Thoreau: Cottagecore before it was cool
Jul. 11th, 2021 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI've been looking at cottagecore. Look, I'm firmly behind trendlines. It's allowed once you get past fifty. I have a note. But anyway, so I like the idea. The idea, sure. Unfortunately I live in a reality where... I can't do the idea.
I just can't pretend that hard. I do pick berries and preserve them (In ziplock bags in my freezer) for things like home-made breakfast crepes in February. That is 100% a thing I do. But when I pick berries, it's into a quart-sized cottage cheese container because (a) I have those and (b) they are lightweight and (c) I'm picking the berries from the trellis right in front of my house and I need to know when I get to a container full because that's how many fit nicely in a quart ziplock freezer bag. But, this isn't cottagecore and it's not photographable in any appealing way because it's a ratty multiple-wash-n-reuse cottage cheese container and cultivated black raspberries that I string up on old clotheslines (plastic) run between slightly listing posts. Also I'm doing it in my regular clothes. I'm just not gonna dress up in some sort of white frilly thing to go wrestle relatively poorly-behaved thorny canes that stain my fingertips purple if I pull a berry off too aggressively. If my fingertips wind up be-purpled, I suspect that any white frilly thing I wore would get wrecked EVEN IF I was not the fifty year old woman PigPen of wearing clothing.
Or, y'know, so I'm doing a Country Aesthetic thing like, say, weeding the garden. I weeded the garden (vegetables) at my friend Lala's house this past Saturday from about 8:30 AM to about 1 PM. Many, many weedings. I wore jeans and a ratty tank top and a kerchief on my head because I was kneeling in the dirt and attempting to locate tomato plants in amongst the red root amaranth and the wild geranium and the endless morning glories (they got loose in the garden once and now they are a persistent issue). Weeds and tomato plants were approximately the same size. While I 100% weeded FOR REAL and was 100% out in "the country" and "working in the garden" it was not aesthetically pleasing. By the time I was done, I had dust sticking to my sweat up to the creases in my elbows. My face was dirty. My shoulders (tank top) were also dirty. My pants will probably leave a mud ring in the washer. My face was unattractively red (because hot) and while we indeed fled to the shady recesses of her (antique) farmhouse that is missing some siding and has bees living in the walls, and we indeed had home-made mint tea over ice cubes that cracked soothingly as the warm-ish tea flowed over them ... we were sweaty and dirty and hot and tired. And It Was Not Aesthetic. Would that it were, but it was not.
I'm told that cottagecore involves walks in sunlit woods. Mmm. Okay. I have sunlit woods. I even have sunlit woods with fairly photogenic ferns and whatnot. Thing maybe you didn't know about ferns where I live -- for them to be big and photogenic, at least where I am, the ground has to be wet. And my woods do not have paths in them. I wear sensible footwear and long pants because, well, snek. Briars. Muck. Ticks. I can take the picture like I am there in my cottagecore clothes, but in real life I'll be there in my for-the-wet sneakers and my long pants.
Enjoying nature is a cottagecore thing. I enjoy nature. Mostly I enjoy nature with a net, in a swamp. See above, re: muck, ticks. Having a net sounds like it could work but it is not what you might call a classy, aesthetic net that could perhaps drift me into dark academia or perhaps gentleperson explorer territory. It is a "this net was like ten bucks at WalMart and I cut off the fish net and duct-taped on fine fabric netting such as might be used for wedding favors" sort of net.
Chickens could be cottagecore. My friend Lala has chickens. They lay eggs of all different colors. That could be a thing. Her mom gathers the eggs, sometimes in her shirt tail. (This would be A LOT more cottagecore if the shirt in question wasn't a mass-produced t-shirt that said something like "I'm so busy I don't know if I found a rope or lost a horse!".) Some of the chickens are aesthetically-appealing -- mostly the roosters -- but they also try to attack me. That never happens to the cottagecore people.
I want my world to be cottagecore but... reality keeps getting in the way.
I just can't pretend that hard. I do pick berries and preserve them (In ziplock bags in my freezer) for things like home-made breakfast crepes in February. That is 100% a thing I do. But when I pick berries, it's into a quart-sized cottage cheese container because (a) I have those and (b) they are lightweight and (c) I'm picking the berries from the trellis right in front of my house and I need to know when I get to a container full because that's how many fit nicely in a quart ziplock freezer bag. But, this isn't cottagecore and it's not photographable in any appealing way because it's a ratty multiple-wash-n-reuse cottage cheese container and cultivated black raspberries that I string up on old clotheslines (plastic) run between slightly listing posts. Also I'm doing it in my regular clothes. I'm just not gonna dress up in some sort of white frilly thing to go wrestle relatively poorly-behaved thorny canes that stain my fingertips purple if I pull a berry off too aggressively. If my fingertips wind up be-purpled, I suspect that any white frilly thing I wore would get wrecked EVEN IF I was not the fifty year old woman PigPen of wearing clothing.
Or, y'know, so I'm doing a Country Aesthetic thing like, say, weeding the garden. I weeded the garden (vegetables) at my friend Lala's house this past Saturday from about 8:30 AM to about 1 PM. Many, many weedings. I wore jeans and a ratty tank top and a kerchief on my head because I was kneeling in the dirt and attempting to locate tomato plants in amongst the red root amaranth and the wild geranium and the endless morning glories (they got loose in the garden once and now they are a persistent issue). Weeds and tomato plants were approximately the same size. While I 100% weeded FOR REAL and was 100% out in "the country" and "working in the garden" it was not aesthetically pleasing. By the time I was done, I had dust sticking to my sweat up to the creases in my elbows. My face was dirty. My shoulders (tank top) were also dirty. My pants will probably leave a mud ring in the washer. My face was unattractively red (because hot) and while we indeed fled to the shady recesses of her (antique) farmhouse that is missing some siding and has bees living in the walls, and we indeed had home-made mint tea over ice cubes that cracked soothingly as the warm-ish tea flowed over them ... we were sweaty and dirty and hot and tired. And It Was Not Aesthetic. Would that it were, but it was not.
I'm told that cottagecore involves walks in sunlit woods. Mmm. Okay. I have sunlit woods. I even have sunlit woods with fairly photogenic ferns and whatnot. Thing maybe you didn't know about ferns where I live -- for them to be big and photogenic, at least where I am, the ground has to be wet. And my woods do not have paths in them. I wear sensible footwear and long pants because, well, snek. Briars. Muck. Ticks. I can take the picture like I am there in my cottagecore clothes, but in real life I'll be there in my for-the-wet sneakers and my long pants.
Enjoying nature is a cottagecore thing. I enjoy nature. Mostly I enjoy nature with a net, in a swamp. See above, re: muck, ticks. Having a net sounds like it could work but it is not what you might call a classy, aesthetic net that could perhaps drift me into dark academia or perhaps gentleperson explorer territory. It is a "this net was like ten bucks at WalMart and I cut off the fish net and duct-taped on fine fabric netting such as might be used for wedding favors" sort of net.
Chickens could be cottagecore. My friend Lala has chickens. They lay eggs of all different colors. That could be a thing. Her mom gathers the eggs, sometimes in her shirt tail. (This would be A LOT more cottagecore if the shirt in question wasn't a mass-produced t-shirt that said something like "I'm so busy I don't know if I found a rope or lost a horse!".) Some of the chickens are aesthetically-appealing -- mostly the roosters -- but they also try to attack me. That never happens to the cottagecore people.
I want my world to be cottagecore but... reality keeps getting in the way.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-09 02:02 pm (UTC)