Indie Sleaze and EDs
Tumblr girl wakes up with her makeup caked on from the night before, tangled between unwashed bedsheets and wrapped in an oversized t-shirt she cut patterns of holes into with kitchen scissors to expose the creases of her pale spine. Tumblr girl lives life set to a soundtrack of Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence and a handful of Lorde songs, and she stumbles to the bathroom in the morning and maybe brushes her teeth but not her hair, tangled and bleached with ends more split than her personality. Tumblr girl is cool. Tumblr girl reeks of Camel Blues and a sensual kind-of feminine effluvium. Tumblr girl tightropes the fine lines between messy and dirty, neurotic and aesthetic, performative and dogmatic. Tumblr girl is carefully carefree, curated behind Urban Decay eyeliner and the bruises on her knees painted with palettes of iron deficiency and clumsiness. Because to Tumblr girl, her studs and eye makeup, tights and combat boots, and curated motifs of the Union Jack are not just style but lifestyle: paradoxically untethered to societal norms while shackled to a subculture devoted to portraying a particular image. Tumblr girl’s drug habits and eating habits and everything-in-between-habits should have killed her by 2018, but Tumblr girl is alive and breathing: she’s the New York City niche microinfluencer, the girl with the Isabel Marants on your For You Page, the freshman on the Garb writing team.
“Skinny Waists and Drug Habits”
Dark hues, grime, and grunge: Tumblr fashion was ‘edgy’ – the embodiment of the Effy Stonem archetype that young girls idolized and recreated. Tumblr was not just the platform for these individuals to post sad selfies and outfit photos set to a moody blue filter; Tumblr was a community. Through this subculture of teenagers arose a recognizable aesthetic reflected in pervasive fashion trends that represented the very foundation of their digital personas: a glamorized sense of moody teenage depression. To the Tumblr girls, depression was ‘cool’. Depression was ‘aesthetic’. Depression was fishnet tights and a G-Eazy song. The Tumblr aesthetic transcended the inherent superficiality of their digital personas, manufactured like the rips on their American Apparel skinny jeans.
Recently, we've been seeing skinny jeans come back, styled with Isabel Marant wedges and a dream. The Tumblr era has returned to social media in full throttle. Sky Ferreira is trending again. We’ve seen the decline of the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic, slick-backs, and minimalism, swapped out for messily chic maximalism. Personally, I attribute the resurgence of the carefree indie sleaze, Tumblr-esque aesthetic to Brat summer in 2024 – a cultural phenomenon. Artists like Charlie XCX and The Dare have made sleazy clubbing and the careless lifestyle covetable again. They embody hedonistic lifestyles that juxtapose the convoluted state of the world, appealing to young people who want to savor their youth before facing reality. However, this resurgence of the indie sleaze lifestyle promotes a romanticized sense of drug use as it has become increasingly normalized in the media. Young people want to be free; the Tumblr lifestyle gives the impression that it can provide that freedom for them.
‘Pro-Ana’ Nation
In 2025, we look back at the Tumblr era through the same Rio de Janeiro-tinted glasses those Tumblr girls viewed their reality through in 2014. We see grunge, individuality, and expression in those years. The reality is that the Tumblr era was vastly reflective of a self-destructive idealization of depression that infected vulnerable young girls, training them to pursue sadness as a trophy of ‘coolness’ and acceptance from a cyclically toxic community. In the culture of 2014 Tumblr, style surpassed its distinctive fashion norms; style was physique. Style was the number of bangles young girls could fit above their elbows, not the bangles themselves. Tumblr hosted sub-groups of communities promoting disordered eating. Young girls were conditioned to believe that the best physical representation of their manufactured aesthetic was to appear as emaciated as possible, which may be interpreted as a cry for help or adherence to a toxic culture, or both. With the resurgence of the Tumblr era, social media blinds us with an inappropriate amount of eye makeup and the shininess of studs everywhere that we can no longer recall its inherent misery. The glamorized sadness on Tumblr was still sadness, nonetheless, and sadness is not fashionable, nor should it be associated with a particular aesthetic or style in 2025.
The Tumblr revival presents another slippery slope in the modern age in light of the simultaneous rise of Ozempic face and SkinnyTok. Celebrities are trading in their BBLs for protruding collar bones, and impressionable young girls are, once again, the greatest victims of fluctuating body standards in a vain and capitalistic society. As the Tumblr era is notorious for its ‘pro-ana’ philosophy, the only thing we can do is be aware of the risk factors it poses to impressionable youth and advocate for aesthetics and style to be based solely on style and fashion alone, not self-destructive behaviors, not body types. Body types are not trends, nor are they fashion.
But, Bitch, I’m So Free
However, aside from the underlying idealization of depression embedded in the Tumblr aesthetic, its tandem philosophy is an effortlessly carefree and liberating way of life for the modern young woman. In the era of the ‘clean girl’, defined by rigid routines, 10-step skin care, and Hailey Bieber slickbacks, the Tumblr resurgence creates space for the messy girl, and that’s what I love about the style. For me, style is not about a perfectly curated aesthetic, rather, an empowering mentality. I find great joy in my unbrushed and over-bleached hair, disheveled in a Sky Ferreira type-of way, and I like the unconventional femininity of it all. The Tumblr girl mentality is authentic, chaotic, and free. Like, bitch, I am so free. Hayden Oh’s inner Tumblr girl is grimy and sleep-deprived, but studded with authenticity and wrapped in a mini skirt embroidered with the wildest of horses.
Today, we embrace the return of the Tumblr era while conscious of the dark aspects of its history and hyperaware about the negative culture it has the potential to cultivate. The 2025 Tumblr girl is more inclusive than her 2014 counterpart, emphasizing her fashion, expression, and personal identity rather than promoting eating disorder culture and mental illness. The Tumblr era is back, and it’s not just a phase, mom. It’s a mentality. It’s a lifestyle.
Hayden Oh
(@misanthroh)
