On the Commodification, Aestheticization, and Distortion of Punk

That's sooo not punk.

Since punk’s loud, unabashed, in-your-face conception, it has, like all cultural movements, been commodified—packaged into neat anarchist sticker bundles because that is the nature of our profit-driven economy. There have always been subcultures, and there have always been ‘posers.’ Now, we are seeing a new wave of punk influence in fashion trends: spiked and studded bracelets trending on AliExpress, the resurgence of graphic statement tees, and purses laden with pins of all sorts sold pre-made by TikTok creators for $95. It seems only natural that after the revival of goth in popular culture, punk would follow. I feel it necessary to state the obvious: teenagers joining a movement started over fifty years ago is not, itself, negative in the slightest. Nor is it inherently damaging to the movement that they learned about it through TikTok or Tumblr or even the Netflix-made Sex Pistols show. On the contrary, we desperately need more anti-establishment sentiment among the youth, who have grown satisfied with Shein and Amazon as the sole contributors to their closets. Through the essentialization of a culture whose very foundation is nonconformity, self-expression, and rebellion, punk risks being lost as a movement—reduced, instead, to a costume for others’ conformation, contradicting its very essence.

The punk fashion movement, crucially aligned with punk music and ideals, originated as a raw expression of rebellion. The statement tees, the studded jackets, and the military boots were all expressions of disdain for conventionality, and an embrace of individuality. However, in our consumer-driven society, punk fashion has been increasingly distilled into a mere ‘aesthetic,’ available for purchase one click away. This troubling evolution from a passionate subculture that championed the DIY movement to a commodified trend reflects a loss of some of punk’s core values: namely, individuality and anti-consumerism. Punk’s anti-capitalist roots make its commodification by fast-fashion brands (we’ve all seen the Sex Pistols and Joy Division band tees at H&M) particularly ironic. As the substance of punk is increasingly replicated through mass-produced fast fashion, we must remember what the fashion was intended to express. The style that resulted from punk’s loud political activism and rejection of conventional norms has ended up in a pile of ‘aesthetics’ for preteens to choose from, like a multiple-choice question on an end-of-year exam. With the help of the internet and late-stage capitalism, it is easier than ever to choose convenience over creativity. Instead of cultivating your pin collection as a response to the events you attend and movements you support, you can opt for a buy 4 get 1 free punk pins collection on Etsy. Instead of distressing your shirts at home, you can buy €15 shirts expertly crafted by South Asian children in sweatshops to duplicate the effect of vigorous moshing on a cheap t-shirt. Instead of sewing patches onto your jeans, you can buy jeans pre-patched, with absolutely no effort on your part or any reflection of your personal interests—and crafted by the same South Asian children. And that is so not punk.

“Saying “Oh man, fucking Kathleen Hanna put out this new Julie Ruin record and it totally sucks. I’m going to do something ten times better,” is engagement. It’s awesome. It’s the best thing that could happen. But if instead someone thinks, “Oh, the girl from Bikini Kill did this thing, let’s make stickers of her and put them on our notebooks,” it’s just empty consumption. I’m not saying that putting stickers of another woman on your notebook is fucked—especially if it reminds you that you’re connected to a larger community—I’m just saying that the empty consumption of it as if it’s another product is fucked.”

— Kathleen Hanna in We Owe You Nothing: Expanded Edition, Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews

This commercialization has been painfully obvious at various other points in time: most notably, in the co-option of Riot grrrl fashion in the 1990’s. The defining girl-punk movement, a direct response to the male-dominated scene, championed DIY ethics, women’s rights, and a rejection of patriarchal beauty standards. Bands like Bikini Kill, Bratmobile and Sleater-Kinney used their platforms to speak out against sexual violence and amplify women’s voices in a genre largely controlled by men. However, by the mid-90s, many elements of Riot grrrl’s artistic expression, such as plaid skirts, Doc Martens, and “girl power” slogans, were usurped by mainstream brands. The Spice Girls were born, and a new shallower '“girl-power” movement moved to the musical forefront. Much of the fashion originally sported by Riot grrrls remains popular today. The problem, though, is not that the fashion is popular—it is which venues have appropriated, distilled, rebranded, and repackaged the style while mass-producing the clothing through exploitative means. This erasure of meaning parallels punk’s ongoing commodification, where the culture’s fashion is stripped of its substance and alienated from the music that fueled it. When punk enters the mainstream, as it has time and again, its visual elements—the spiked hair, band t-shirts, ripped jeans—are detached from the radical ideas they once represented. The fashion becomes hollow, no longer a reflection of the revolutionary energy of punk music, but rather a trend to be purchased at your convenience. Consumerism undermines the substance of the movement and vastly diminishes the opportunity for critical engagement.

"(Riot grrrl) is about feminism, it’s about girls making their own culture, and it’s about punk. And I think that when it gets co-opted, that’s when it gets dangerous... I feel like this culture got sort of taken and made into something that’s just a fashion trend.”

— Kathleen Hanna for Pitchfork, 2014.

There is something positive to be said about the trendiness of alternative fashion; we have become more open to artistic expression that was previously cast to the fringe of society. Today, dyeing your hair signifies much less about your mental state to those around you than it did in the 1980’s. People with visible tattoos can hold esteemed positions at otherwise formal companies. It is now cool to be ‘alt,’ as TikTok refers to people in subcultures ranging from goth to gyaru. Yet, this popularization carries with it a host of adverse effects. Firstly, punk fashion has become less synonymous with the political opinions that result from a social movement rooted in challenging authoritarianism, conservativism, and the establishment. There have always been ‘nazi punks’ (a contradiction in itself) and white-power skinheads, and the rest of us have always laughed at them. Now, there are an increasing number of conservative and ‘centrist’ punks (conservatives with less conviction). One such conservative ‘punk’ is komrade.nikolai on Instagram. In a video that has garnered over 10,000 likes, Nikolai took to the internet to respond to the claim that punks (and, by extension, goths) cannot be conservative. He felt the need to “remind” us leftists of “who started punk rock,” subsequently naming Johnny Rotten, Joey Ramone, and Bobby Steele—all conservatives or Republicans— as the pioneers of the movement. He went on:

“The ideology that seems to resonate now with modern punks is, if you don’t believe exactly what I believe, then you’re a poser, you’re a cosplayer, you’re fake. That whole ideology is just absolute crap—it is inherently anti-punk to say something like that. Who are you to tell me what I should think and believe? That seems pretty establishment of you.”

The creator’s ignorance is further reinforced in his response to another user’s comment stating that “punk does not mean liberalism. It means anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism, anti-oppression,” with the very insightful reply, “Ahh yes, punk is so anti-capitalist. So anti-capitalist that they sell albums, sell merchandise, and sell tickets to shows. How very anti-capitalist of them.” Need I say more?

One person commented on the appearance of the creators making the claim that Nikolai was debunking: “Bro has a yellow beard and he’s gonna dictate if I’m goth alt or not… What a wuss,” to which Nikolai responded, “and bro wonders why females never take him seriously. Based take.” The use of the term ‘females’ to describe women really drives it home. In this short interaction, we can see several of punk’s fundamental principles ignored: Punk is about rejecting norms, about embracing the unconventional and unsightly. Why would dyeing your beard a bright color make you a “wuss”? Does that extend to dyeing the hair on your head a bright color? If so, Nikolai must have a bone to pick with Johnny Rotten (and many other pioneers of the punk movement). Mocking others for being different and expressing themselves artistically through their appearance is not only unproductive but assumptive and pretentious, revealing an intolerance for individuality and a willingness to demean others for the sake of conformity. This perpetuates an environment that punishes people for stepping outside conventional norms. And that is (say it with me) so not punk.

Of course, these two do not represent the entirety of conservative punks, and nobody fits wholly and neatly into just one box: most everyone is made up of a combination of progressive and conservative values, and what is progressive or conservative to one person or culture may not be to another. I am, therefore, not asserting that punks cannot hold any conservative values. Still, ignoring Nikolai’s dubious centralization of punk’s origins around the likes of Johnny Rotten, his response lacks any actual critical engagement with the claim he is debunking. The fact is that the very core of conservativism, which advocates for upholding traditional hierarchies and social norms, negates punk’s roots in concepts of nonconformity, anti-authority, and unconventionalism. Sure, you can be conservative and punk, but you must then accept that you are living in contradiction. Whether or not you can be republican and punk is another matter entirely because it is contextual. I will not focus on that assertion here because—newsflash—America is not the world.

This brings me to my next topic: gatekeeping. Gatekeeping has been the center of much discourse in every subculture since the dawn of time. On one hand, gatekeeping can preserve safe spaces for marginalized groups by excluding the intolerant. Punk venues and queer spaces enforcing no-tolerance policies for discrimination are prime examples of these protective aspects. This tactic was popular among Riot grrrl artists, some of whom excluded men from certain events entirely. In this way, not only does gatekeeping protect vulnerable members, but it fends off expropriators and bigots such as ‘nazi punks.’ Gatekeeping can also be an effort to ensure punk retains its ethos of resistance to mainstream exploitation by shunning those who are in it for its trendiness. On the other hand, elitist attitudes can alienate prospective members, especially those in vulnerable groups or those discovering punk through untraditional means such as TikTok. Gatekeeping has also historically been used to exclude marginalized groups. Many forums and online groups are abundant with punk snobs (another contradiction) dismissing new fans for not adhering strictly to historical standards. A crucial question is thus raised: is punk better served by protecting its ideological integrity or by embracing its evolving identity? The answer to that is very simply both. We must be open to new expressions and ideas, because that is what punk is all about, but we must also disavow ideas that are not only in conflict with the very definition of punk but that are also harmful to the movement and its members.

Aesthetic-only participation poses a threat to the punk movement because it reduces a dynamic, politically charged collective into a surface-level trend, devoid of its ideological depth. When punk is divorced from the values that define it, we allow its visual aspects to be hijacked and commodified. Subcultures like punk and its goth, emo, and grunge derivatives originally used fashion to challenge the establishment or conventional norms, but once commodified, its messages are removed, and the style loses its subversive power. Punk’s original anti-consumerism ethos becomes secondary to the desire for a marketable, aesthetic experience, turning the subculture into a wearable costume—and leading to the very homogeneity it was designed to resist. This essentialization further invites groups such as ‘nazi punks’ into the movement, claiming that their freedom of expression nullifies the glaring contradictions that their participation brings with it. The unquantifiable value of the messages that punk fashion and music convey further raises questions about the commodification of art in general—how can we appropriately price something whose core is the rejection of the very systems that determine monetary worth?

As society evolves—and the movement with it—we must make the effort to preserve its integrity by resisting the forces of commodification. As punk continues to permeate the mainstream, its visibility increases, leading to a newfound acceptance of alternative fashion—many people can now embrace tattoos, piercings, and expressive clothing without the stigma that these elements were once inseparable from. If utilized appropriately, this greater openness fosters creativity and individual expression, aligning with punk’s original spirit. Still, there remains a danger of misappropriating or trivializing the values that the subculture stands for. Punk is not dead—on the same platforms that promote shallow aestheticization, countless punk creators are keeping alive the DIY ethos and sharing tutorials on making your own patches, repurposing thrifted clothing, and crafting punk zines. Independent brands like Underground England embrace handcrafting, while bigger brands like Fashion Revolution continue to champion fair labor practices in the fashion industry through their #WhoMadeMyClothes campaign. Punk can survive the age of consumerism, but only if it resists complete absorption into the marketplace. By rejecting its diminution, we can reclaim punk fashion as a tool for revolution.

One more thing: