The rise of conservatism and the resurgence of indie sleaze style in pop culture might come from the same impulse
The rise of the internet has signaled unprecedented, rapid shifts in pop culture over the past twenty-odd years. With short-form content’s increasing popularity, the trend cycle has become even more fleeting and increasingly visual. As a culture, we’ve begun to pry ourselves away from the organic shaping of fashion styles, lifestyle habits, and even personality traits –influenced by our environment or circumstance– and toward curated ‘aesthetics,’ defined by short flashes of Pinterest images to the beat of a ballad. White text with something like “to be a smart, determined lawyer in New York City” over semi-grainy, romanticized snapshots of expensive, feminine suitware, high heels, and books, that flare to the rhythm of a rap song. Suddenly, even though you’ve always wanted to be a social worker, you’re considering law. A glowing cell phone screen radiates these photos back to us. The messaging mutates into a contrived desire to exchange what we are for what we could be. Worst of all, we believe that this impulse is inborn, rather than invented by the internet.
Writers and internet-users alike have been recently making connections between the growing authority of the global right and trends in fashion. After all, fashion is undeniably political: it is a reflection of what we find beautiful and thus what we assign value to. In a global culture largely prescribed by capitalism, how much money something is worth ultimately decides how much attention it receives. Take the clean girl aesthetic, which has been the girlies’ go-to for the past five years, a trend that has been linked to celebrities like Hailey Beiber and associated with slicked-back hair, a no-makeup makeup look, gold hoop earrings, and a polished, healthy lifestyle. The emphasis is theoretically placed upon enhancing a girl’s already-desirable features, going “back to nature” and deviating from the plastic surgery-laden trends of the 2010s, in which filler, overlined lips, and heavy makeup were seen as the height of good looks. Despite being advertised as a “low-maintenance” method of beauty, many women still find the clean girl aesthetic unachievable, requiring products like Drunk Elephant’s bronzing drops (which retails for $39.00) or Rhode’s lip gloss-holding phone case (sold for $38.00) to reach TikTok-verified clean girl ascendancy. It costs real money to be associated with the buzzwords attached to the clean girl tagline: classy, expensive— and the price to be a clean girl excludes anyone who can’t afford it. Not only that, but the existence of a clean girl –”clean” having historically been associated with the idea of purity– implies the opposing existence of a “messy girl,” one that’s “dirty.” If someone can’t afford to be a clean girl, does that mean in the imagination of these online aesthetic-curators, that person is filthy?
This idea of purity and spotlessness associated with the clean girl aesthetic is a theme shared with other recently popular trends, like the old money or trad wife and cottage core aesthetics. All of the sudden, young people want to dress in white, cable knit sweaters, blue and white, floral-patterned knee-length dresses, and pearls. Girls are proudly displaying large Massachusetts lobsters on their tote bags, just to mimic merchandise you might find in an affluent, East Coast town. The toned-down, “serious” and “classy” looks being idealized online nowadays associate modesty and minimalism with beauty, respectability, and innocence. Even more concerningly, the visual language of traditional living’s resurgence has translated into actual lifestyle changes for women. Mommy-blogging TikTokers like Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm have glamorized the woman who cooks elaborate meals from scratch, remains impeccably dressed even in a comfortable domestic space, and prioritizes her children and husband. Women are actively consuming content that makes them feel inadequate if they are not acting out the role of the “perfect” mother and domestic partner– the consummate traditional woman. The messaging is similar to advertisements you might find in the 1950s or the conduct handbooks of the Victorian era, and it’s hidden underneath the guise of seemingly-harmless content promoting heatless curls, sourdough starters, and red nails to attract your partner. While posts might advertise these actions as stepping into your “divine feminine” after you’ve found a worthy man, what they really indicate is the rise of conservative rhetoric that underscores a traditional and retroactive role for women in society. Styles like clean girl, old money, and trad wife harken back to previous eras, representing a cultural nostalgia within young Americans of which the media has been increasingly cognizant. But aren’t our fashion choices influenced by our surroundings? Haven’t we been noticing some backwards trends in other areas?
For example, the emergence of “Skinny Tok,” spearheaded by white, conventionally-attractive creators like Liv Schmidt, should give us reason to pause. While the attitude of the fashion industry– as well as the wider culture– had seemed to largely embrace body positivity in recent years, there’s been an increase in fatphobic rhetoric online. Mantras like Schmidt’s “it’s not a sin to want to be thin” noticeably echoes the notorious Kate Moss slogan, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” The #SkinnyTok tag has now been banned on TikTok, but content promoting disordered eating and thinness persists on the platform, propagandizing fatphobic discourse for a potentially young audience. The normalization of weight loss medications like Ozempic in the online space is another indication of this dangerous incline towards pro-skinny rhetoric, reminiscent of 90s magazines that glamorized a “heroin chic” look. Not to mention, the proliferation of weight loss medications is another social element that puts “attractiveness” behind a paywall for women. What if a girl can’t afford Ozempic, or to eat the extremely rigid diet advertised on social media? Does she turn to black market, weight loss-drug dupes? The situation is especially concerning due to the diction of the content: that if someone eats non-diet food, they lack “discipline,” and “motivation,” or “do not respect themselves.” There’s a morality tied to thinness, one that suggests that a person is weak or disgusting if they aren’t a sample-size zero. And viewers feel this negativity. Speaking to NPR, University of Toronto eating disorders researcher Amanda Roffoul stated that “Negative images that are unrealistic or show thin people or really muscular people tend to have a more lasting impact than body-positive content.” Research also suggests that body-positive content doesn’t impede the messaging of pro-skinny content: once the damage is done, it’s done. TikTok’s young users are already being exposed to this kind of dialogue, priming yet another generation of children to seek thinness over health or body acceptance. The online rhetoric not only has implications for viewers’ mental and physical health, but also for representation and the American ethos. In their review of the size inclusivity of the Spring/Summer 2025 season, Vogue Business reported that 0.8% of models that season were plus-sized, a notable decline from previous seasons, and representation for plus and mid-sized models in luxury brand campaigns also decreased. While doors were opening for plus-sized models in the mid-2010s, now those same doors are closing. The fashion industry is recentering itself on the “thin is in” trend, one that is necessarily exclusionary based on both luck-of-the-draw biology and class-status. The labels being attached to thinness– the wealth necessary to meticulously care for yourself, the discipline and femininity associated with a smaller, less-substantial body– reference the kind of elitism to which luxury brands nod.
But these are only the fashion and pop culture repercussions of a political landscape that is progressively swinging back towards right-wing conservatism. In 2022, the Trump-appointed Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that had given American women the constitutional right to an abortion, grounded in the right to privacy. Since then, many states have instituted abortion bans, forcing women to cross state lines if they want to preserve their bodily autonomy. Even then, they may face legal repercussions when they return to their home states. Though we’ve only been in the midst of Trump’s second term for six months, hundreds of anti-trans bills have been introduced. Eighteen pieces of legislation have been passed, including an executive order that bans gender-affirming care for children younger than nineteen. Back in April, the UK Supreme Court made the startling move to rule that trans women are not legally women. Online, the kind of language deemed acceptable by the broader public is changing, too. Popular podcaster Joe Rogan, musician and neo-Nazi Kanye West, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla turned political figure, all used the “R-slur” online in recent months. Use of the word doubled on X following Musk’s tweet containing the slur according to a Montclair State University study. The conservative cultural regression we’re seeing is catapulting us back into the days before public investment in political correctness– the exact platform that Donald Trump ran on, with his “Make America Great Again” slogan. It’s a desire to return to a climate in which western hegemony went unquestioned and to America’s perceived economic and cultural stability of previous decades. In times of economic and social turbulence– like after the 2008 recession, the legalization of gay marriage, the Black Lives Matter movement, and COVID-19– it’s easy for despots to prey upon fear. They launch their platforms based on a belief that cultural hegemony will provide security, producing nostalgia for the days regarded as eras in which there was little internal national conflict because the “traditional” rulers were in power. (Spoiler Alert: There was still a LOT of conflict). These conventional rulers were white, wealthy, heteronormative men. Now, in the media, we’ve backslid into appealing to racist and patriarchal standards that those men did, and continue to, uphold. In fashion, we’ve reverted to pedestalizing the modest, demure, domestic woman of patriarchal fantasies. One with a diligent beauty routine that is carefully curated and expensive-to-maintain. It is all to mimic an idealized “natural” beauty you’d find in 1950s advertisements, or in Charles Dickens’ descriptions of his male protagonists’ love interests: the gorgeous woman who doesn’t have to “try” to be beautiful, who doesn’t recognize the power contained in her beauty or her sexuality. The old money resurgence is in fact a direct callback to WASP-adored “The Official Preppy Handbook,” published in 1980, and the fashion strictures it promoted. It doesn’t matter if the clothes you buy are truly expensive (many Gen Z subscribers to preppy fashion buy their clothes from Shein or Brandy Melville), only that you give the air of wealth and reserve, an implicit validation of the association between modesty and respectability, “classiness” and traditionalism. These trends– clean girl, trad wife, old money, – are all a reflection of the overarching political shift to the right, and our desire to be socially acceptable in an increasingly conservative climate.
But as you’ve probably noticed, the clean girl, trad wife, and old money trends aren’t the only retro styles making a resurgence. The Y2K, turn-of-the-century style, first sensationalized by icons like Britney Spears and The Spice Girls, carries with it the air of independence, innovation, and uncertainty that coincided with the new millennium. It was an era of intense over-investment in pop-culture, likely driven by the tumultuous political and social climate of the early 2000s. Reeling from the fear inspired by events like 9/11, the roll-out of new technologies, and war in the Middle East, Americans sought escapism, and they did it through celebrity worship. Sound familiar? The American populace came in from their Tuscan-style kitchens, sat down on brown leather couches, and turned on their televisions to watch shows like Paris Hilton’s The Simple Life. MTV shows reached new heights of popularity, and celebrities were turning out to the VMAs in looks that have defined the period: Britney Spears’ black lace ensemble in 2000; Christina Aguilera’s mermaid-chic turquoise outfit in 2002; and Lindsay Lohan’s cheetah-print attire and bleached-hair in 2005, to name a few. Much of women’s style in the early 2000s sought a reclamation of femininity and sexuality. Bright colors, low-rise jeans, slim-fitting and slightly-cropped tank tops, resting just below the navel, dominated the fashion trend cycle. G-strings grazed hip bones, patterns clashed; it was an era of fashion exploration that starkly deviated from the majority of dark-colored, celebrity-fashion showcases in the 90s. The sex-appeal and experimentation seen in fashion were directly mirrored in the media of the time, including women-centered shows like Sex and the City and songs laced with lyrics investigating sexual encounters. While it was an era of major public scrutiny for women– we can’t forget about the horrific pro-anorexia culture perpetuated by tabloid magazines, or the misogynistic media witch hunt against Britney Spears– it was also a decade of sexual and artistic expression, especially through fashion. Pop culture began seeing a revival of the style in 2019, one that, like the clean girl aesthetic, has endured for the past six years. Your favorite Gen Z It-girls have likely been sporting vintage pieces from the early 2000s, or at least alluding to them on the red carpet. Take the black lace and thong pair that Tate McCrae sported at the 2024 VMAs, a direct reference to the previously-mentioned Britney look. Or the aesthetics and sounds of either one of Olivia Rodrigo’s albums, drawing off of 2000s pop-punk heavyweights like Paramore and Avril Lavigne. Speaking of the rhythms and lyrics of the Y2K era, online, many have praised Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan for reviving the “bubblegum pop” beats of the 2000s pop star, with lyrics that celebrate womens’ sexuality.
Simultaneously, there’s also been a hunger for the indie sleaze style of the early 2010s. The original indie sleaze era encapsulated a hedonistic energy similar to that of mainstream media in the 2000s, but it was a subculture that also stood in opposition to the polished aesthetics of the pop star or model. Rather than being tantalizingly sexy, it was horny, and rather than the idealized image of sequins shining in the spotlight and shoe closets, indie sleaze was associated with ripped stockings, cigarettes, leather jackets, smudged eyeliner, and the occasional fedora. It wasn’t a fantasy, it was real life chaos, and it was a subculture that shaped lifestyles in real-time. Major cities resurrected their infamous nightlife scenes, and celebrities and stoners alike partied in unapologetic fashion, captured by the likes of photographers such as Mark Hunter (@cobrasnake). Think Skins, or the feeling summarized in Arctic Monkeys’ AM album. Recently, we’ve seen more cultural figures embracing the messiness of the indie sleaze scene, contrasting the aforementioned clean girl or old money aesthetics–something the revival’s pioneer, Charli XCX, sings about in her song Sympathy is a knife on her record-breaking album, Brat. While there had been whispers of an indie sleaze revival in 2022 and 2023, there were full blown shockwaves of resurgence in 2024 with the release of Charli’s album Brat, the pop singer’s sixth studio album chock full of electronic beats reminiscent of the club music that soundtracked the late 2000s and early 2010s club scene. Even the low maintenance visuals of the album cover– just a bright green with arial font lettering– harkened back to the indie sleaze era, in which carefree aesthetics reigned. The original indie sleaze era was a response to the 2008 recession, when many didn’t have the financial resources to imitate the lavish lifestyles seen on reality television, but they didn’t think that should deny them a good time. It wouldn’t be surprising if the looming financial difficulties of the end of the Biden administration and the start of the Trump administration have kicked the indie sleaze revival into high gear. Charli XCX brought along other stars like The Dare and Troye Sivan in her indie sleaze renaissance. It’s a touch humorous for those chronically online in 2014, when both Charli XCX and Troye Sivan were Tumblr darlings, not for their partying, but for Charli’s Boom Clap and Troye’s YouTube videos. Artists of the original indie sleaze era have also had their own comebacks, including an increased relevance for The 1975 (also due in no small part to Matty Healy’s relationship with Taylor Swift) and Sky Ferreira’s song Leash on the Babygirl soundtrack.
Notably, the success of the Brat album, and the subsequent cultural niche that evolved from it, was very much tied to how resonant Charli’s music was for the queer community. Charli XCX has recognized her fanbase’s demographics, stating on a podcast that, “Generally, the queer just community has, like, better taste,” and casting a number of trans actors in her 360 music video. Online, Brat was declared a musical revolution for the girls and the gays– and the subculture has continued to celebrate a sort of sexual liberation and deviation from the politics and respectability of the conservative clean girl. While Brat’s iconography was used for Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, the more subtle contrasts in values and attitudes that differentiate the clean, old money style from the Y2K, indie sleaze aesthetic are the variations that underlie the current cultural landscape, even unbeknownst to the trend-followers. If the return of the clean girl, trad wife, and old money aesthetics may have been a conservative reaction to political turmoil and the undermining of western hegemony, the reappearance of Y2K and indie sleaze may be the symptom of the left attempting to reclaim sexual liberation and pride celebration, especially in a political landscape that has increasingly mutated into a thinly-veiled right-wing terrain. While conservatives are appealing to nostalgia for a time of unquestioned white, heteronormative power, the liberals are recreating styles popular during a time in which social justice was on an upward trend. As Charli XCX’s Brat, Sabrina Carpenter’s sex-kitten flair, and Addison Rae’s Britney Spears-inspired dance music came into fashion, America was in the midst of an election that ultimately resulted in the return of a radically conservative government. It isn’t surprising that through our pop culture, those that could not, or did not want to, survive underneath a traditionalist regime would escape into pop culture that celebrated and protected the rights they had just been given, now under siege. The themes of sexuality, dancing, and even the use of drugs and alcohol– glorified by the party-centric aesthetic of the Y2K/Indie sleaze renaissance– symbolize a counterculture that rejects the respectability politics and modesty policing of the conservative shift in pop culture, as well as in government. Of course, we have to admit that the indie sleaze and Y2K resurgence is a romanticization of the eras we seek to recreate. We’re kidding ourselves if we believe that women were free from scrutiny over their sexual lives or the size of their bodies, or if we think that the LGBTQ+ community had been liberated from heteronormative constraints in the early 2000s. Indeed, the Y2K and indie sleaze revival have also been contributing to the harmful narrative pushing weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and glorifying the “heroin chic” look. After all, the 2000s were also an era of extreme fatphobia. Magazines only showcased extremely thin stomachs; the Victoria’s Secret fashion show was at the height of its popularity; and female celebrities were routinely picked apart for gaining any weight. Now, millennial women are recognizing the harmful body messages that were made mottos in the early 2000s, but that hasn’t stopped us from repeating the cycle. Side Note: while fashion might be fracturing based on political values, there are longstanding biases across the spectrum that need to be dismantled if we’re seeking liberation. Those biases, like fatphobia, are woven within some of culture’s most beloved aesthetics, and we have to root them out– and accept change of the styles we’re nostalgic for– if we want to move forward.
Maybe the lack of innovation in our nostalgia-laden fashion is the very thing making the trends feel so hollow, whether they be clean girl and old money or Y2K and indie sleaze. Vogue fashion writers recently debated whether or not the culture could have a true indie sleaze revival, with Christian Allaire writing that his “biggest qualm with indie sleaze in 2025 is… the lack of sleaze. Back in the 2010s, it felt really authentic because stars didn’t have stylists or full-on glam teams in the way they do today… It’s hard to imagine how this will look today, when a curated image is everything.” As Allaire said, in an increasingly visual culture, where a “curated image is everything” due to the prevalence of social media, even the freedom that comes with a “messy” image is veneered. In a society of constant surveillance, even the “messy,” sexually-liberated Y2K or indie sleaze girl lives with an anxiety around maintaining a perfect image, the same anxiety that resides within a modest clean girl or old money girl– the only benefit being that maybe she gets to document her nightlife, whereas the trad wife might not. There might be reason to consider if lack of authenticity in our subcultures as a result of this digital voyeurism is actually affecting our politics, too. Initially, entrance into a subcultural community was generally unforced. It was facilitated by your location, where you fell on the political spectrum, your level of affluence, or even just your natural pop cultural inclinations: you were indie sleaze if you liked the Arctic Monkeys, you participated in mainstream culture if you loved Britney Spears, and if you were wealthy and lived on Martha’s Vineyard, you probably dressed in an old money fashion. In the age of aesthetics– in which, online, we’ve developed a new visual language to convey emotion or a sense of personhood we’d like to emulate– organic personal resonance with pop culture has become less genuine. Styles, music tastes, and even lifestyles have been reduced to trends, which also makes pop culture less powerful. If there aren’t concrete ideas standing behind pop cultural trends, even if they’re bad ideas, then pop culture just becomes a smoke screen without the ability to create actual change among the populace. The hippie aesthetic was an image, but one that accompanied a genuine anti-war movement that sent a message to men in power. Would we be capable, as a culture, of something like that now?
This question is especially pertinent when we see the use of aesthetics to normalize oppressive language in online spaces. Accompanying the resurgence of old money, trad wife, and clean girl aesthetics, we’ve seen the aforementioned accompanying “thin is in” rhetoric gaining ground on TikTok. On trad wife pages specifically, we’ve seen how misogynistic and patriarchal ideals can be reinforced and marketed to young women through the lens of “cottage core vibes.” But even among the Y2K and indie sleaze circles, the visuals of these trends have been used to mobilize an agenda of “anti-wokeness” through dirtbag leftists like Matty Healy of The 1975. While alternative aesthetics have always been embraced by those who did not align with the mainstream, subcultural spaces have been infiltrated with exclusionary rhetoric. For example, Matty Healy– who has done a Nazi salute on stage in the name of “satire” while simultaneously criticizing the anti-semetic comments of Kanye West and mocked Ice Spice’s ethnicity on a podcast– is a longstanding figure within the indie sleaze circle as the frontman of The 1975. In a subculture that is theoretically evolving as a reaction to conservatism, can we really platform a man who makes bigoted remarks and also achieve the goal of creating safe spaces in opposition to conservatism? One might argue that the aesthetics of indie sleaze have more to do with sexual exploration and gay pride than being a direct opponent of conservatism, and they would be right. But that is because indie sleaze is a vestige from a bygone era prior to the feminist and social justice discourse exchanged in this century– and the same goes for all of the forenamed aesthetics, whether right- or left-leaning. The question we should be asking ourselves is: are we getting stuck in nostalgia? Have we sterilized our social landscape by reducing pop culture to visuals? As artists, we can help referencing others; art is a legacy of the thousands of artists who came before. But perhaps as the decade progresses, we should focus less on nostalgia, and more on innovation, if we have any hope of escaping the political deadlock our country finds itself in, or the boring, cyclical trends we find on the internet.
Kira Manelski 
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