“Cottage core” is an aesthetic based around an attractive young woman, always with long hair – and usually a shade of blonde, almost always white, living a carefree life in a (typically) small home in the woods, wearing frilly dresses, having beautiful gardens, baking bread, painting pictures and enjoying a calm life in an area resembling a stereotypical English countryside of the 19th century.
“Cottage core” is based on a fantasized, idyllic simplified farm life imagined as it might have been in Europe in the distant past (but with access to fiber Internet, 5G cell phones, 4K video cameras and computers for digital editing – so quaint!)
“Cottage Core — the word “core” basically means enthusiasm — is a daydream of Generation Z, who have lived much of their lives online. This is the contradiction it holds: it promotes dreams of a technology-free world using only technology.“
The wicked truth about Cottage Core – UnHerd
It’s the stuff of flowery prairie dresses and sourdough starters, of hand-dried wildflower arrangements and hand-stitched quilts strewn on antique beds, of handmade pies cooling in open windows with the sun shining in. In an era where just about everybody wishes they had a bucolic getaway, cottagecore brings the stylized movie set dream of a fairytale cottage in some magical woods or an enchanted English countryside meadow to you, wherever you are.
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What makes cottagecore distinct is that it was born on the internet and largely exists there, far away from the realities of country life.
What Is Cottagecore? A Simple Guide (thespruce.com)
(Much more here from the BBC. Worth reading.)
This genere started before Covid but grew rapidly as a form of escapism during periods of lock downs. Unfortunately, some of these cottage core stories were faked – and some didn’t really live these lifestyles but played the part for TikTok and YouTube. As some note, many of these fantasy lifestyle video content creators would not last a full day on a real farm or ranch.
Travel stories have degenerated into the same escapism format, wrapped up as a romance novel, or the ever popular “America is awful but I found heaven in another country” in the genre of “I moved abroad” stories.
Like romance novels, these stories take the following form:
- a (usually) young woman moved or traveled to another country and fell in love (sometimes it is a gay or lesbian or a minority – straight guys are rarely mentioned in this genre.)
- America is an awful country
- Life at the destination country is so much better than in America
- All your problems would be solved if you too left America for a better future in another country.
The “I moved abroad” type stories are another form of cottage core escapism – and are generally just as fake. I analyzed over 400 such stories, and many observations were discovered: Start here: The Myth that Americans Can Easily Move Abroad – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking and also see
