Taking the past out of the pastoral: TikTok’s queer ‘cottagecore’ culture and performative placemaking | Intellect Skip to content
1981
Volume 7, Issue 3
  • ISSN: 2055-5695
  • E-ISSN: 2055-5709

Abstract

TikTok’s ‘cottagecore’ subculture has been fertile ground for the growth of a new queer rural imaginary. Through performative elements such as food, dress, imagery and Sapphic sentiments, queer women on TikTok curate an idyllic and idealized vision of rural queer life and lay claim to it. Cottagecore as a performative practice allows queer people to revel in a fictional frontier lifestyle for their own enjoyment, without concern for its actualization. This article outlines the way in which queer TikTokers play/pretend the pioneering landscape, which previously has been dominated by hetero voices. By populating these virtual spaces and queer-coding forms of dress and performance, they claim their right to belong in frontier and pioneering narratives and figuratively, if not literally, stake claim to the rural terrain.

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2022-09-01
2024-04-26
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): frontier lifestyle; lesbian; pioneer; queer women; rurality; virtual spaces
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