Cottagecore and Homemaking

Aesthetics are all the rage right now, and I admit, they're super fun. Light academia, dark academia, royaltycore, Y2K, and more. Who doesn't want to put on a big princess dress and wander through the corridors of a castle, if only in your mind? But today I want to look at one specific aesthetic- cottagecore.

Cottagecore is an aesthetic based around a romanticized version of agricultural life and simpler times of the past. Think things like floral dresses, gathering wildflowers, and baking bread. It's a pretty loosely used term, but you get the idea.

I was watching a video recently about Kiki's Delivery Service and how it's more relatable as you get older, and she brought up an interesting point about cottagecore. She was talking about how it's interesting because we long for this lifestyle we've never known, but people like our grandparents did. We want those simpler times and lifestyles we have no experience with.

I think this has especially risen to prominence because of the pandemic and people's desire to escape from it. We turned to lost skills like baking or breadmaking or knitting to help us cope with having so much time. And that brought about the desire for a time past, when things were less complicated.

On one hand, that's not entirely a bad thing. We've lost so many art forms and skills as time has gone by. If things like cottagecore can bring back an interest in baking bread or learning to sew your own clothes, then great.

But on the other hand, these people are longing for an idealized version of rural life. Waltzing through fields of flowers and leaving bread to cool on the windowsill in summertime.

Real farm life isn't like that at all. It's throwing on your raincoat and boots when the wind flips your chick coop to go out and right it. It's dealing with gathering the harvest before first frost. It's slaughtering animals and losing others illness or other animals.

I've lived on a farm for a lot of my life, but even I don't know the full extent of farm life. There are people out there that truly live what some people might consider cottagecore, and it's not pretty or aestheticy. It's all those things I mentioned and more. Living off your own land and making most of your food and clothes is more than aesthetic. It's a lifestyle. A choice more and more people are making as our world gets crazier.

Cottagecore, in essence, is an idealized form of homemaking. Homemaking is a beautiful thing. I see it in so many forms in the people around me. Women and men who chose not to adhere to the norms of modern society and are probably the better for it.

Aesthetics are fun, but they aren't realistic. If you can't keep a succulent alive for more than a week, you probably won't be able to grow your own home garden. Real farm life and homemaking is messy and hard. But I would say from my experience, it's worth it.

What are your thoughts on cottagecore and aesthetics? What's one that irks you? Tell me in the comments.

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