Coquette-core is taking the internet by storm. Teenagers, notably girls, wear frilly lace, pastel dresses, pink ribbons, thigh-high socks, and chunky Mary Jane’s.
Inspired by Lana Del Rey, TikTok trendsetters, and Tumblr blogs, Gen Z is undoubtedly obsessed with all things Coquette. After all, the style is cute and embraces girlhood. While this trend appears innocent, Coquette has a dark history.
The history of Coquette
The origin of the Coquette trend can be traced back to early 2020. Right before the pandemic began, an up-and-coming subculture blew up on Tumblr. It featured teens and young women wearing hyper-feminine and traditional outfits. Think light pastel colors, and frills, covered with lace and bows.
They took an interest in listening to artists such as Lana Del Rey, Melanie Martinez, and Clairo. These girls also indulged in books such as Lolita, My Dark Vanessa, and Girl Interrupted and treated bunnies and fawns as their spirit animals.
Then, in 2022, the subculture was thrust into the spotlight. The small subculture became viral on TikTok with a trend called “This Is Me if You Cared,” which showcased people placing pink ribbons on random objects. This subculture is called Coquette, more popularly known as the Coquette aesthetic.
So, what exactly is ‘Coquette’?
In the most basic terms, Coquette is a fashion trend characterized by sweet, romantic, playful, and often flirtatious elements. There’s a huge focus on femininity.
The style is mainly known for its usage of lace, pastel colors, bows, and flounces. It is inspired by the Victorian era and the 1950s but with a modern twist. At its core, Coquette is embracing childlike innocence. While most people see Coquette as a fashion trend, it acts more like a subculture.
The origin of Coquette as a fashion trend and subculture stems from two similar places. The first concept is the Lolita, which was popularized by Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. The second concept is Lolicon, a controversial genre of media in Japan.
The “Lolita” problem
To better understand the Coquette, you must understand the concepts of Lolita and “lolicon.” On the surface, both concepts are vastly different from one another. Despite how different they may seem, there is a lot more overlap than you think.
So what is Lolita exactly? It is a term popularized by Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. According to the novel, Lolita is “precociously seductive.” She is under the age of consent, usually a prepubescent or teen girl. The Lolita attracts an older adult, who’s most often male and is fully complicit in sexual acts and advances.
Similarly, “Lolicon” is a popular Japanese genre found in anime, manga, and video games. It depicts young underage girls in erotic, sexual, and sometimes violent situations. The genre is incredibly controversial due to its exploitative nature.
While Lolita and Lolicon stem from different cultures, there are many similarities between them. Both Lolita and Lolicon feature young underage girls as the selling point. They depict these girls in extremely sexual situations and in large age-gap relationships, making it seem like the underage girl consents to the relationship.
Lolita and Lolicon use obsession and devotion to make the relationship appealing. It implements stark power dynamics between the underage girl and the adult man. Essentially, Lolita and Lolicon are two sides of the same coin.
Lolita and Lolicon act as predecessors to the modern Coquette. Coquette girls enjoy media that people associate with Lolita culture, such as Lana Del Rey and My Dark Vanessa. It is important to note that the majority of people who are engaging in coquette are young girls in their teens and 20s. To derive from such a sexualized place is alarming when minors are involved, especially when Coquette’s roots derive from a place of blatantly sexualizing underage girls.
Reclaiming femininity
Why are girls drawn to Coquette in the first place? Many girls who participate in Coquette fashion see it as a way to reclaim their femininity, especially since we inhabit a society which deems femininity to be lesser than. Arianna Mangus, a self-proclaimed Coquette, believes that the trend allows her to embrace girlhood and childhood.
I think a lot of people think about it as embracing femininity but to me, I think there’s a really important tie to youth and growing up coming-of-age. That sort of thing movies like The Virgin Suicides. Obviously, there are ties to Lolita. That’s where it all comes from. But yeah, to me it’s about just embracing girlhood.
Arianna Mangus
@aribelleee 🎀
♬ original sound – nada
Participating in Coquette gives girls a sense of community. There are countless Tumblr blogs, Reddit communities, Discord servers, and TikTok pages dedicated to all things Coquette. This gives girls an opportunity to make friends with other like-minded individuals who share similar interests, almost akin to a fandom. Coquette also acts as a form of expression. In Claire Marie Healy’s “Coquettes,” she states:
“I see girls who love how they look, girls who just want nice things, and girls with a heightened awareness of the fabrication behind their mode of dress, who are taking pleasure in that process of self-creation. Yes, we are decidedly far from the arena of radical feminism—and the connotations of the emphasis on ‘delicacy’ makes me actively watchful—but when the girls themselves are clearly having so much fun, I also hesitate to consign Coquettedom as merely another way in which teenagers are making themselves more unhappy. Evidently, it is also making many young women feel good.”
Claire Marie Healy
Coquette and feminism
Having a community with minors and young women can create a grey area. Things get dicey when young people indulge in complex media like Lolita or My Dark Vanessa and miss the point. In “When Dolores Haze Gets a Tumblr: Online ‘Nymphet’ Culture and the Reclaiming of Lolita Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita” by Mishka Hoosen, she states:
“Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is often spoken about as a novel that has been misinterpreted – not only by a patriarchal popular culture but often by the same young, vulnerable girls that would be prey to a man like Humbert Humbert. In most literary criticism of the novel, and in the preface of the novel itself, attention is repeatedly drawn to its aesthetics, its rarefied elegance, and how this same elegance is part of its horror – distracting a reader from the banal cruelty and evil of the narrator’s kidnapping and rape of a 12-year-old girl.”
Mishka Hoosen
Those young girls that Mishka is referring to romanticize the horrific elements of the novel and, in short, completely miss the novel’s point. This rhetoric can also diminish the fight to make Coquette a safe space for all. In the mind of Elijah Zurek, a nonbinary activist, Coquette is a way for women to reclaim something harmful and spin it in a lighthearted way.
I find it very interesting, in this day and age, that we’re taking back things that were harmful in every community. So, I guess for the feminist community it is this. I mean, with the LGBTQ community it’s the word ‘queer’ and different slurs. I think it’s kind of amazing that our generation is down for a joke: We say anything and everything and I think that that’s what we need to ultimately heal. But also acknowledge the past and how we got here, how these things came to be, and how we combated it.
Elijah Zurek
Is Coquette-core problematic?
Yes and no: It’’s more complicated than you think. The elephant in the room with Coquette is how it originates from media that heavily sexualizes children. This is especially concerning since the majority of people who participate in this subculture are teens and young women. Romanticizing child sexual abuse and age-gap relationships can easily make underage girls who are Coquette vulnerable.
According to the FBI, over 50% of victims of online sexual assault are from the ages of 12 to 15. And 1 in 5 girls are a victim of sexual assault. These statistics are concerning, especially with the association of the romanticization of age-gap relationships and child sexual abuse found within the community. Engaging minors with this kind of material feels unsafe.
Yes, all of the things previously mentioned are bad. It is important to know the origins of any subculture. Yet there is still a glimmer of hope within the Coquette community — namely, people like Arianna, who are trying to make this subculture a safe space for women and girls.
In short, it is okay to dress in a feminine way and enjoy Lana Del Rey and Lolita, but it is important to know Coquette’s origins while allowing the trailblazers of Coquette to reclaim the word and embrace their femininity in peace.
