes to being human. However, humans have been using labels to put each other in harmful boxes since the beginning of time, and TikTok certainly doesn’t change that.
Previously, labels were used to put people in boxes and to limit.
Now, when self-applied, they can be a vehicle for creativity and drawing outside the lines. Especially when there is no limit on the labels you can have.
