Labubu, Stanley Cups And The Aesthetic Chaos: Gendered And Environmental Costs Of Tiktok Trends

If you are not walking out the door with your bag full of Labubu charms in one hand and a pastel Stanley cup in the other, on your way to grab your favourite strawberry matcha, are you even ‘one of the girls’? Aesthetic culture, where certain visual styles give rise to trends and fads, has been on overdrive in the past couple of years. The latest member of this culture is Labubu, a doll developed by figurine giant Pop Mart based on a character created by Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung. Like many of its predecessors, Labubu has captured the fascination and wallets of the TikTok generation.

Popularised by celebrities like Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK’s Lisa, the dolls, labelled as ‘ugly-cute’ due to their wide eyes and unsettling toothy grins, have been flying off the shelves at ₹5,000 and above, with resale markets and auctions charging even more. It follows a blind box purchasing style where the buyer does not know the colour or character style of the doll until they open the box.

Labubu is not the first product to break into aesthetic culture and will certainly not be the last. Other trends include Stanley Cups, which are colourful water tumblers retailing at ₹7000 and above, as well as a boom in matcha tea and matcha-infused drinks across the world, to the point that Japan is concerned about production. Apart from these, there are also growing trends in adding keychains and charms to bags, and styling clothing based on ‘core aesthetics’ like cottagecore, coquette, and office siren.

Performance of individuality

The key feature of aesthetic culture is that following trends is all about optics. Labubus and bag keychains are not just toys here; they serve as currency and a symbol of social standing. Matcha is not a centuries-old traditional Japanese tea, but rather an aesthetically pleasing addition to your feed. Stanley Cups are symbols of economic status, identity, and belonging to the ‘in-group’. In this system, meaning is stripped away and replaced with value that does not breach the surface.

Products are judged not by their origin or function, but by how they photograph. A drink, a doll, or a water bottle becomes desirable because it fits the current popular visual narrative. What matters is not what you use or enjoy, but how it looks when held in your hand, shared on your feed, or displayed on your shelf. Known as performative consumption, there is little attachment to these products beyond their ability to give the buyer a popular Instagram or TikTok post. The result is a society plagued by overconsumption due to fast-paced microtrends dictating the ‘right’ personality, status and identity to have.

Developing an identity through microtrends

Developing an identity was once the result of slow, intentional curation, but it is now dictated by ever-changing microtrends. We used to spend years cultivating a wardrobe or jewellery collection that aligned with our personal style and who we have grown to become. Now, microtrends have replaced long-term identity-building with short-term aesthetic alignment, leading to “aesthetic overloads”. It is not just one or two keychains, accessories, clothes and jewellery anymore; people are mass purchasing entire collections, colour-coordinated to match outfits or seasonal aesthetics. At the same time, we are willing to pay absurd amounts to stay relevant and show that we are part of the club. Collecting is less about personal interest and attachment and more about staying relevant online.

However, while following trends and staying relevant are of utmost importance, so is establishing individuality. As such, there is a dilemma. How can we stand out while fitting in? To do so, people purchase items like Stanley Cups and Labubu dolls in various colours and styles to match different moods. They scramble to buy limited edition products as soon as they are released to establish themselves as distinct from the crowd. The bursting demand gives rise to knockoffs, which sets off a new cycle of production and consumption. The pressure to be seen as both original and trendy leads to a constant churn of buying, discarding, and replacing items at a pace that outruns meaning. In trying to express our uniqueness, we ironically become more alike, trapped in an endless loop of sameness, cosplaying as individuality.

Gendered marketing of microtrends

Have you noticed that a significant number of microtrends are associated with women? There are style aesthetics including e-girls, clean girls, office sirens, mob wives and many more. Not to mention, pictures of matcha held in a girl’s hand wearing her favourite Pilates outfit. Scroll a little further to find the latest it-girl unboxing five Labubu to hopefully get the colour she wants to add to her collection of bag charms. Next to that, you can find a $1000 unboxing and try-on haul video of Shein clothing. Women, here, seem to be the target audience, consumers and advertisers of these trends.

The commonality between these trends is that they are reminiscent of age-old social expectations of women to tie their identity, value, and worthiness to appearance. The pressure placed on consumers is to buy and constantly transform themselves to align with the latest mood or style by suggesting that their desirability and relevance depend on how well they adapt to ever-changing aesthetics. Girlhood is packaged and repackaged and sold to young women constantly.

Trends promise empowerment through aesthetics but do so by tapping into insecurities around appearance, belonging, and having taste. If you don’t follow an aesthetic, have the trending products or the latest skincare, you are not performing ‘being a girl’ well enough. Tom Crisp, teacher of a sustainable fashion course at the University of Falmouth, told Vice, ‘The trends prey on our insecurities about the way we look and feel… encouraging us to consume more to stay on trend.’

A significant majority of marketing styles are designed for women. For example, Stanley is marketed as “hydration with style” through pastel colours, sleek designs, and influencer partnerships with predominantly female creators. Labubu ads and influencer content describe them as cute, soft and similar labels, which are heavily gendered as feminine traits. Additionally, popular content formats, like ‘Get Ready With Me’ and outfit try-on hauls, target women and prioritise constant visual change.

The expectation of visual reinvention is rarely placed on men to the same extent. While men may engage with trends and some target them specifically, they are not typically judged by their ability to shift from clean girl to coquette to mob wife in a matter of weeks. For women, visual presentation has become a social currency that must be continually refreshed to remain relevant and considered attractive. It is not about taste but about survival in a culture that equates a woman’s worth with her ability to perform the right kind of femininity at the right time. Lucky for us, you can buy worthiness, individuality and identity.

Manufactured desirability and exploitation

Capitalism is the little devil on your shoulder trying to convince you to keep buying, and it has several tricks in its arsenal to make you do so. One powerful tool is creating the illusion of choice. In the context of microtrends, the illusion of choice is when we believe that we are making consumer decisions based on our free will, but, in reality, our choices are being steered by marketing cues like scarcity and urgency. We are being told what we want. Microtrends create a sense of urgency, such that consumers are under the illusion of choice in that they are made to believe that missing out on the latest aesthetic means falling behind socially. This manufactured urgency keeps people in a constant loop of catching up to the latest trend, leading to overconsumption.

Additionally, overconsumption is exacerbated by companies creating a sense of scarcity. Blind boxes and limited edition Labubus motivate consumers to continue purchasing to fulfil their desire for uniqueness and prestige. The uncertainty of what is inside a blind box taps into the same psychology as gambling, rewarding repeated purchases with occasional hits of exclusivity. This strategy directly influences the desire to stand out, creating a competition out of self-expression where more is always better.

The effects of overconsumption affect the most vulnerable parts of the population. The algorithm-based production model of fast fashion brands like Temu and Shein reacts to viral content in just a few days, transforming microtrends into products at a rapid pace. This places heavy strain on employees, a significant number of whom are low-income women, who encounter hazardous working environments with little to no safeguards. Class dynamics are stark here, where the privileged perform aesthetics while the working class sustains the system. According to a 2024 investigation by Public Eye, Shein’s suppliers in Guangzhou violate Chinese labour laws, with workers enduring 70-hour weeks and being charged 300 to 1000 yuan for any errors they make. It is not far-fetched to imagine that similar models are being followed by all fast fashion brands worldwide.

The environmental impact of overproduction is huge. For example, the majority of clothing is created from synthetic materials like polyester, which can take more than 200 years to decompose. The effects of this are particularly evident in areas like Ghana’s Kantamanto Market, where millions of used clothes arrive weekly, and most of them ultimately become waste. It is reasonable to believe that when Labubu and similar charms circulate through the trend cycle, they will eventually find their way to landfills in impoverished areas. These instances demonstrate how the ecological burden unevenly affects the Global South, introducing an additional form of systemic exploitation encountered by these countries.

Labubu, Stanley, matcha, and other microtrends are not what they appear on the surface. They are about wanting control, identity, status and belonging. These desires impose emotional burdens, societal pressures, and gendered expectations on individuals and cause a massive environmental cost for the world around us under the guise of empowerment and individuality through late-stage capitalism’s tools of choice, illusion and urgency. However, I cannot ignore that many of these products bring genuine joy to buyers, especially when faced with a world that has increasing job insecurity, financial insecurity and continued violence against marginalised groups. In such a world, it is perhaps best to question why we want to purchase a particular trend and try to be conscious consumers who are aware of capitalism’s cruel tricks.