]> 2026-04-29T17:32:32+00:00 026 0 en Entry In recent years, a number of fashion and beauty brands have developed promotional content that circulates an aspirational quality imbued with unstudied “cool” around their product. Despite the appeal of this conceit to tropes of the everyday, authenticity, and belonging, it presents a superficially relatable ideal whilst exploiting digital media’s capacities to foster intimacy and promote a postfeminist subjectivity based on consumption. This article examines three brands that circulate “aspirational realness” around their product: Glossier, Reformation, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh. All remediate the conventions of prior fashion media to communicate discourses of neoliberal femininity to a media-savvy consumer. Aspirational realness is thus read as a means by which consumption is both encouraged and situated as a means of self-realization in the likeness of other aspirational “cool girls.” critical Individual 026 [https://www.rosiefindlay.com Rosie Findlay] https://attachments.are.na/24757053/6e6027da205fcd00dae4a37a04c54e2b.pdf?1700145381 Rosie Findlay Aesthetics Feminism Fashion “Trust Us, We’re You”: Aspirational Realness in the Digital Communication of Contemporary Fashion and Beauty Brands Article 2024-05-01T14:48:22Z 2460432.1169213 026 0 0 plainlist 1 [[:026]] 026# QUERYc94d8a3760c42d64072bb94919bb6d61