Links + Recs 2: Cute is making a comeback
top books of 2022, TikTok trends, and why is everything so darn cute?
Welcome back to Arroz con Mango!
I hope you all had a happy new year and restful holiday break! On the book front, I failed my Goodreads Reading Challenge by 3 books, which was probably a good thing because one of my goals for the new year is to not read so obsessively. In the past three weeks, I spent more time catching up with family and friends, cooking and baking, and generally relaxing- which was definitely a nicer way to spend the holidays. I’m also at 18 subscribers, and while I hope to spread my book-love a little further this year, I’m truly so grateful to all my friends who have supported me <3 it really means the world!
Biiiig thank you from me and Apu
To start off my first post of the year, I want to look back at 2022 and reflect on the best/worst books I read.
Novels I loved
Stoner - John Williams
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
The Door - Magda Szabó
Chilean Poet: A Novel - Alejandro Zambra
Other fiction I’d recommend
The Governesses - Anne Serre
An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures - Clarice Lispector
Motherhood - Sheila Heti
Nonfiction Books worth your time
Women in Clothes - Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton
Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions - Johann Hari
The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket - Benjamin Lorr
The Nineties: A Book - Chuck Klosterman
Books that pleasantly surprised me
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency - Olivia Laing
The Anomaly - Hervé Le Tellier
Books that let me down
Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto - Aaron Bastani
Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World - Jeff Madrick
Don’t bother reading
Fraternity: Stories - Benjamin Nugent
Fake Accounts - Lauren Oyler
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter- And How to Make the Most of Them Now - Meg Jay
Death in Her Hands - Ottessa Moshfegh
Favorite Music Books
Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion, and Film - Marc Spitz
Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City in 2001-2011 - Lizzy Goodman
Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl - Carrie Brownstein
For the second installment of links + recs I want to bring you on a journey to the whimsical land of all things sweet, girly, and adorable.
It could just be my side of the internet, but has anyone else noticed an influx of cuteness on your feeds? Scroll through my TikTok ‘for you page’ and a typical sequence of videos might be: a Five Below Sanrio haul, Sonny Angel unboxing, a slideshow of animals in knit headwear, anything with the “didn’t I do it for you” Kermit Audio, and K-pop style photocards of international soccer (football) players.
This phenomena is not only online though, many recent fashion trends also embrace cuteness: see “ballet-core” (ballet flats, Mary janes, ribbons and hairbows, braids, satin slips), and “coquette” (excess blush, tiny floral patters, ruffles and lace, those camis your mom probably bought you in a three pack a decade ago). Why is Brandy Melville selling a baby tee with a cherub eating ice cream pulling a old-fashioned ducky toy?
Recently, my friend shared this piece by Sianne Ngai, Cuteness of the Avant-Garde, published in a Summer 2005 volume of Critical Inquiry and cited in one of my favorite podcasts, Nymphet Alumni, in Ep. 9: Internet Girl Physiognomy. In this article, Ngai explores the way Avant-Garde poets employ “minor aesthetics” such as cuteness in their work. She suggests that while more attention has been paid towards the “prestigious aesthetic concepts like the beautiful, sublime, and ugly,” since they are more associated with “stronger positive or negative feelings of pleasure/displeasure,” minor aesthetics are more closely linked to consumer aesthetics, and thus are better suited for analyzing “art’s increasingly complex relation to market society in the twentieth century,” (811-12).
In my memory, ever since the Tumblr years of 2012-2016, people have been obsessed with speaking about and naming different kinds of aesthetics (now also called -cores). Today Tumblr itself has become an aesthetic boiled down to the popular images of American Apparel skirts, rainbow oil spills, and the xx album covers. Ngai references Kant’s “aesthetic relations” to speak about judgments made on object’s based solely on their appearance and treated as if it’s a trait inherent to the object. Aesthetics are difficult to pin down and are usually defined by describing other objects that we also classify as that aesthetic; the mood board reigns supreme.
Cuteness is often associated with the “infantile and feminine;” adjectives that come to mind include tiny, adorable, small, sweet, round, soft, charming, squishy, endearing, and so forth. Common cute things are stuffed animals, certain cartoons, anthropomorphic objects, and baby animals and humans. According to Ngai, “the smaller and less formally articulated or more bloblike the object, the cuter it becomes- in part because smallness and blobbishness suggest greater malleability,” (816). Cute objects provoke cooing and awing, smushing and cuddling, but also more sinister actions like smothering and deforming. It’s important to note that cute as a value-judgement is unclear, and cute things are not often held to high regard or considered artful or interesting.
While I now had a better sense of “cuteness” and it’s appeal, it still didn’t address what had really struck me: that women my age (myself included) but also those in their 30s or older, were being bitten by what I’m calling the cuteness bug! We’ve been making fun of Disney adults for years and it’s often said that kids these days are ditching their dolls and toys earlier for iPads and other tech, so I was shocked to see my generation embracing their inner (cute) child. So many videos I encounter on a daily basis feature women spending hundreds of dollars on plushies and blind box collectible toy, some even taking them on Starbucks runs. Long story short, when did it become normal and maybe even profitable for young women to look and engage in “cute” hobbies? Additionally, when and how did kawaii become a more global phenomenon (Miffy Museum in the Netherlands, Hello Kitty shopping in Mexico)? In 2005, in Consuming "Hello Kitty": Tween Icon, Sexy Cute, and the Changing Meaning of 'Girlhood', Amy T.Y. Lai writes, “for Americans, Hello Kitty is no more than a ‘cartoon cat,’ generally liked and consumed by pre-teenage girls (‘tweens’) but having much less impact among adolescents, let alone adult women,” so I feel like a definite “vibe-shift” as they say has taken place (244).
I suspect the rise of cuteness is due in part to many factors, all of which come together online. For one, we’ve seen the comeback of the 90s and the 2000s in fashion and pop culture, so it makes sense that the general culture of nostalgia would inspire women to look back on their childhood and seek inspiration from there. A Google Trends search of the term “Sanrio” shows an increase in searches over the past two and a half years along with other searches such as “Animal Crossing,” “Squishmallows,” “Aesthetics",” “Razors, and “Wet Seal.” Additionally, K-Pop’s popularity in the West has skyrocketed, and both the boy groups and girl groups are carefully managed to ensure their image remains wholesome and age-appropriate. They are heavily marketed, from high production music videos and song releases, endless merch options, to homemade fan photocards and TikTok edits, these bands and the culture surrounding them is saturated in cute imagery. Another suspicion I have is that “alternative” aesthetics have been coopted by corporations and are no longer edgy, unique, or cool- so the cool girls have turned towards the cute things that have been overlooked in our recent past. Could this also be linked to the disillusion many woman have felt with the sex-positivity culture of the mid 2010s and has that has led them to prefer to look cute over looking hot? who knows! Or perhaps this could just be another example of the Lipstick effect, where cute trinkets such as Miffy keychains or Sonny Angels serve as relatively inexpensive “little luxury” impulse buys.
Yet, as mentioned earlier, cuteness has its dark side. Intrinsically tied to consumerism, cute objects are for the most part environmentally wasteful; commonly collectable in nature, they inspire overconsumption and more often than not come in non-recyclable packaging. I feel guilty after watching cute videos of toddlers, remembering no matter how innocent it may seem, they are being constantly content-farmed and forced to perform for an unknown, potentially dangerous audience. Even cute clothing often verges into perverse territories, reminiscent of the Lolita and nymphet tags on tumblr I’d rather not remember. As Daniel Harris writes, “the process of conveying cuteness to the viewer disempowers its objects, forcing them into ridiculous situations and making them appear more ignorant and vulnerable than they really are,” (179). I can’t help but think of the countless ‘get ready with me videos’ that begin with ambiguously aged women (hopefully not girls) who film themselves in their rooms going from their undergarments to their finished outfits for countless, faceless viewers.
Like a tiny fluffy puppy, the culture of cute looks innocent enough, but pet it the wrong way and it may bite.
Cute Links
ʕ✿→ᴥ←ʔฅ star eye shadow
( •͡ᴥ•) cute Christmas haul
ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ☆ coquette ribbon tattoo
(๑≚ᆽ≚๑✿) NYC Sonny Angel meet up
^≗ω≗^ Hello Kitty Concha Cookie
(=・ェ・=) Hello Kitty Nacimiento
Cute Songs (* ‿ * ✿)
About You -1975
Apple Cider- beabadoobee
NEON 1989 - YUKIKA
Kaihatsu-san - Reiko Kudo
Treehouse - Alex G, Emily Yacina
Cookie - NewJeans
Mama’s Lamp - Kitty Craft
Pangaea Girls (Magic Feeling) - Candy Claws
Crush? - Strawberry Machine
Dreaming is Fucking Right - The Marshmallow Kisses
Taiyo - Asobi Seksu
Purrfect - Crapface
Gi Gi Leung is Dead - my little airport
Mary’s Song - The Aislers Set
if you’ve made it this far… you are the cutest of them all! Thanks for tuning in this week, hope your new year is off to a great start! Comment below your favorite cute thing and maybe 1 resolution for 2023. If you liked the more long-form content, give this post a like and share with your friends! Ttfn :*
Links + Recs 2: Cute is making a comeback
Something I think is interesting is the cuteness/creepiness overlap... uncanny valley ofc but also I think a huge part of it is the rise of anime in mainstream which is such a fascinating trend to me... also I think whatever this new wave of cuteness is has less to do with blobbiness and more to do with details and tchotchkiness... in a sort of hoard-y, spiderwebby way. I am going to send u some artist pages