It's A Music Festival World, And We're Just Living In It
For the last five years or so, music festivals have become a fad that everyone runs to at the chance. But, quickly music festivals have become more about what your hair looks like, what shoes you’re wearing, how you’ll do your makeup, what accessories you’ll wear, etc, as opposed to the actual music itself. It’s basically a decoy for people to be full of themselves, without appearing as so. But, as this music festival trend has progressed, it’s become quite evident that it’s more along the lines of a buffet to feed people’s egos.
To start off, let’s just run down the list of ridiculousness that these “music festival” goers go through, in order to supposedly celebrate and enjoy “music”. Two words…flower crowns. Flower crowns have become one of the most signature pieces to wear to music festivals. Perhaps it’s because they magically allow you to hear the music better….don’t they? Then, we have metallic body tattoos. You know those fake tattoos kids get in cereal boxes? Well, now they’re apparently cool for adults to wear too. Only, the adult ones are metallic to grab more attention and glisten in the sun…so poetic, right? Hair feathers….yes, making your hair look like a dream catcher is necessary in order to sing along with your favorite band at a festival. There are even set ways on how to do your makeup for a festival. You know, because after the musicians are done playing, they host a beauty pageant….
With that said, music festivals have completely lost their original purpose. There are too many requirements now to attend a festival, and they all have to do with appearance, and nothing more.
These days we live life with our faces buried in our phones, putting most of our energy towards watching Instagram stories, searching for latest tweets, and scrolling through selfies on Facebook. We have now created this idea that we must compete with whatever we saw on social media. We have to out-do everyone’s posts, in order to prove that we have better lives than them. Many of us even trying to recreate what we see in our own homes. We look to try and play musical instruments, learning through social media or YouTube, perhaps making purchases for things like Beat to help make some sense of what we create. With social media these days, it is so easy to connect, share our love for much and relive the action. Even when we aren’t there.
Music festivals have now become home to the narcissistic. They are nothing to do with music, but instead all about dressing up into these “characters”, or “personas”, that you are not, in order to represent this untouchable/exclusive image of yourself. So, essentially, all the craze with “what to wear to a festival, how to wear it,” and wearing accessories you would never be caught wearing in the real world, is all for the almighty selfies, live videos, IG stories, FB stories, etc. It makes you look hip, cool, wild, and free. And, in return, you’ll get all the “likes”, and comments that will feed your hungry ego.
Then, when you go home, and your family asks how the music festival was, you can ask them back, “what music”? What are they talking about? But, at least your flower crown is still intact…………. queue in the eyeball rolling emoji here.