There Is Nothing Whimsical About Plastic: Stop Adding Jewels to Everything

Take it back to the beginning and there was something genuinely lovely about whimsy in everyday life. It meant a cute charm on your bag, mismatched socks, a strange painting you thrifted, or wearing something ridiculous simply because you liked it. I collect wine bottles and turn them into bangle stands. Whimsy at its best was about seeing what you already had a little differently. It was never about having more.

So what is whimsy? Cambridge defines it as "unusual, funny and pleasant ideas or qualities", while Merriam-Webster calls it "the quality or state of being whimsical or fanciful". Notice what neither definition requires? Buying something new. Whimsy has very little to do with consumption at all. But somewhere along the way we lost the plot and turned it into a product of capitalism. Now I cannot scroll through Instagram without "whimsy-maxxing" being pushed in my face, because the algorithm has decided I am oh so miserable.

Does Joy Have to Be Bought?

The appeal of whimsy-maxxing is understandable. After years of burnout and the relentless pressure to make everything look tasteful and likeable to other people, we have arrived at an obvious conclusion: we need colour, silliness and personality again. I cannot complain, because this was my thought process too. What I do not find amusing is how the internet, inevitably, turned it into a strategy.

I do not think someone putting rhinestones on their favourite water bottle is destroying the planet. One person decorating one object is not an environmental crisis. That is not my argument. It is the mindset behind it: the idea that every object needs to be decorated to feel special. There is a difference between bedazzling something you use every day and bedazzling something you will throw away in five minutes. Personalisation should not be confused with consumption disguised as creativity. Everyone on social media is supposedly expressing their individuality, and yet it all looks the same. It is the illusion of a personality without much personal thought.

We are at a dystopian point where every trend and aesthetic can be purchased.

Do you want to be whimsical? Here is a list of things you need to buy.

Do you want to be mysterious? Here is a list of things you should do.

Do you want to be a cool girl? Here is everything you have to own, because otherwise you are not cool.

This is what bothers me about whimsy-maxxing, and I will keep calling it that, because it is no longer whimsy. If packaging were all that mattered, it would fall under looks-maxxing, another strange trend. The odd little things you do when nobody is watching, because they make you happy: that is whimsy. There does not have to be a curated shopping list, and it does not have to be understood by anyone else. The irony is that a trend built around individuality has started to produce a very specific kind of sameness. If we need to buy twenty things to prove we have a personality, we have missed the point entirely.

A Chain of Disposable Personalities

As I said, the problem with this version of whimsy is not the pink plastic cup someone covered in rhinestones. The real question is what happens when a trend tells us that the things we already own are no longer interesting.

Your perfectly functional water bottle becomes boring because Kylie Jenner posted a photo of her jewelled Stanley cup. Your phone case becomes replaceable when Rhode launches another line of cases that hold their blushes. An object that was fine yesterday is inadequate today because it does not fit the version of whimsy currently circulating on everyone’s For You page. That is how a harmless aesthetic turns harmful: an endless cycle of desire, want, boredom and replacement.

It would be dramatic to suggest that your bedazzled Vaseline is an environmental hazard. What matters is the system of consumption that makes thousands of unnecessary purchases feel harmless, because each one is small on its own. Most of the products we use are made from plastic or contain synthetic materials that are already difficult to recycle, and glitter, rhinestones and other decorative elements make them harder still.

The bigger environmental issue may be psychological. We have been taught to believe that joy requires novelty, and that when something stops feeling new we should buy something else. Once we are done with whimsy, the next trend will arrive and we will do it all again.

I do not want to kill the fun. I just do not think we should have to prove we are having fun by consuming. So by all means, wear the ugly sweater to your local grocery store, paint your furniture purple, keep a crystal by your bed (I do). Just do not confuse having more stuff with having more personality. The most environmentally responsible version of whimsy might be this: stop buying more, and start treating imagination as something you do every day.