The bimbofication of astrology – queer astrology and self-consumption in the internet age
28 September 2023
It’s funny in my last post I wrote about how western astrology carries the history of a capitalist/colonial world and that perhaps we can reposition it as a tool of resistance. A tool that now has greater accessibility to it than ever before thanks to the internet. Yet with the online astro-boom, late-stage capitalism has sought commodify the art beyond selling magazine horoscopes as shown by its proliferation on social media and in-store goods. Capitalism feeds the hunger to categorise yourself within a series of things, with the 12 signs becoming the new hottest thing for doing that and pop astrology has evolved into the mainframe of GenZ cultural references. With this growth, it’s interesting that astrology has jokingly become an integral part of queer culture. The memes, the dating anecdotes, the drama of a retrograde, pop astrology fulfils the desire of self-gratification. It’s easily consumable, looks pretty, humorous and functions as pleasurable self-objectification. Pop astrology is like the bimbo of the astrology world.
Bimbos are inherently queer. Their performance of femininity is like a self-aware hyper drag of gender. Bimbos always make me think of cigarettes. An exhalation of all the toxic messages we are sent about how we should be doing femininity and the resultant, if short-lived, rush of pleasure. Pop astrology is a hyper performance of the signs, that’s why you always get stereotyped messages about how cancers are cry-babies and taureans love food. The hyperbolic stories we tell about the signs are like an energetic drag we dress up on our traits and personalities. Drag functions as a commentary on the culture of identity. We use astrology to perform our identities. The result is a kind of flattening effect as signs become stereotyped aesthetics to consume and add to your array of cottagecore, frog centric content.
This can be fun but often the obsession of stylizing the self can be an expression of self-consciousness. Constantly positioning oneself as a certain type of person as opposed to other types at the same time seeks validation in what you are and reinforces lack in what you are not. Transmuting one’s energy into a consumable aesthetic fills one up with this empty sense of self whilst also leading to more hunger for not being quite enough. This is the more indulgent side of self-cannibalizing. There’s something about gorging on yourself as an aesthetic that is hollowly pleasurable. Yet even though eating happens in the body I feel like this process leads to an experience of disembodiment as you get caught up in curating a perception of self. It’s easy to be enticed by this as algorithms favour ego that can be eaten by ego so it can create more hunger. In this digital age we are witnessing the transfer from the unfulfilling pleasures of material consumption to energetic. In this form it’s just more explicitly a consumption of self.
Consumption is somewhat tied up in assimilation as it’s about making something more palatable, especially if it’s something odd as the mainstream finds pleasure in consuming the other that is often mistaken for novelty. Perhaps the self-cannibalizing of queer identity is about seeking security through positioning itself as an object within the series of ever-growing hungry capitalism, justifying its existential status. As expressed by queer musical icon SOPHIE in her song Faceshopping: “I’m real when I shop my face,” her existence is validated in an act of consuming her own aesthetic appearance. This is not a confession, but a commentary on the capitalist culture we live in and what it means to be real. ‘Realness’ is an attribute strived for by drag queens, originating from the 80’s ballroom scene in New York where black drag queens performed class status. Pop astrology is about validating queer identity in the western capitalist world, about finding a space for queer people to exist in the current cultural climate.
Yet, this kind of practice not only eats away at yourself, it eats away at the celestial bodies too. I found my queerness in astrology when I came across an approach that is sometimes called relational, sometimes animistic or embodied astrology. This takes us out of the heady algorithmic world and roots firmly in direct experience of reality. It unveils the aliveness of the world, cosmology and ecology. The moon is not just a symbol your emotional being but an undulating spirit woven from more than a millennium of stories, gatherings of communities, festivals, calendars, farming arrangements. Changing in form, moving the tides, the moon moves in you each time you feel nourished, or wasted away, feel the days pass, or bleed, wander, or find safety, fullness. It’s a recognition of inhuman bodies that are alive. The moon is no longer an object that you project an idea of your emotional self onto. This practice is an antidote to self-objectification as it imbues the world with divine intelligence and awareness that you are a body in movement with many others, a recognition of yourself as another thread in the woven pulsating aliveness of being. It’s interesting that iconic ‘bimboesque’ figures such as Monroe, Hilton and Elle Woods are known for their complexity and intelligence being underestimated. Astrology can teach you about the queer entanglement of life. It’s this kind of queer existence where you can feel full.
For an alternative astrological approach check out the work of: Kirstin Mathis, Diana Rose Harper, Sasha Ravitch and Amaya Rourke.
References: Paris is burning, Faceshopping by SOPHIE
Other sources that provided inspiration: Technic and Magic by Federico Campagna, The problem with brands taking over astrology by Them