The Resurrection Of The Tumblr Girl

Time may march on, but the longing for our best days remains. An itch you can’t scratch, until you can. Because the day has arrived, the day we’ve all been waiting for. Nostalgia-core has come full circle, and now our teenage or college years are back in fashion.

Vogue writer Maria Santa Poggi first forewarned of the cultural whiplash that would be a 2014 Tumblr girl resurgence back in 2022. Four years on, she may have been a bit premature, but no less wrong in predicting the inevitable. Millennials, older Zoomers, and even young’uns who missed the boat are fiending for what follows the prevailing 2020s aesthetic, Y2K. It’s time to get our nostalgic adolescence on, much like many of our parents got to relive the ’80s. Naturally, the 2010s are next in line.

The Vibe on Tumblr

As an early adopter of Tumblr, I arrived before the party really started. Yes, it was amazing, especially because this was pre-social-justice Tumblr, but I also burned out on it before the peak of Tumblr girl aesthetics (of which there was actually quite a variety) took over mainstream culture. I remember when Tumblr was supposed to be a big secret. No one at your high school was supposed to know about it. Outing a fellow blogger was a cardinal sin akin to deadnaming. Anonymity was king and held sacrosanct in how platforms like X operate today.

Love it or hate it, Tumblr was a true incubator for basically everything that’s emerged from online culture over the past 15 years. It was the catalyst for what became so many different established online subcultures, aesthetics, identities, and discourse, essentially creating callout culture, fandom, and parasociality. I could go on, but that’s not the focus of this article.

On Tumblr, your feed transported you into a different world where you could be inspired and cultivate a persona based on who you wanted to be rather than who you were. You’d pride yourself on personalizing your blog, likely with customized HTML that made you feel like you were a hackergirl in training and MySpace-adjacent auto-played blog music. I even had a custom cursor: Nyan Cat. As you can probably tell, my Tumblr peak was 2012 or 2013. In its early days, Tumblr was like an escape from the real world. It was where you could let your real identity free to vent, express, and curate. Blogging with an undercase b.

In a recent video essay, cultural commentator Tanner Devore argues Tumblr culture was such an intoxicating time because it was all about expressing yourself in reblogs. That is, rather than it being about content creation, it was about curation, or “building a vibe.” Down to the song you had playing, your layout, whether your header and your profile picture went together in some way, the text you used and the cute little emojis you had next to your stuff, there was a meticulousness in carving out an identity for yourself and making that visible to the world in a way that felt more authentic and less focus-grouped.

It didn’t matter if the vibe was legible to other people, if it was fully fleshed out, or completely nonsensical. You could experiment. Artistic expression was indulgently ambiguous or contradictory. There was a freedom and a lack of hyper-analysis to this culture at the time that allowed you to play with and live in the vibe you cultivated, free from the chains of the peering eyes of Big Video Essay. “I think there’s a lot of intimacy that comes to reblogging something and not having to put a comment to it or not having to explain why,” Devore says. “It’s just that this picture of gasoline on the pavement looks amazing next to this picture of this grid with white lines. I don’t know why, I just know that it does, and that’s all I have to say.”

Everything felt like its own subculture, and these were little worlds you could jump into, complete with identity-transforming music scenes, and it’s something people are desperate to get back into. When Devore looks back at this era, what stood out about it and why so many seem to yearn to go back is the way artists had earned a level of trust and intimacy with their fans to the extent that the fans trusted the artistic vision. No one was saying Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die or Ultraviolence eras were anything but perfect because these artists were world-building in a way that doesn’t feel permitted today.

Now, artists change tracklists and covers and even scrap entire eras based on immediate fan reactions. It seems like we’ve lost that sense of trust and intimacy in both directions. We seem to crave it from the artistic paragons of the culture, and they seem to crave it from their fans. Devore notes the rise of Charli XCX’s BRAT Summer as well as artists like Zara Larsson and PinkPantheress, artists known for nostalgic world-building. He thinks artists are craving the same intimacy with their fans, to just trust the work and the artist.

Instead, we entered an era of hyper-analysis, which he argues is the biggest difference between the culture of the 2010s and the 2020s. Instead of simply enjoying things for their own sake, we need to immediately deconstruct them. “Is it a flop?” “Is it a bop?” “Did they write this so it would become a TikTok sound?” “I don’t get it, what’s it about?” “Has she fallen off?” Give it a rest, already. It’s like you can’t appreciate the aesthetics of something anymore. You have to immediately join a bandwagon.

Perhaps we’re yearning for that era where things could just be a vibe, and it wasn’t that deep.

This is especially bad with stan culture. Stans are fans with intense, often obsessive devotion to a celebrity or artist, hyper-focusing on numbers and charts over artistry and pitting them against other artists, fueling wars within these online communities. Unsurprisingly, they’re almost always 14-year-old girls or boys forming unhealthy parasocial attachments to celebrity icons as a form of escapism. It’s not just noise, though.

Stan accounts directly impact artist decisions now, like the person whose low-effort quip, “I love her lack of energy, go girl give us nothing!” on Dua Lipa’s 2018 BRIT Awards performance became so influential that it turned into one of the most famous copypastas on stan Twitter. More than that, it literally forced Dua Lipa into an entire rebrand. Per her own admission, that comment single-handedly drove “operation level up,” with the pop star determined to improve her stage presence and choreography to prove her critics wrong.

Devore says, “I want to keep going back to that word ‘trust’ because not only were we more trusting of the artist, I think in a lot of ways, people just trusted that things weren’t that serious.” He goes on to cite the era of people posting Arizona iced tea cans as a form of expression, and while we could sit here and get into a think piece about how consumerism as aesthetic is an example of late-stage commodification of everything, and blah blah blah, he says, “Honestly, I feel like it was just a damn Arizona can, and the thing is, it did work. That was early influencing to me. I really wanted to be the girls with the little EOS chapsticks and hold my Arizona can.”

In other words, early influencing was organic and fueled by sheer mimetic desire, not sponsors, not collabs, not peddling discount codes or secret partnerships or ads. With how overwhelming the world and the internet are getting, perhaps we’re yearning for that era where things could just be a vibe, and it wasn’t that deep. The rise of artists like Addison Rae, who are essentially purely vibes artists, suggests this is what the culture is craving.

Aesthetics on Tumblr

There were plenty of aesthetics bleeding onto Tumblr both before 2014 and after 2016, some migrating in from other platforms, others originating on Tumblr itself before breaking containment and morphing into something else entirely elsewhere. The twee aesthetic was first popularized in the early 2010s by Zooey Deschanel, but it persisted on Tumblr through the 2010s, eventually morphing into other aesthetics. The same can be said for the Coachella-era boho phase, popularized by Vanessa Hudgens, which hit its peak around 2010 to 2012 but continued to haunt the feed for a number of years.

The main circa-2014 Tumblr aesthetics were soft grunge, 2014 girly, vaporwave, pastel goth, pastel grunge, and art hoe. By late-stage Tumblr (around 2015 to 2016), the platform had become increasingly Instagram-ified, producing hybrid aesthetics like the Tumblr baddie, modeled off Kylie Jenner’s King Kylie era, and the Victoria’s Secret L.A. girl, both of which quickly migrated off Tumblr and onto Instagram. These latter aesthetics glamorized Los Angeles as a lifestyle and helped formalize what would eventually become the Insta baddie look.

More obscure early 2010s Tumblr aesthetics have been documented by subculture members and internet historians who have documented evolving internet trends. Randy Moon mentions several early 2010s Tumblr aesthetics I’d never heard of before, despite being a frequent user in the early 2010s, such as seapunk, witch house, and morute, which goes to show how splintered the Tumblr experience could be. Some of the aesthetics she mentions that most people don’t realize originated on Tumblr include Dark Academia, Cottagecore, Coquette, and Regional Gothic.

She also does a good job of unpacking the various aesthetics that defined the early and late 2010s in extensive detail, including how they emerged, who their influences were, how they were expressed, the media or music associated with them, their color palettes, and the underlying ethos behind them. In her videos on the early 2010s Tumblr aesthetics and late 2010s Tumblr aesthetics, which can be cross-referenced with Aesthetics Wiki, I’ve found that the dominating aesthetics tend to cluster around a few categories I’d classify as mainstream, alternative, trauma-coping, and esoteric. The conventional aesthetics include 2014 Girly and Quality Tumblr, but some alternative aesthetics went mainstream too.

Quality Tumblr was a high-quality aesthetic that usually revolved around taking brightly colored images of certain products or brands that were popular with the teenage demographic. The style became popularized when a bunch of teens got their first DSLR cameras and began taking experimental photos of everything and tagging these photos on Tumblr as #HighQuality. These photos were distinguished from the hodgepodge of mainfeed Tumblr posts that were much lower resolution and taken on poorer image quality devices, such as old-generation iPhones.

This aesthetic revolves around consumption, particularly of products related to American culture and girlhood, such as products and brands you could find in malls or American foods and food brands. These include Bath & Body Works, Starbucks cups, makeup brands like Too Faced, and Maybelline’s Baby Lips. Photos were focused on a singular product or a set of products, especially ones with bold pops of color that were aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Think of it as a food photographer’s dream. It was so influential that it seeped onto other platforms and became a defining cultural aesthetic of the era. It’s exactly what Devore was referencing when he said he wanted to be those girls holding the Arizona can and the EOS lip balms up to the camera.

There was also the 2014 Girly aesthetic, which revolved around idealizing femininity and staples of girlhood, whether it was through the soft, girly-toned colors like various shades of pink, white, beige, and mint or the popular brands and products of the time, like Victoria’s Secret, Brandy Melville, Starbucks, silk pajamas, UGG boots, and artists like Ariana Grande.

Many may refer to this aesthetic as the “basic girl” because of its positioning as a relatively mainstream, consumerist, hyper-feminine aesthetic that was contrasted at the time by the “Not Like the Other Girls” mentality and was framed in opposition to more alternative aesthetics like soft grunge and art hoe. The attitude of the aesthetic was aspirational femininity, soft life, and indulgence, with influencers like Gabi DeMartino popularizing the aesthetic for young girls who were looking to Ariana Grande-maxx and DIY decorating their rooms with frilly, feminine accents.

Art hoe emerged out of its predecessor, “soft grunge.” It’s defined by a love for art, nature, and personal creativity and was reportedly started by young creatives of color who wanted to carve out a space for themselves to be artsy girls of color in what was previously perceived to be a very “white aesthetic.” Photos would contain digital collages with famous works of art, flowers, and sketchbooks and were associated with fashion pieces like Doc Martens, mom jeans, quirky striped tops, and an artsy persona that emphasized earthy tones and nature, especially plants.

Late 2010s niche aesthetics include art hoe, babygirl or babycore, traumacore, weirdcore, dreamcore, and liminal spaces. Traumacore and babygirl were aesthetics that revolved around processing trauma by attempting to reclaim childhood innocence or process traumatic childhood memories. Babygirl did this by emphasizing early girlhood and themes of vulnerability, safety, innocence, and contentment, colored by pastel baby pinks and whites, frilly, feminine textures, and bows that feel like a calm before the storm, a feeling before the bad things happened.

It’s often associated with age regression, but it’s not to be confused with a sexual kink like DDLG. The aesthetic is non-sexual and meant to express a yearning to retreat back to childhood innocence, though it has faced criticism for being too closely conflated with certain BDSM communities that do ageplay because of the use of symbols like pacifiers.

Traumacore, by contrast, juxtaposes symbols associated with cutesy childhood innocence and nostalgia, such as Sanrio characters like Hello Kitty or Kuromi, with darker themes like disturbing, violent, or sorrowful thoughts and fears. Both of these “aesthetics” can be thought of more as coping mechanisms or artistic therapy. These formats sometimes come under criticism for fetishization or co-optation of trauma and mental health issues without actually relating to these experiences.

Weirdcore, dreamcore, and liminal spaces blend trauma-coping aesthetics with obscure and esoteric expression. These styles are less about fashion and personal photography or products and more about memes, photos with superimposed text, and contradictory symbols used to create surrealist imagery. Liminal spaces as an aesthetic tends to focus entirely on transitional or usually populated spaces as disconcertingly empty and frozen in time. Liminal spaces tend to evoke a sense of familiarity combined with the sense that something is amiss. For example, an image of an empty Blockbuster Video store might just be an empty business, but it also symbolizes the fall of an entire analogue industry, marking the shift visually into the digital era in which we find ourselves.

Liminal spaces focus on the feeling of liminality itself, an empty building in a transitional phase with no sign of life where there should be, whereas weirdcore and dreamcore build off of liminal spaces as the setting to explore wacky concepts that induce feelings of, in weirdcore’s case, dread or discomfort, and in dreamcore’s case, a sense of whimsical transformation. All three appeal to a sense of uncanny valley and often feature meta-commentary, such as text like “why do I even exist,” on certain worries and longing for a different time or place.

The Resurgence of the Soft Grunge Tumblr Girl

Despite all of these unique, contrasting aesthetics emerging out of the same platform, there were a few that truly captured the culture and went mainstream, unwittingly defining an entire era. The question is, what are people talking about when they say the “Tumblr Girl,” “Tumblr aesthetic,” or “the 2014 Tumblr aesthetic” is coming back? We just went through heaps of strange, niche, hyper-specific aesthetics that all had popularity in various subcultures, and they don’t even scratch the surface.

When it comes to the Tumblr aesthetic, however, we all know the one: soft grunge or pale grunge, the latter of which is basically soft grunge but with more pastel color and a more kawaii feel. You might have referred to it as the “sad girl” or “alternative girl,” but we’re talking about the same thing. Moon even considers it the quintessential Tumblr aesthetic of the 2010s. “When you say 2014 Tumblr, this is probably the aesthetic that you’re going to think of first,” she explains. It took over the world one pair of combat boots at a time. But where did it come from, and what was it all about?

Soft grunge combined elements of ’90s grunge with early-2000s emo aesthetics, though the latter was far more muted than the flamboyant “scene” or “indie sleaze” looks that preceded it. This was arguably the most lived-in Tumblr aesthetic. Rather than existing merely as a photography style, a meme format, or a blogging niche, it functioned as a philosophy, a music scene, and a fashion sensibility, a way of life.

Staple pieces included denim jackets, black choker necklaces, band tees, fishnet stockings, or thigh-highs paired with Converse or Doc Martens. The makeup look was dark, bold, and grungy, with smoky eyes, very defined dark eyebrows, and black or dark red lipstick. Hair was either very dark or dyed a bold color like blue, purple, or pink. It was either long and flowy (usually if it was colorful) or chopped into a bob with bangs. Galaxy prints, grid patterns, and wacky alien themes also emerged during this time. An aesthetic photo-op usually involved, bizarrely, holding random bottles of water.

The look solidified someone as “alternative,” but in a way that was ultimately rooted in safe, conventional fashion. Instead of being transgressive in the way earlier emo aesthetics were, soft grunge mainstreamed a darker, edgier look. She was everywhere on Tumblr, but she was also every girl in your high school. The simplicity and ubiquity of the style make it hyper-identifiable as a time-capsule fashion era and super easy to replicate.

I personally had outgrown my edgy alternative phase far earlier than this era, but I’m sure it had some influence on my wardrobe. What I didn’t appreciate about this era was how dark and lifeless everything felt by design. If this era had a color, it was certainly limited to black. The photography style of the time was to crank up the exposure to give all of your photos a washed-out, hazy look. Even the music was dark. No wonder I was so depressed that year.

Soft grunge also romanticized sadness, pairing visual melancholy with sullen, introspective music like Lana Del Rey, Lorde, Melanie Martinez, The Smiths, Sky Ferreira, and The 1975, alongside darker-edged pop such as Marina and the Diamonds or early Charli XCX. Girls who fully inhabited the aesthetic often modeled themselves off characters like Effy Stonem from Skins or Aria Montgomery from Pretty Little Liars and gravitated toward similarly bleak subject matter, such as films like Girl, Interrupted or The Virgin Suicides, or “no one understands me” style text posts. This era produced a lot of lolcow “3edgy5me” or “2deep4u” content posted earnestly by angsty teenagers going through it.

As Maria Santa Poggi first predicted the resurgence of this aesthetic back in 2022, she argued characters like Maeve Wiley from Sex Education and pop star Olivia Rodrigo have taken cues from young, grungy women from almost a decade ago, but with a twist. Rodrigo, for example, wears chunky platform combat boots or sneakers, punk miniskirts, and experiments with updo hairstyles but keeps it fresh and modern by experimenting with color and Y2K trends.

You can expect to see a few differences between the revival of the 2014 Tumblr style today versus its genesis. Style influencer Hailie Barber noted a few years ago that young girls were swapping berry lipstick shades (anything too bold and red is considered cheugy) for peachy tones, and while we were absolutely obsessed with grid patterns in 2014, now it’s evolved into checkerboard. As for the jeans, the 2020s are still firmly team wide-leg, so skinny jeans have been replaced by straight-leg or boyfriend cuts. The popular 2014 skirt styles, circle and skater, have been replaced by the more 2020s-friendly tennis skirts.

TikTok user @sorebeans claims she has it on good authority that the Tumblr aesthetic is about to become the next major trend. According to her, a friend who teaches high school says students are already romanticizing Tumblr-era culture, including brightly dyed hair, and asking what it was like to be in high school at the time. She theorizes the resurgence is a predictable rebound effect. After years of the clean girl aesthetic dominating, people are instinctively swinging toward its polar opposite.

Whether these trends will hold or continue to evolve remains to be seen, but the moment of their arrival is finally here. Mobile editing app Picsart has started uploading videos declaring “2014 Tumblr is back,” teaching the younger generation how to recapture the aesthetic through photography, fashion, and posting choices, while first-hand accounts of its resurgence dominate TikTok and culture articles pit it against Y2K as the competing aesthetics of the modern era.