In today’s culture where simple is in and bold is out, we often wonder where all the whimsy and magic went in the world. As someone who has always been loud, whether it be my voice, my choice in clothing or the decorations in my room, I was always bored with the idea of simplicity. As the years have gone on society and pop culture has transitioned from the boldness of the early 2000s to millennial gray and the judgmental world we have now, what happened to having fun?

In a conversation I was having with a few friends we discussed how fun it is when you’re having a long day to just take a dance break, turn up the music, and have fun. This made some people cringe and look down on how we choose to unwind. That’s where my question comes into play. The reaction to the idea of having fun is met with judgement and dirty looks.

A perfect example of this idea is Halloween. Halloween has always been fun and is meant to be a day where people can express themselves through costume and have a day to just be whimsical, silly and express themselves however they please.

For most people, however, that outlook ends around the eighth grade. Once you enter high school it’s no longer cool to wear your costume to school, it’s now cringe and childlike. Those two things seem to always be tied together and it takes away from the already dwindling feeling of childhood that we have as we get older.

This lack of whimsy can also be seen in the movies that are put out today. It seems every movie that hits big at the box office is a biopic about a depressed musician, a remake of an old movie or a sequel that nobody wants.

While these movies are important to have, it’s equally important to uplift movies that are made just for the fun of it and to entertain an audience. Twenty years ago when a romantic comedy would be released it would have done numbers in the theatre for its six week run and would become a classic to watch through the years following.

Now, romantic comedies are put directly to streaming services and often picked apart on apps like TikTok or X. A prime example of this is “My Oxford Year,” which premiered on Netflix in August of this year and no one was talking about it. The movie could have been a great hit if it was properly advertised and released in theatres.

That is what makes it so hard for the whimsy of it all to be revived. You can see this pattern through music as well. If an album is not this deep emotional piece, every lyric with a deeper meaning, then it is automatically bad writing and is torn to shreds by listeners. If this was how society worked when “Pocket full of sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield came out or when “Mamma Mia” was released to theatres we wouldn’t have some of the greatest gemstones of pop culture that we do now.

While writing this, I thought of the young children whose light will be dimmed by societal expectations and by people on the internet calling what they are passionate about cringey. We need to bring back the idea of fun and pieces of art having no meaning, just being done for the love of it. Truthfully, nobody has a say on what is or is not cringey because pop culture is all about self-expression and that varies from person to person.

The whimsy of the world is not all gone though. To me, the new trend of finding the beauty in everything, making everything “aesthetic” and finding art where you can is the true mark of whimsy.

It shows that the everyday person wants to revive the whimsy and find the beauty in the mundane everyday. Take Pinterest for example: the app thrives off of everyday photos of cities and landscapes being turned into beautiful photographs, because people are able to see that the world is truly beautiful. The app is full of users who appreciate everything around them and have fun with what they are given.

The whimsy of the world must be brought back, where fun is in again and judgment is out.

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