The Aestheticization of Whiteness on Tumblr
by Mackenzie Turner
Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website founded in 2007 that allows members to post multimedia content. Popularized in the 2010s, Tumblr became a space for fan culture to thrive through popular blog posts about shows such as Doctor Who, Supernatural, and Teen Wolf. Outside of fandom spaces, Tumblr users posted photographs, film stills, and song lyrics that fit certain “aesthetics.” The soft grunge aesthetic was prevalent on Tumblr in the 2010s as a by-product of the 2000s indie sleaze fashion trend. The soft grunge aesthetic paralleled online culture, informing fashion, photography, and music trends. This edgy, dark visual aesthetic informed the emotionally heavy content shared on Tumblr, expressing feelings of nostalgia, melancholy, and despair.
A striking commonality in the content shared on this “aesthetic” side of Tumblr is its overwhelming emphasis on whiteness. Their choice of subjects, films, and musical artists are almost entirely white people. These posts idealize whiteness not merely as a racial identity but as a cultural and aesthetic framework. They deem whiteness worthy of aesthetic value and social clout. These posts particularly promoted an idealized version of white femininity, idolizing and romanticizing pale whiteness. Posts on Tumblr racialized purity and ethereality, associating whiteness with femininity and limiting femininity to delicateness and weakness. In effect, this association alienates non-white women and reinforces the conception that they are inherently less feminine and less desirable.
Popular images featured on Tumblr were stills from director Sofia Coppola’s filmography, most commonly The Virgin Suicides. Most of Coppola’s work centers on the subjectivity of middle-to upper-class white women. The Virgin Suicides is a 1999 film about five teenage sisters who live a sheltered life in middle-class suburbia. By the end of the film, all of the sisters have taken their own lives. The film is narrated by a group of neighborhood boys who idolize the sisters and obsess over them, attempting to unravel the mystery behind their deaths. The film is a slow and meditative examination of adolescence, isolation, and memory. The cinematography of the film is dreamlike and ethereal, creating a hazy and nostalgic feel. The color palette, filled with soft pastels and muted tones, evokes a sense of melancholy, making the film a prime source of aesthetic idealization.
The film's aesthetic qualities found a home on Tumblr, tagged extensively under the name “sad girl aesthetic.” The “sad girl aesthetic” often included melancholic images of young white women in distress, crying with running mascara or smoking cigarettes. Across this aesthetic was a core sense of loneliness, bleakness, and existential dread. The “sad girl aesthetic” marks sadness as an integral part of teenage girlhood. However, this aesthetic does not represent a universal type of girlhood; rather, it is a depiction of an idealized white girlhood. The fragility and suffering of the girls in The Virgin Suicides is romanticized in ways that are rarely extended to narratives involving non-white characters. On Tumblr, there was no critical examination of how whiteness functioned in the film to inform the audience’s sympathy for the characters. Whiteness is central to the film’s aesthetic: their pale skin, blonde hair, and delicate demeanor are romanticized as symbols of their innocence and vulnerability. This aesthetic emphasizes beauty in suffering, particularly white suffering and ignores how these narratives elevate white women’s struggles as inherently more poetic or universal than those of women of color, whose stories often remain untold or unsupported by these cultural frameworks.
At the height of Tumblr’s popularity, mental health issues and drug use were commonly romanticized in these online spaces. Depression, in particular, was glamorized and aestheticized, seen as cool and edgy. Posts that promoted thinness, disordered eating, and self-harm permeated Tumblr in the 2000s and early 2010s. Characters such as Effy Stonem and Cassie Ainsworth from the hit British teen show Skins (2007-2013) were upheld as the standard of beauty and seen as aspirational. Skins is known for its raw and unfiltered depiction of adolescence, refusing to shy away from topics such as mental illness, substance abuse, sexual assault, and death. Some viewers criticize the show for its explicit content, but arguably the issue lies not in the subject matter itself but how it gets glamorized and romanticized in online communities. Tumblr users in the "pro-ana" (pro-anorexia) community used Skins characters as inspiration and motivation. Users would spread stills and clips of Cassie, who struggled with an eating disorder throughout the series, adopting her behaviors surrounding her relationship to food. This proved dangerous for the well-being of countless young women who internalized these harmful ideals of beauty.
In 2012, Tumblr banned blogs that promoted suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders. Today, tags and search terms related to harmful content are censored on the website. While implementing safety measures on social media platforms is crucial, examining and transforming our society’s ideals is equally important. Challenging and deconstructing beauty standards based on whiteness and thinness is essential. It is necessary to redefine what is considered aesthetic, creating space for diversity in and outside these online communities.
