Hyper fixations on labels

living in a world where there is a constant new way to describe oneself.

What’s your aesthetic? Clean girl, cottagecore, coquette, dark academia, old money, skater boy, or minimalistic? We live in a world where we need to be defined by new labels each day. In the midst of learning new labels, we have forgotten how to simply live. We have forgotten what it feels like to spend a day without mentioning a new trend. We are slowly trading individuality for imitation. As someone whose vocabulary has also turned into ongoing trends, I don’t condemn a funny video on Instagram, but aren’t we overdoing it when all our conversations as a society start to sound the same?

Where did it all start? I believe it was during Covid, when we were all stuck inside our homes and exposed to the same social media platforms. In the boredom of it all, we became obsessed with trends. Although trends have existed for years, whether it was the era of skinny jeans or thin eyebrows there was still a sense of self. The Covid era feels like a lifetime ago, yet we all lived through the same strange version of life. From following the two week shred by Chloe Ting to the Dalgona coffee trend, our lives took a different turn.

From the era of Covid came the era of social media dependency. In the vulnerability of being trapped within four walls, we all fell into the trap of online life. In a world where we may feel freer than ever, we have somehow become chained to our phones. I was once talking to someone and mentioned that I hate “bed rotting.” I was surprised when the person did not know what “bed rot” meant. While I initially felt a sense of social illiteracy in that person, I should have recognized the effects of excessive social media consumption in myself instead.

Don’t become pessimistic and hate the era of social media you were born into. Social media has given us a lot. It has given us awareness of things generations before us were never exposed to such as awareness of mental health, news around the world, free speech, and the reality that many human rights, although established, might not be exercised unless you are an American or Jew.

However, is awareness a punishment in disguise? The more aware you become of something, the more that awareness begins to take a toll on your life. Once you begin noticing patterns in people and society, you cannot unsee them.

In the world we live in today, humans are scared of the unpredictable, so we create labels to define ourselves. All humans truly want is to be understood. Is that not why, throughout our lives, we search for different relationships? We want our parents, friends, siblings, partners, children, or even strangers to understand us.

As a society, we have become desperate to be defined.

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Maybe that is why Oscar Wilde’s words still feel painfully relevant today. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, he wrote, “To define is to limit,” which I believe is one of the most beautiful lines ever written in literature.

In only four words, he taught us a lifetime’s worth of wisdom. Sadly, once you attach yourself to one title, you become trapped within it. Apparently, a successful woman in her career cannot also be a successful mother. The essence of this quote is to never let one part of your life limit another. When you allow someone to define you, consciously or unconsciously, you begin to believe that definition is your boundary. The moral is that when you let one thing describe you completely, eventually you may become only that thing.

The biggest problem in this equation is not only how often we limit ourselves to one title, but how we have started to clone each other. We are all exposed to the same social media platforms that constantly preach the same ideas. Once something becomes cool and trendy, everything else suddenly becomes “outdated.” We are told what we should like and what we should not.

My realization began with TikTok and how deeply it affects taste and choices. TikTok has a way of making people obsessed with the most random things. Last month, everyone could only talk about Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and understandably, she was a fascinating woman. However, the entire meaning of her story was lost because all people focused on was her style and how handsome John F. Kennedy Jr. was. It was a story about two real people whose lives were destroyed under the pressure and scrutiny of society, yet all anyone cared about was the aesthetic.

Society has become so centralized around aesthetics. All that matters is how things look rather than what they truly are. To be considered “cool” in society, you must constantly prove that you are cool. Coolness is no longer about how you speak, think, or treat others, but about what you wear, post, and display online. But forcing ourselves into something we are not will only leave us endlessly trying to become someone else.

Now, whenever I like something, I have to ask myself whether I genuinely like it or whether social media taught me that I should. Stanley cups are one of the most unreasonable trends ever, and that was when I realized that we as a society may have completely lost the plot.

At the end of the day, isn’t it just a water bottle?

You are more than a water bottle, an Alo set, Labubu, Pilates, or Birkenstocks. You are all the people you meet, all the love you give, all the respect you show others, all the laughter you share, all the books you read, all the hardships you overcome, all the knowledge you carry, and all the amazing people you love.

Stop trying to become other people and enjoy life for what it truly is. Life is about going to Pilates to work on yourself, not to post about it for validation. Life is about laughing with your friends in a coffee shop simply for the joy of being there. Life is about doing what you love because you genuinely want to, not because you feel pressured to.

You are cool because you are you, not because you are like everyone else.

Authenticity makes you cool.
Being different makes you cool.

You are already cool.