Written By: Pascale Gibbs, Spotlight Editor
The Rise of Coquette and It’s Deadly Implications
DISORDERLY: The rise of the style ‘coquette,’ inspired by Lana Del Rey, has caused a rise in the aesthetic of eating disorders, cigarettes, and ‘little girl’ innocence.
Lana Del Rey is an artist whose music can be described as a whimsical and romantic exploration of melancholy, glamor, romance, with many allusions to the 1950’s and 1960’s. Her music and lyrics are often gloomy yet amorous, and on top of this, Lana has one of the most unique voices in her industry and genre. With her genre technically being indie to psychedelic pop, her voice is very unlike her usual music counterparts. Her voice is quite deep for a woman, and she utilizes that beautifully. Furthermore, she focuses mainly on conveying emotion rather than hitting the notes perfectly – she uses raspiness with an airy tone to truly present the whimsical melancholy of her music.
But, Lana Del Rey is more than an artist. Her fanbase has created an entire new style around her ‘aesthetic’ – coquette. Coquette is a light-hearted, very feminine style that is often associated with love and old, elegant clothing. There are many different parts to coquette, including clothes, lifestyle, and music. First of all, the clothes are mostly white and light pink, modeled to be doll-like, and incorporate a lot of feminine frilly pieces. Coquette fancies a lot of light colors in order to convey an ultra-feminine persona.
This vanity shown above is a summary of the coquette aesthetic when it comes to colors and vibes. This style comes off as sweet and innocent, and in some disturbing ways it is, but that is also exactly what it is not. Here’s where we get to the lifestyle part of this aesthetic. From what I’ve told you about the style, you would think that the lifestyle would be to be perhaps sweet, kind, and overall soft. However, this is very far from true.
Coquette, based on Lana Del Rey’s music, has stressed a lifestyle with drugs and starvation. The coquette style replaces meals with cigarettes. This is because a huge part of the style is based on being skinny – to ‘fit’ with the doll-like and soft feminine vibe. However, the word skinny is an understatement. Coquette style stresses not just being skinny, but definitely underweight. The rise of coquette style has consequently promoted eating disorders.
This is where we also get the Diet Coke part of coquette. Diet Coke is part of the style – it is seen in a lot of the ‘aesthetic’ videos and photos to promote being skinny and eating less. This has gotten so bad that there are many videos making fun of the skinny promotion. For example, a ‘what I eat in a day’ TikTok and showing a cute bottle of pink Chanel perfume and a glass of Diet Coke with pearls in it, poking fun at the coquette girls that promote having very few daily calories. Even though Lana Del Rey has never promoted such a thing, her fanbase has created a whole lifestyle based around her melancholy lyrics and her old, classy style.
Another thing that must be covered with the coquette style is the child-like aspect that it creates. Coquette’s style is purposely young, feminine, and innocent – in some cases, this is a dark and dangerous path, as there are girls that dress this way to attract the perverted attention of old men. This all comes along from the feminine aspects, the frill and bows, as well as the dangerous part about being underweight.
Overall, coquette style has become quite the interesting and dangerous phenomena. With its stress on being skinny and doll-like, it is an almost unattainable thing in that respect. Despite all of this, coquette can be a genuinely innocent style that anyone can wear. Not every girl who wears coquette promotes eating disorders or drugs, but there are many girls who still rock cute feminine clothing and listen to Lana Del Rey.