How Aesthetics Swallowed Pop.

Whether it's coquettecore, prep, or Brat, stars are aligning themselves with instantly legible—and all-consuming—images.

- By Gaby Wilson

It all unfurled over the course of about a month. In August 2010, Lady Gaga became the most-followed person on the platform we then called Twitter. Not long after, she was beamed into the homes of 11.4 million MTV viewers during the VMAs, wearing 35 pounds of raw flank steak. Over the next couple of days, the app made a critical update: For the first time, photos and videos could be embedded in tweets, and new posts began to populate the feed via an addictive, slot machine-style feature, now known as the “infinite scroll.” It buoyed conversation about the meat dress, already one of the most provocative sartorial creations ever to infiltrate popular culture, and made Gaga a trending topic for over a week.

Suddenly, every camera was a potential path to virality, every red carpet an arms race for attention. Few took better advantage of this fact than the era's pop stars, who flooded the 2010s with well-timed public reveals of their baby bumps, shocking hair transformations, and hot-button accessories. But these days, virality is exhausting, and the pendulum is swinging in a different, though perhaps not entirely opposite, direction.