Understanding Digital Narratives of Black Girlhood Through Social Media Aesthetics

Abstract Today, Black girls use social media, including TikTok, as sites for storytelling and for creating their own self-definitions. In this article, I address the question of how Black girls use social media aesthetics to construct digital narratives about their Black girlhoods. To do so, by analyzing a case study of TikToks, I explore the rise of the Soft Black Girl aesthetic and its connections to larger, white-dominated aesthetics, such as Cottagecore. Furthermore, I trace the political implications of social media sub-aesthetics that Black girls create, as well as how such sub-aesthetics are used to both deconstruct stereotypes pertaining to the adultification of Black girls and disengage from whiteness in online spaces.