This Viral TikTok Trend Glamorizes Women Getting Wasted. Here’s What It Gets Wrong
The aesthetic of wild, drunken abandon is deemed aspirational only on those who look a certain way
--
A new aesthetic has emerged on TikTok, and it’s all about looking like the girlfriend of a rockstar. According to the app, must-have items include a faux-fur jacket, a head of messy hair, and a cigarette that hangs loosely from your mouth. Think UK-born fashion icons like Kate Moss, Alexa Chung, or Suki Waterhouse, who appear in several photomontages depicting the aesthetic.
Now, calling Kate Moss a rockstar girlfriend seems weirdly reductive, given she’s infinitely more famous than the rock musicians she has ever dated (Pete Doherty from The Libertines being perhaps the most notorious one). And therein lies the most obvious criticism with this aesthetic: it portrays women as accessories to high-profile men instead of individuals in their own right.
But that’s not the only issue I see with this trend. I don’t think the dreamy prospect of hanging off the arm of a sweaty guitarist is what makes this aesthetic so appealing (the #rockstargirlfriend hashtag has amassed 3.1M views). After all, men barely feature in the photos. Even the outfits — sleek and edgy as they are — seem more of an afterthought.
The main draw of the aesthetic, and what the women in the photos all have in common, is that they look wasted.
Some are pictured sitting on nightclub floors and bathrooms, grimacing at the camera, or drunkenly hanging off a dude’s neck. Others raise wine glasses to the camera. All of them look disgustingly beautiful while doing so.
All of these women embody a particular aura, an intoxicating blend of hedonism and self-assurance. Looking at these videos feels like watching a perfume commercial where some famous actress struts down the street in a bold, sultry fashion. You, too, can walk to your local grocery store with such dazzling confidence, these ads always imply. Just spray this $100 fragrance on your wrists and neck, and voila!
The rockstar girlfriend aesthetic gives off similar vibes, though the substance you need is of the mind-altering kind. Specifically: alcohol, the consumption of which is glamorized in a way that other drugs rarely are (except for maybe, cocaine, if you’re in the “right” demographic, that is).
Because here’s the thing: the aesthetic of wild, drunken abandon is deemed aspirational only on those who look a certain way. Almost all the women featured in the trend are young, white, and extremely thin. Many of them are fashion models, which means they look photogenic for a living and can probably strike the perfect pose even while holding in a hiccup.
Most of us don’t look that way when we drink — or elicit the same kind of admiration from strangers on the internet.
Case in point: British tabloid Mail Online often creates terrible content, but its infamous Revellers-Hit-The-Town photo round-ups are particularly vicious. Published after major calendar events like Boxing Day or New Year’s Eve, these articles typically feature dozens of photographs of women in party dresses as they exit bars and nightclubs.
Most of these women look very, very drunk, or “worse for wear,” as Mail Online loves to describe them. Some struggle to walk home unassisted. Others are sometimes pictured (without their consent) as they urinate in dark alleyways or next to trash cans. The comments are as vitriolic as you might expect. “About as feminine and ladylike as a runaway cement mixer,” says one top-rated comment on a recent story (there were much worse ones than this).
Though these reveler photos depict women getting wasted, the aesthetic differs vastly from what you see on TikTok. Mainly, though, the Mail Online’s photo round-ups are not meant to expose audiences to the sex appeal of alcohol but to humiliate the women who choose to drink it.
And yet, as much as I loathe these articles, I will say this: they paint a somewhat realistic picture of what getting wasted looks like. Unlike TikTok’s rockstar girlfriend aesthetic, the Mail Online’s images capture drunkenness in all its chaotic, messy forms: the eyes glazed over, the slumped posture, the fits of laughter, the ugly crying, and yes — the occasional bodily fluids on the sidewalk. And that’s to say nothing of the post-drinking experience, those private moments rarely captured in photographs — like the 3 AM “hangxiety” attacks where you wake up in a panic after a heavy night out, curled up in shame and self-loathing.
Of course, there’s nothing inherently immoral about getting drunk. And while there are plenty of good reasons to abstain, worrying about what you look like in photos shouldn’t be one. Still: appearances are deceiving, and whatever it is that gives the women of the rockstar girlfriend aesthetic the unique allure they possess, it’s definitely not alcohol.
This article is part of my sobriety series, where I examine society’s relationship to alcohol, as well as my own. If you’d like stories like this in your inbox, consider subscribing to my newsletter on Medium.
