i'm torn between finding cottagecore vaguely reactionary and genuinely enjoying the vibe of mushroom picking and embroidery lmao. real leftism is hating urself for liking things
I think cottagecore is a strong reaction to being continually alienated from the products of your labor and vaguely scared about what societal collapse will mean for you wherever you are. It's immensely satisfying to bake bread and grow produce and fix things and make things that you then directly consume, and it's a relief to know that you have those skills and won't be 100% SOL if the world gets measurably worse soon.
I guess the left version of that is communecore, which is just "you and some of your friends all get together to do cottage core in a group"
i don't live in a settler colonial state so i never connected that tbh. i think for me the discomfort lies more in feeling like i'm doing a Marie Antoinette, valourising the "idyllic countryside life, where everything is slow and sweet". irl the only farmer i know is my grandma's brother in ukraine, and i'd absolutely hate and be terrible at living like him. i also just think everything about glamourising "the past" (esp as i live in Austria) has to be examined really critically?
i genuinely love a lot of the aspects of cottagecore individually. like the past few years i've started crocheting, going into nature more, reading up on folklore, trying to buy stuff made of natural materials instead of plastic more, etc. and yet somehow when it's all put together into one aesthetic it makes me uneasy. 🤷♀️
edit: ok i went and thought about it some more haha. i think it's also that i live in a country that has a strong "bauern"/"farmer" aesthetic anyway - going hill walking, and ooh look there's cows as soon as you walk 10 mins out of town and up the hill, and look at all these cute little wood carvings of geese, we're this cute little farmer country in contrast to those germans, and even if people don't live in the countryside it feels like most of the "proper" austrians have some relative who does. and i really do enjoy it, but a part of me wants to scream, "ok i see here's ur cute little wooden duck, and i see there's ur grandpa's vintage SS knife." and i totally get that people who live in the US and the UK bring completely different cultural baggage to the aesthetic with them (e.g. colonialism), but i can't help mine lmao. sorry for the rant.
i guess if you're English but your idyllic cottage is set in the Scottish Highlands? idk, i know nothing about UK Cottagecore Discourse, i just watched a video on cottagecore by a British person and she mentioned colonialism so i rolled with it.
I think there is an important point to be made here that you can enjoy things in your own way without "contaminating" yourself with reactionary. Don't let assholes ruin what you enjoy just because they claimed an aesthetic. They're only socially hegemonic if they're the only ones engaging in an aesthetic. Do I even make sense lmao, I'm fukken still drunk from last night
i'm torn between finding cottagecore vaguely reactionary and genuinely enjoying the vibe of mushroom picking and embroidery lmao. real leftism is hating urself for liking things
Yes
Yes.
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I think cottagecore is a strong reaction to being continually alienated from the products of your labor and vaguely scared about what societal collapse will mean for you wherever you are. It's immensely satisfying to bake bread and grow produce and fix things and make things that you then directly consume, and it's a relief to know that you have those skills and won't be 100% SOL if the world gets measurably worse soon.
I guess the left version of that is communecore, which is just "you and some of your friends all get together to do cottage core in a group"
My gf's best friends are moving in thinking we're gonna practice cottagecore, but secretly it's communecore preparing for collapse.
i don't live in a settler colonial state so i never connected that tbh. i think for me the discomfort lies more in feeling like i'm doing a Marie Antoinette, valourising the "idyllic countryside life, where everything is slow and sweet". irl the only farmer i know is my grandma's brother in ukraine, and i'd absolutely hate and be terrible at living like him. i also just think everything about glamourising "the past" (esp as i live in Austria) has to be examined really critically?
i genuinely love a lot of the aspects of cottagecore individually. like the past few years i've started crocheting, going into nature more, reading up on folklore, trying to buy stuff made of natural materials instead of plastic more, etc. and yet somehow when it's all put together into one aesthetic it makes me uneasy. 🤷♀️
edit: ok i went and thought about it some more haha. i think it's also that i live in a country that has a strong "bauern"/"farmer" aesthetic anyway - going hill walking, and ooh look there's cows as soon as you walk 10 mins out of town and up the hill, and look at all these cute little wood carvings of geese, we're this cute little farmer country in contrast to those germans, and even if people don't live in the countryside it feels like most of the "proper" austrians have some relative who does. and i really do enjoy it, but a part of me wants to scream, "ok i see here's ur cute little wooden duck, and i see there's ur grandpa's vintage SS knife." and i totally get that people who live in the US and the UK bring completely different cultural baggage to the aesthetic with them (e.g. colonialism), but i can't help mine lmao. sorry for the rant.
dunno what colonial baggage it has in the uk, we didn't rob the land they would live their idyllic rural fantasy on from native people here
i guess if you're English but your idyllic cottage is set in the Scottish Highlands? idk, i know nothing about UK Cottagecore Discourse, i just watched a video on cottagecore by a British person and she mentioned colonialism so i rolled with it.
eh, i wouldn't call that colonialism, scotland wasn't an english colony, it was a rival kingdom that eventually got absorbed into the english one
I think there is an important point to be made here that you can enjoy things in your own way without "contaminating" yourself with reactionary. Don't let assholes ruin what you enjoy just because they claimed an aesthetic. They're only socially hegemonic if they're the only ones engaging in an aesthetic. Do I even make sense lmao, I'm fukken still drunk from last night
real leftism is hating yourself