Molly Soda, who is big on Tumblr. Photo by Nick Koenig (via Vice.com)
The Teen-Girl Tumblr Aesthetic* essay that I coauthored with LA-based writer Kate Durbin for Hyperallergic’s Tumblr as Art Symposium is featured on Vice.com.
But if Jimmy is to be believed, why are are the Tumblr-ers blogging consistently enough to have identifiable brands? The answer may lie in a phenomenon that’s of particular interest to me, which culture critic Kate Durbin termed “the teen girl Tumblr aesthetic,” a term which Durbin and coauthor Alicia Eler coined in an essay on the arts blog Hyperallergic.
The teen girl Tumblr aesthetic, they wrote, “hijacks the notion of adolescence, attempting to reinstall it into adults…through nostalgia, hypersexualized female bodies and fleeting, sugary feelings.” Or, in the words of a GIF still in the early stages of circulation, “Damn I look cute. But I’m far from harmless.”
Check out the full story here: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/what-its-like-to-be-tumblr-famous
