‘The Aesthetification of Everything’: Kindle Girlies, BookTok and How Reading Became an Aesthetic

It seems that everywhere you turn, what you're doing has been turned into an "aesthetic." In the online world, every mundane activity is an opportunity for branding, product placement, and up-sells. Hitting the gym requires a constellation of pre-workout supplements, Apple over-ear headphones, and Gymshark matching sets. You're not getting your steps in, you're going on a "Hot Girl Walk." Stanley cups and their requisite accessories have turned the simple act of drinking water into a chance to show you're "in the know." Everyday tasks become rituals imbued with meaning: We're taking everything showers, we're in our clean girl era, and we're… reading? But does all this "aesthetification" somehow cheapen the experience? Or does it figuratively and literally add to it?

Clever marketers have been trying to start trends for decades, probably centuries, but the proliferation of social media influencing, especially on TikTok, has dispersed those messages into smaller, more ambiguous pieces. It's hard to decipher between a friend letting us in on their trick and a company selling something to us.

Posted by JR Atkinson

The most recent candidate for the TikTok Aesthetic treatment has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, literature. Gone are the days of dusting off an old novel, cracking the spine, and flipping through between stops on the subway. Book lovers the internet over are turning in their hard copies in favor of the Amazon-owned e-reader (which used to just be the Christmas gift you get for a family member that you loved but didn’t know that well). The women (yes, mostly women) behind the trend use these devices to consume with abandon, valuing their portability and ability to turn pages at lightning speed. The Kindle Girls are here.

The trend is an offshoot of BookTok, a side of TikTok with the ability to make or break an author, a book, or a novel series, and who share a propensity for steamy, pulpy novels. Think Colleen Hoover, Penn Cole, and any Sarah J. Maas book whose title starts with “A Court of…” What began as an organic group of excited readers sharing their interests has transformed into a global sensation, capitalized to the highest degree (A Colleen Hoover film adaptation is currently ruling the Summer box office).

Kindle girls are BookTok girls, but they’re extra committed to their reading devices, decking them out with custom stickers, cases, and PopSockets and outfitting their reading nooks for maximum cuteness and coziness. But does this do the unthinkable and turn reading from a respite from contemporary horrors to just another TikTok trend?

When @flashesofstyle posted a TikTok of her Kindle setup, complete with a remote page-turner, mushroom-shaped pillow, and a snack tray fitted out for a Stanley, reactions were split. On TikTok, the comments were supportive, even envious. “I can’t do this because my family wouldn’t see me for days,” leannesamby wrote. “I don’t even have a Kindle, but I feel influenced,” rebecca johnson added. But when the video was reposted to Twitter, the hate rolled in. Users decried the need for all the accessories and accused her of falling prey to consumerism’s tricks. “Why does this feel like it doesn’t count as reading? it’s more consuming than reading [...] just sit down and open the book and read it for f**** sake,” @f1rewalk_withme wrote.

Is there a right way and a wrong way to absorb art, and have the TikTok girls found that line and crossed it? In an age where we’re constantly fretting over our screen time, is Kindle culture the perfect antidote, or is it just another screen ready to harvest our consciousness? Even If it takes a pink case and a popsocket, anything that gets the kids reading, right?

The term “over consumerism” has been lobbed at many TikTok creators for bum-rushing their nearest Target for the newest Stanley (despite already owning six) for showing off their baffling rows of shower gel, and for treating Lululemon workout sets like they’re Pokemon cards. In the mind of these critics, these creators are simply pawns in a Jeff Bezos-like figure’s cruel game to win the world and kill all the sea turtles. But many commenters will be quick to point out that it’s usually women who receive this criticism, suggesting that the outrage over these women’s consuming habits is a form of thinly veiled sexism. Remember the analogy to Pokemon cards, another clever invention to sell useless soon-to-be trash? Overconsumption isn’t relegated to women who want to cute-ify their lives. Overconsumption is the waters in which we swim.

It isn’t a good thing, but to overconsume is part of what it means to be a human right now. If you’ve ever ordered takeout from a restaurant, you know how much garbage you can generate by accident. It doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and stop recycling, but considering the staggering totality of waste, buying a pink Kindle case doesn’t seem that bad, especially if it makes you less likely to give up.

And what if the very tools of the oppressors help liberate us from their bonds? There’s a long way between a brain rot-inducing TikTok scroll session and getting lost in the pages of a juicy novel. And books don’t try to sell us things. The more time we spend reading, the less time we spend scrolling, the less compelled we are to buy unnecessary products, and the better the world gets. So if we must cuddle up to a polyester, landfill-bound mushroom plush in order to do it, perhaps it’s worth the concession.