Being a Lana Del Rey fan, wearing hyper-feminine clothing, and eating less than 800 calories a day are all requirements one must fulfill to become the ideal coquette girl. The word coquette directly translates to "flirty" in French. This meaning reflects the dainty, feminine aesthetic that coquette girls strive for.
The problem with these coquette girls isn't their feminine clothing, but the connection they've made between being skinny and effeminate. In order to be considered feminine, these coquette girls promote extreme dieting to achieve a skinny body. They even somehow romanticize vapes, making them even more trendy to teenagers. If you think I'm over-exaggerating, just watch these: Tiktok 1, Tiktok 2, Tiktok 3, Tiktok 4, Tiktok 5. Although the abundance of beautiful pink and white patterns are appealing to the eye, the anorexia certainly isn't. As you can tell from a few of these videos, these girls place one sliced cucumber on a dainty floral plate and call it a meal. While this seems aesthetically pleasing to coquette girls, any regular person can recognize how harmful this trend can be. In the last Tiktok, you can even see someone decorating their vape with pink ribbons and playing a Lana Del Rey song in the background that says "Pass me my vape, I'm feelin' sick, I need to take a puff". Young teenagers on apps like TikTok are being advised by these coquette girls to create unhealthy habits like under-eating and vaping. Somehow, the innocent pink and white coquette clothing cancels out the damaging habits exhibited in these videos.
Although TikTok users are in charge of curating their media diet by liking and following content they enjoy viewing, the TikTok algorithm itself is accountable for promoting dangerous habits to teens online. At the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate, researchers tested how much of a role the TikTok algorithm would play in a teenager's feed. They set up fake accounts for teenagers, liked only a few videos about dieting and self-harm, and wait to see how the algorithm would react. In just a few scrolls, an alarming number of videos about weight loss and self-harm were popping up. Any average teenager who likes only one or two videos about weight loss can find themselves in a rabbit hole of pictures of skinny models, razors, and "idealized body types". This explains why eating disorders among adolescents and social media are correlated to each other: mental illness is being promoted behind a mask of "healthy" and "fashionable" trends such as the coquette aesthetic and extreme diets. There are numerous statistics that support this: 61.7% of adolescents report that social media has impacted their body image negatively, Instagram users are 2.3 times more likely to suffer from an eating disorder than non-users, and 20.8% of TikTok users who encountered eating disorder-related content reported developing unhealthy eating habits. But guys, don't forget to applaud TikTok for this amazing message that appeared when I searched up "diet", which can be seen below:
No matter how innocent and cute the coquette aesthetic seems, let's not forget the creepy beginning behind this trend. The book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is the backbone of the coquette trend, and has become the model for many teens attempting to dress like the book's main character, Lolita. The novel narrates the story of an old man named Humbert who has a disgusting obsession with Lolita, a twelve-year old girl. Although Lolita is being harassed by Humbert, she's too innocent to understand and mistakes Humbert as a father figure and someone she can trust. Nabokov's 1955 novel was such a hit that a movie was later produced in 1997. Lolita's innocence and cluelessness about the disturbing situation she is in has become some sort of inspiration for the coquette girls.The coquette aesthetic is literally romanticizing the pedophilia that Lolita experienced by mimicking her behavior, way of speaking, and clothes. Some of them even are dressing up as her for Halloween and posting their costumes on TikTok for all the young girls online to see. If you're wondering how it can get any worse, Lana Del Rey has a song called "Lolita". Unlike Nabokov's novel, the song "Lolita" comes from the perspective of Lolita herself, who suggestively expresses that she suddenly feels grown up due to her relationship with an older man: "No more skipping rope, skipping heartbeats with the boys downtown, Just you and me feeling the heat even when the sun goes down". Although Lana's song is only portraying the confusion that Lolita feels, coquette girls twist and turn "Lolita" into their own disturbing meaning, and use her experiences as inspiration for their mannerisms.
Despite the abundance of pink bows and laces, not a single aspect of the coquette trend is pretty. In fact, it's appalling to realize that individuals all over social media, especially TikTok, are promoting self-harm, eating disorders, pedophilia, and other physical and mental issues to people online. The innocent clothing and beautiful music used by coquette girls is a complete facade for what they're really promoting to teenagers. Make sure to always do some research before jumping head-first into a trend, because you might find yourself spreading an invisible fire that no one should touch.
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