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Taking the past out of the pastoral: TikTok’s queer ‘cottagecore’ culture and performative placemaking
- Source: Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, Volume 7, Issue 3, Sep 2022, p. 165 - 176
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- 19 Jan 2022
- 07 Apr 2022
- 01 Sep 2022
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.