Create the Fairytale
Towards the end of January, as the wind howled outside and the snow blanketed the town, I lay in bed for what seemed like the hundredth day. Thanks to a litany of ailments related to a kidney infection, I still could only get through a handful of hours of work before I needed to crawl back into bed and sleep. During this time I fell down the Instagram rabbit hole that my eight year old self could only dream of — a romantic world of rustic cottages and English gardens, of swirly linen dresses and afternoon tea. As I lay in my bed, with barely enough energy to shower some days, I found myself transported to the misty fields of England, the fairytale landscapes of France, and the snowy forests and mountains of New Hampshire. In these accounts I found kindred spirits, women across the world who still believed in the power of fairytales and sought to live their lives slowly, with beauty, romance, and meaning. These various accounts, as different as the creators behind them are, all fell under the umbrella of the internet subculture of ‘cottagecore.’
Cottagecore first graced the Internet thanks to the desire of mainly female and femme members of the LGBTQ+ community to escape from (largely patriarchal) modern norms and expectations, such as capitalism and gender roles and expression. As such, at the heart of cottagecore is the rejection of these norms and the space for anyone with a love of nature and a longing for an earlier, simpler time. As English cottage dweller Ramona Jones puts it, “Imagine a life where you can avoid all your stresses, relocate to a fairy-tale cabin in the woods and write your own narrative among nature. That is the escapism of Cottagecore - taking comforting aspects of the past and tying them in with a modern existence to create a sense of magic and escape.” It’s a fluid lifestyle changing and forming to the unique personalities of all who find themselves drawn to it, but this whimsical sense of escapism and love of the natural world tends to hold true regardless. There’s so much more I could say about the essence and nature of cottagecore, but for the sake of this post, I’m sticking with how it has impacted me.
Living a life inspired by fairytales is nothing new to me. Born a Disney fairy princess, I passed much of my childhood in my own imagination, fueled by Andrew Lang’s color books of fairytales, Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale anthologies, and, of course, a healthy amount of Tolkien. Tea is a daily ritual, and there’s nothing I love more than to fill my home with fresh flowers, the smell of baked cookies, and dresses patterned with flowers. Until now I never thought about how my various interests and ideal lifestyles connected. In the whimsical world of cottagecore, I found a name to many of the values and ideas that I already held, and to the romantic lifestyle I already was living. From sustainable fashion to the love of fairytales, these accounts turned their passions and values into art online. In them, I found words to explain the way I see the world, with a lens that isn’t oblivious to the challenges and sorrows of life, but rather chooses to see the beauty in it, and letting that which is lovely define my life instead.
“Imagine a life where you can avoid all your stresses, relocate to a fairy-tale cabin in the woods and write your own narrative among nature. That is the escapism of Cottagecore - taking comforting aspects of the past and tying them in with a modern existence to create a sense of magic and escape.”
This spring I noticed our backyard come alive with hundreds of violets. They blanketed the grass with their white and purple heads. I’d assumed that foraging would require me to go on an adventure, seek out a wooded path off the beaten trail to find so many clusters of violets. Instead, all I had to do was open my own front door. I returned to my kitchen with a mason jar full of purple flowers and a day later I’d exchanged that jar of flowers for a jar of delicately sweet violet syrup. From then on, my backyard turned into a magic playground, where flower fairies frolic and leave wildflowers in their wake. This is the true magic I’ve discovered in the world of cottagecore. It isn’t about leaving your life behind, exchanging it for another. Instead, it inspired me to return to looking at the world as I did as a child, seeing all the beauty and possibility it could contain. I might live in an apartment downtown on a sideroad tucked behind a Five Guys, but when I look at the world with this new lens, it looks completely new.
Last month my brother joined my husband and I for brunch as he has almost every Saturday morning this year. That morning, I turned on my Spotify and let the sometimes lilting, sometimes jaunty, melodies of Johnny Flynn waft through the kitchen as I mixed up a batch of pancakes. Some had crushed lavender mixed in, others had crushed rose petals sprinkled on top. On others I placed a fresh pansy blossom. I set the violet syrup on the table and topped it all off with tiny cups of shockingly blue pea flower tea. As I admired my meal in all its woodland charm, I joked with Austin and Nathaniel that I’d reached my final form, I’d become the person my eight year old self always wanted to be. I realized the profound truth in that. Children in their simplicity, thoughts and desires still unadulterated by the whims of peers and pressures of the world, see things clearly. That eight year old girl, with her waist length pale blonde hair, made houses for fairies and elves and climbed trees in princess dresses, without a care that none of her friends wanted to keep making fairy houses with her. She danced in the sunshine and found beauty in the simple things of life. I never stopped being her, but over the years I masked my love of whimsy, for what reason, I honestly can’t say now.
A dream is a wish your heart makes…
The power of the pandemic is waning now. Life creeps back to it’s normal breathtaking pace. It would be easy to again leave behind the fanciful, romantic notions of slow living. Yet, those weeks in bed with the snow and wind howling outside the window gave me something that I’m not likely to forget. They reminded me how wonderful it was to dream, and how in dreaming there is a kind of truth. The world really is a precious, beautiful place. Fairytales are real, and I see them in the love I share with my husband, the laughter I exchange with friends, in the watercolor wash of the sunset, and in the birdsong of the morning. Life has its challenges and sorrows, and am I no stranger to them. When I look through the lens of whimsy, though, those heartbreaks become easier to bear and lose their power over me as I remember that no amount of sorrow can take away who I am at the core of my being. That, perhaps, is the true magic of cottagecore.
COVID turned life upside down — in some truly terrible, unexpected ways. Yet, in the middle of the madness, miracles happened, and I encountered a peace I never expected to find: I rediscovered and reclaimed a piece of myself.
“Cottagecore is a place where we can escape the chaos of modern life. Sure, it’s a bit of fantasy for most of us. But that isn’t a reason not to indulge in it. In fact, all the more reason for it!”
