As u may know I spend too much time thinking about camp (the aesthetic phenomenon, not the outdoor activity), and anyway I just feel compelled to say that normcore and camp are simultaneously in dialogue with one another and are opposites

Ok first, normcore isn’t “normie shit” but is specifically “really beautiful and cool people adopting normie shit in order to demonstrate how their beauty and coolness transcends the horribleness of the normie shit, and to exclude the nonbeautiful/noncool from the practice”

And camp isn’t “banal shit,” it’s “people with impeccable aesthetic sense directing their gaze at a thing considered to be banal, and appreciating it *for its banality,* & by that appreciation elevating the thing out of banality” — camp is the word for the banal/not banal paradox

ANYWAY, here’s the thing: both camp and normcore involve a cool person adopting an uncool object. But camp is a gaze of elevating the object — a gaze of inclusion and appreciation — while normcore is about using the object to elevate the person, a politics of exclusion and ego.

Thank you to @SafyHallanFarah for being a person I can have these ridiculous conversations with, love u

(I do think there are ways to map this to camp’s coded queerness and the retrograde heteronormative cosplay inherent in normcore (either by inclusion or subversion) but today is not the day for that one)