Pity Sex - Dogwalk
Tumblrcore
posted December 8, 2025
link
link
Again, this week’s fashion subgenre doubles as a trip down
memory lane (for me, at least). I’m revisiting my college years,
specifically around 2014—back to when I tried blunt-cut baby bangs,
listened to Title Fight on the way to class, and posted stuff like this
on Tumblr:
i need some kind of validation to prove i will be successful later in life bc right now i’m straddling the line of “future failure” or “awesome winner bitch”
I love how nothing has changed in however many years it’s been since 2014!
Back in those days, the Tumblrcore girl had thousands of dedicated followers (of course). They reblog her Photobooth selfies, her self-portraits on film, her silk underwear embroidered with quotes about power and femininity. So you keep seeing her on your Dashboard. And as much as you don’t want to like her, you have to admit you kind of love following her. Because she’s got a haircut. And really good style. Not just run-of-the-mill Urban Outfitters stuff. Cool vintage shirts. Lots of checkerboard patterns. She probably has an “ironic” (but actually not because she grew up with it) obsession with something like Garfield or PeeWee Herman or bugs. Therefore she collects anything related to it, like tchotchkes or tattoos. She loves doing the hardstyle pose in front of funny vanity plates she sees around the city.
Any Friday in the mid-2010s, you’d find her lying on a twin mattress on the debris-ridden floor of her low-priced but beautiful historic apartment, getting ready for a show in an old house and texting a guy who she hates to admit broke her heart, even though he’s short and has stupid tattoos. Most of her art is actually secret messages to him, and she hopes one day he’ll notice that and see how much he hurt her (he won’t). She also posts 35mm scans on her Flickr account and sews patches onto her old hoodies, even if there are no holes to cover.
The Tumblrcore girl is either pursuing a degree in art or preparing to, or maybe she just wants to move out on her own and see what it’s like. For some reason, girls like her are concentrated in places like Baltimore and Philly, so you’d probably find her there. She’s the first person you saw wearing jeans that were ripped in the back like they were half-cutoffs to show her barbed-wire tattoo. You save pictures of her hair to an Instagram album as if you’ll ever get something that daring. You’re obsessed with the way she layers and sort of dresses like a dominatrix-grindcore drummer-elementary art school teacher.
It seemed like if you wanted to be a Tumblr-famous hardcore girl, there was a formula to follow, and one of the prerequisites was “blunt-cut baby bangs.” As I mentioned, I tried that. I could not pull it off. I could not pull off sharp winged eyeliner and full eyebrows every day, or wearing those oppressive American Apparel legging jeans (with the one measly button at the top). I was bombarded with images of my then-feminine ideal daily.
Even though I was always so jealous of them—whether it was the money I assumed they had, or their cute boyfriends, clothes, followers, etc.—I couldn’t stop myself from studying them. I tried to picture myself moving through the world the way they did. For a while, I even played the part. It felt like the closest available version of Me, But Better—one more optimized for internet attention and cute hardcore boyfriends.
Obviously, there was a pretty narrow set of hair and makeup choices: bangs, winged eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man, and full, maybe blocky even, eyebrows. In terms of clothing, the Tumblrcore girl had a little more freedom: American Apparel for basics like black turtlenecks and mom jeans; Fred Perry polos and Doc Martens boots for skinhead-adjacent fashion but in a Woke Feminist way; Thrasher hoodies and metal band merch skater/emo boy hoodies, semi-ironic workwear/hunting gear like Carhartt jackets and camo cargo pants; Riot Grrrl-inspired pieces like vintage-style underwear, red lipstick, shirts with angry phrases; and, of course, the perfectly curated vintage from thrift stores or expensive boutiques. It was basically requisite to have tattoos as well, whether they were “traditional old school” style or cute artsy doodles. It was the formula that worked best on the Instagram grid or in mirror fit pics captioned “not yr bb girl.”
These were all things I was naturally drawn to anyway. But at a certain point I started asking myself: would one of those cool chaotic girls on Tumblr with a username like ‘grrrl-brat’ wear this? Maybe if I kind of emulate her vibe it’ll pop off and get a bunch of notes… It sucks fantasizing about how much attention a picture could get before even taking it. But that’s precisely what we all did. And we still do, to some extent.
Those girls just made it seem so easy. They were so cool, and a little scary, like they switched between idealizing their lives and being vulnerable and depressive. They invited their followers to ask them questions, usually anonymously, knowing that their parasocial fans would be invasive and contemptuous. Like their patron saint, Molly Soda, their online presence was part of the performance art that is their life. They were equal parts guarded and secretive, even while spilling their guts out in crying selfies, and it was incredibly compelling.
Here are some pieces that I feel are representative of this era. It’s a little bit skater, a little bit hipster, with the winking femininity of riot grrrl’s smeared red lipstick and combat boots.
i need some kind of validation to prove i will be successful later in life bc right now i’m straddling the line of “future failure” or “awesome winner bitch”
I love how nothing has changed in however many years it’s been since 2014!
Back in those days, the Tumblrcore girl had thousands of dedicated followers (of course). They reblog her Photobooth selfies, her self-portraits on film, her silk underwear embroidered with quotes about power and femininity. So you keep seeing her on your Dashboard. And as much as you don’t want to like her, you have to admit you kind of love following her. Because she’s got a haircut. And really good style. Not just run-of-the-mill Urban Outfitters stuff. Cool vintage shirts. Lots of checkerboard patterns. She probably has an “ironic” (but actually not because she grew up with it) obsession with something like Garfield or PeeWee Herman or bugs. Therefore she collects anything related to it, like tchotchkes or tattoos. She loves doing the hardstyle pose in front of funny vanity plates she sees around the city.
Any Friday in the mid-2010s, you’d find her lying on a twin mattress on the debris-ridden floor of her low-priced but beautiful historic apartment, getting ready for a show in an old house and texting a guy who she hates to admit broke her heart, even though he’s short and has stupid tattoos. Most of her art is actually secret messages to him, and she hopes one day he’ll notice that and see how much he hurt her (he won’t). She also posts 35mm scans on her Flickr account and sews patches onto her old hoodies, even if there are no holes to cover.
The Tumblrcore girl is either pursuing a degree in art or preparing to, or maybe she just wants to move out on her own and see what it’s like. For some reason, girls like her are concentrated in places like Baltimore and Philly, so you’d probably find her there. She’s the first person you saw wearing jeans that were ripped in the back like they were half-cutoffs to show her barbed-wire tattoo. You save pictures of her hair to an Instagram album as if you’ll ever get something that daring. You’re obsessed with the way she layers and sort of dresses like a dominatrix-grindcore drummer-elementary art school teacher.
It seemed like if you wanted to be a Tumblr-famous hardcore girl, there was a formula to follow, and one of the prerequisites was “blunt-cut baby bangs.” As I mentioned, I tried that. I could not pull it off. I could not pull off sharp winged eyeliner and full eyebrows every day, or wearing those oppressive American Apparel legging jeans (with the one measly button at the top). I was bombarded with images of my then-feminine ideal daily.
Even though I was always so jealous of them—whether it was the money I assumed they had, or their cute boyfriends, clothes, followers, etc.—I couldn’t stop myself from studying them. I tried to picture myself moving through the world the way they did. For a while, I even played the part. It felt like the closest available version of Me, But Better—one more optimized for internet attention and cute hardcore boyfriends.
Obviously, there was a pretty narrow set of hair and makeup choices: bangs, winged eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man, and full, maybe blocky even, eyebrows. In terms of clothing, the Tumblrcore girl had a little more freedom: American Apparel for basics like black turtlenecks and mom jeans; Fred Perry polos and Doc Martens boots for skinhead-adjacent fashion but in a Woke Feminist way; Thrasher hoodies and metal band merch skater/emo boy hoodies, semi-ironic workwear/hunting gear like Carhartt jackets and camo cargo pants; Riot Grrrl-inspired pieces like vintage-style underwear, red lipstick, shirts with angry phrases; and, of course, the perfectly curated vintage from thrift stores or expensive boutiques. It was basically requisite to have tattoos as well, whether they were “traditional old school” style or cute artsy doodles. It was the formula that worked best on the Instagram grid or in mirror fit pics captioned “not yr bb girl.”
These were all things I was naturally drawn to anyway. But at a certain point I started asking myself: would one of those cool chaotic girls on Tumblr with a username like ‘grrrl-brat’ wear this? Maybe if I kind of emulate her vibe it’ll pop off and get a bunch of notes… It sucks fantasizing about how much attention a picture could get before even taking it. But that’s precisely what we all did. And we still do, to some extent.
Muses: various Tumblr girls (Noorann, Bree, Molly Soda)
Those girls just made it seem so easy. They were so cool, and a little scary, like they switched between idealizing their lives and being vulnerable and depressive. They invited their followers to ask them questions, usually anonymously, knowing that their parasocial fans would be invasive and contemptuous. Like their patron saint, Molly Soda, their online presence was part of the performance art that is their life. They were equal parts guarded and secretive, even while spilling their guts out in crying selfies, and it was incredibly compelling.
Here are some pieces that I feel are representative of this era. It’s a little bit skater, a little bit hipster, with the winking femininity of riot grrrl’s smeared red lipstick and combat boots.
I never did end up popping off on Tumblr. I think it was because I couldn’t pull off those bangs. But I have never lost the urge to try them again sometime.