Scroll through enough social media accounts belonging to women ages 18 to 34 and you might be convinced that, despite the drab sweatpants you’ve been wearing for days straight, there’s never been a prettier time to be alive. “Soft girl” and cottagecore aesthetics have given rise to a wash of dreamy pastels and pastoral fantasy, a celebration of hyper-femininity and domesticity, largely as is part of the appeal without the presence or demands of straight men.
This highly curated tea party wherein everyone is dressed in influencer-embraced Selkie puff or Lirika Matoshi strawberry dresses, their makeup laborious in the service of looking naturally rosy from the outdoors, and glowing like the wearer always happens to be sitting in a sunbeam happens to be catered only with the prettiest of desserts, all of which look like they sprang directly from a Sofia Coppola film. As hobby baker Charlotte Zoller succinctly puts it, “Who among us millennials didn’t see