Fruit Fantasies: How the ‘Strawberry Girl’ and the romanticization of fruit aesthetics create escapist fantasies

 

The Cherry Girl is sweet and mesmerizing. She can be seen dawning cherry red lipstick, with cherry red nails, and cherry red dreams. She might take it literally and sport cherry earrings or cherry print clothes. Her cherry taste extends to her lifestyle as well. She probably listens to Lana Del Rey, who herself has a song titled “Cherry,” to complete the lore of her sultry fantasy of a fruit inspired girl. The point is, the Cherry Girl is fully dedicated to a fashion and lifestyle aesthetic that derived from something as innocuous and unsuspecting as a cherry. The Cherry aesthetic, however, is one of only a few fruit trends to take the world by storm. With the ability of social media to curate aesthetics, with apps such as pinterest, and the ability to popularize trends at a rapid rate (thanks to apps like Tik Tok), fruit themed aesthetics have taken Gen Z by a storm. In this article, I’m going to examine the desire to attach our fashion/lifestyle to fruits and the ethical implications of aestheticizing fruit. 

For example, @aesthe1cfyp on Tik Tok made a "What Fruit aesthetic are you" video

The Strawberry Dress and the pastoral fantasy.

Strawberry Midi Dress by Lirika Matoshi

If you follow fashion and lifestyle trends on social media, then you have probably heard of the infamous Strawberry Dress by Lirika Matoshi. The pastel pink, cotton candy fluff of a dress is decorated with a sequined strawberry print. The tulle of the dress makes the garment look weightless, perfect for swaying in the breeze and twirling in a meadow. The dress captured the imagination of many in 2020, inspiring fan art, recreations, and discourses surrounding the fashionability of the dress. 

The timing of the dress’ popularity is worth noting. Most of us were locked up in our houses and masked, forced into isolation from the outside world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Strawberry Dress thus became an object on which many could project their fantasies onto. These fantasies are largely tied to the idea of the strawberry, a vibrant fruit grown from the earth and foraged from a faraway farm. The rural roots of strawberries conjure the romanticization of rural life and labor, which manifests in the larger aesthetic of “cottagecore.” Cottagecore is an aesthetic that embodies the ideal pastoral life that takes inspiration from the English countryside, slow living, and self-reliance.

Although the term “Cottagecore” is relatively new, the concept dates back centuries. Pastoral idealizations can be traced back to ancient Greek and Roman literature, however its modern conceptualization began in 16th century English literature and art. The industrial revolution would see a rise in pastoral imagery in literature as capitalism and consumerism matured in the fast paced industrial age. Industrialization and the increased capitalistic environment it fostered created a yearning for a slower life. As Wilfred P. Mustard explains in The Pastoral: Ancient and Modern, the pastoral movement captures a “Golden Age” of an idyllic agrarian age. Think of the picturesque poetic pastoral scenes Virgil writes about in his poems or the English countryside of Jane Austen novels. 

Essentially, pastoral literature is a mechanism for escapism and fruit motifs were used to transport the audience into these rural worlds. The strong association of fruits and the pastoral, or more recently “cottagecore,” is why I believe that the Strawberry Dress would not be what it was without the strawberries. This might be an obvious statement, but I realized that many critics and commentators overlook the singular importance and symbolic nature of the strawberry in the dress. Sure, the design of the dress is enchanting itself, but if any other design was stamped on, the dress would not have the same impact. Therefore, the power of the Strawberry Dress is within the Strawberry and its strong rural fantasies.

The ‘Fruit Aesthetic’ Trend

The Strawberry Dress isn’t the only aesthetic curated around fruit that elicits escapist fantasies. More recently, Tik Tok has seen the emergence of the Tomato Girl. The Tomato Girl is an aesthetic that surpasses the physical appearance of the Tomato and focuses more on embodying the fruit’s properties, whether it's through a warm red color scheme or embodying a larger lifestyle. The Tomato Girl is associated with a “Mediterranean” aesthetic and lifestyle, and has thus made the aesthetic a summer craze (which explains the term ‘Tomato Girl summer)’. This aesthetic even has spin offs, such as “Tomato Girl Makeup” and Tomato Girl playlists with latin language tunes.

A collage I made of images that came up when I searched "Tomato Girl"

What’s so fascinating about the Tomato Girl aesthetic, like the Strawberry Dress, is that it has managed to make mainstream news. ABC did a piece on the Tomato Girl Summer exploring the phenomena and its themes, legitimizing this trend. The Tomato Girl also spurred more personalities such as Pomegranate Girl, Kiwi Girl, Lemon Girl, and so on. Fashion and lifestyle YouTuber ModernGurlz explored this trend by creating her own fruit themed aesthetics through TikToks. These aesthetics don’t necessarily have to have the fruit in them, but the overall “vibe” that the fruit gives off. These Tik Tok videos around fruit aesthetics go extremely viral. For instance, Tik Tok user @h0neyy.moons videos have accumulated millions of views and tens of thousands of likes with their fruit aesthetic videos.

 "what fruit are you?" by @h0neyy.moonns

"which berry girl are you?" 

by @h0neyy.moonns

Problematic aspects of fruit aesthetics

These fruit aesthetics, although seemingly harmless, do have larger implications that reflect the conventions of a capitalist society. For one, the aestheticization of fruits further adds to the commodification of food. Now we’re not just buying the food to eat, but we’re consuming fruit as a vanity project. Of course, there is a difference between buying an actual fruit to eat and buying clothes with a fruit print or red lipstick labeled “cherry,” but the association nonetheless feeds into (pun intended) the marketability of fruit as a status value. For instance, on Tik Tok, there has been a summer manicure trend labeled "Blueberry Milk Nails," which are just periwinkle blue nails repackaged into a fruit aesthetic. This color nail polish has always been common, but the cute new label “blueberry milk” has increased the desirability for this nail color. This is an example of how non-food products use fruit aesthetics to sell commodities, which further ties these fruits to the market-fueled machine.

 

Sabrina Carpenter with "Blueberry Milk" nails

Let’s go back and think about the Strawberry Dress for a second. The garment, as we discussed earlier, is an emblem of “cottagecore,” which embodies a slow living, rural life away from industrialization and consumerism. However, the dress itself cost $490.00, which is an inaccessible price for most working class people, let alone a rural farmer living in the cottage. I’m in no way shaming the price of the Strawberry Dress: the garment is handmade from a small business and is beautifully crafted. However, there is a clear disconnect between the high price of the dress and the fantasies it sells of a low-maintenance, anti-consumerist “cottagecore” lifestyle. This disconnect between these fruit aesthetics and the fantasies they sell reflect the larger disillusionment that these aesthetics result in.

When we wear fruit inspired clothes or buy into fruit inspired lifestyles, there is an inherent romanticization of these fruits as aesthetic props that in turn undermines and neglects the labor that these fruits undergo. Maybe you want the cottagecore lifestyle, picking berries in the countryside in your $490.00 cottagecore dress, but do you really know what that labor entails? Agricultural labor is brutal, its workers constantly exploited and underpaid. As explained in the New York Times article, “Most of America’s Fruit Is Now Imported. Is That a Bad Thing?,” over half of the fruits in America are imported from previously colonized and/or exploited countries. Thus, when we romanticize fruit fantasies, we inadvertently romanticize its labor. The more seperated we are from the realities of food labor, the less inclined we are to recognize and fight against the injustices of exploitation.

Cultural appropriation and repackaging "exotic" 

Along with the disconnect between fruit aesthetics and food labor, there is also a risk of cultural appropriation and orientalism with these aesthetics. Many of these fruit aesthetics are pioneered by Western white middle class girls. There are people of color participating in these aesthetics (for example, the cottagecore aesthetic has largely been embraced by a POC queer community), however, they make up a minority of most of these aesthetics. Since these fruit aesthetics are often tied to a larger cultural lifestyle, many of the participants of the fruit fantasies risk appropriating and misrepresenting that culture. For instance, the “Tomato Girl” aesthetic is largely associated with the “Mediterranean lifestyle” but the majority of the people participating in this aesthetic are not from the mediterranean. Tomato Girls will romanticize mediterranean life through the lens of a tourist, romanticizing how mediterranean people actually live (which I wager is not like a upper class white woman from America sailing on a yacht in Portofino).

I don’t want to declare the “Tomato Girl” as a culturally appropriated aesthetic as I am not Mediterranean and it seems like this aesthetic is more of an appreciation for the culture than appropriation. However, I think it’s important to point out that the Mediterranean, specifically places like Italy, are predominantly white, European countries, which are harder to appropriate. If a fruit was tied to a more marginalized community, like Hawaii and the “coconut girl,” there is a risk of culturally appropriating and misrepresenting a culture in order to fulfill these fruit aesthetics. In that sense, fruit aesthetics can mask exoticism by “othering” a culture as some foreign fantasy to be desired. 

The appeal of fruit aesthetics

Although I’ve been critical about fruit aesthetics and their escapist fantasies, I can understand why they are appealing. Humans have always been inspired by nature and it's a huge core of our identity. Fruits particularly have a desirable quality that makes their fantasies easy to cling onto. They’re vibrant, youthful foods that are characterized by their organic and nutritional value, giving fruits a positive association. Additionally, we often fantasize things we can’t have, and the reality is that fruits are largely inaccessible in America. Fruits, especially the ones labeled as “organic,” are extremely expensive and have gotten worse as inflation rises. Since organic fruits are more expensive to farm and the U.S. government doesn’t prioritize fruit subsidies, the price of fruit remains high. The price of fruit is part of a larger political discourse of why healthy food is so inaccessible to Americans (the Vox article and video, Why eating healthy is so expensive in America, gives a great overview). I think it’s important to mention the inaccessible and expensiveness of fruits because for many people, fruit aesthetics and fantasies are the closest they can feel to fruits. 

Overall, the desire to attach ourselves to an aesthetic or personality isn’t new. Whether it’s a zodiac sign, an enneagram, or a Hogwarts house, we all crave to find a sense of belonging in a community. Essentially, fruit aesthetics are just another way to try to grapple with our identity and desires in an uncertain world. The truth is, we live in a bleak society where the class divide is increasing, inflation is rising, and workers around the world are being exploited. Wars rage on, people die, and yet, life persists and we must find a way to manage it. So, if attaching your identity to a fruit is a means for you to find your way in this life, then so be it.