Please, God, Save Me to your Blasphemous Pinterest Board
From the first note I heard of Ethel Cain’s debut album, “Preacher’s Daughter,” it resonated with parts of me that hadn’t ever felt recognized. Growing up in the rural south, it was hard to glamorize a life I never had much connection to. It felt refreshing to see this whole story built in an album that featured aspects of life that I had struggled with growing up surrounded by religion.
This album became a staple in 21st-century Southern Gothic media and caused a substantial growth within the aesthetic. With this, run-down churches and images of girls in all white became unescapable. While there is definitely beauty in even the most religious aspects of the South, it becomes difficult to separate where romanticization begins and genuine culture ends.
When I began to see people from California posting on TikTok about how their cross necklace is now aesthetic, it felt like a mockery of the same necklace that used to choke me every Sunday morning.
Religious trauma is not exclusive to the South. Still, the messaging of “repent now or spend an eternity in hell” is especially prominent propaganda crammed down the throats of any outlier in Southern communities. The God-fearing tyrant is not a trope formed out of thin air; instead, it is an accumulation of all these southern pastors who are hailed as christ reincarnated for proclaiming that any minority is of the devil. These sentiments do not just disappear because their appearance has become popularized. Instead, they come together to form a falsified reality of what life in the South is like for someone who does not conform to conventional notions of the area.
It’s easy to look past the complex and often cruel realities of the bible belt when it is not your actuality. Church was propagated at my school, my home, social events, and even where I worked. It was an inescapable reminder that this community did not have space for me outside of being the opposition. Many who have embraced this aesthetic seem to have no ties to the South or religion at all. They have found success sticking a cross on their chest and playing into the “sacrificial lamb” trope that has crowded Southern Gothic media. Showing exclusion from religion and community ties as somewhat glamorous or another quirky way to set them apart from others. When, in actuality, people have been scorned by their families and forced into conformity through strict, guilt-driven religious upbringings.
My parents are religious, took me to church every Sunday, had me baptised twice, used the bible to dictate right and wrong to me, and at the first sign of defiance, damned me to hell. To know that the people who conceived you, created you, and nurtured you truly believe you will meet what they believe is the worst fate. These are not memories I look back on with fondness; they’re things I still have to come to terms with almost a century later. It does not make me want to film a TikTok about being the black sheep of the family; it makes me yearn for a way to truly connect with my parents.
I want to end this by saying: I see no issue with reclaiming parts of your past or playing into aesthetics that once repressed you. It is important to overcome emotions and memories that haunt us, yet there is a difference in creating art to work through these traumas and doing it for aesthetic purposes. Ethel Cain created a space where those who struggle with scrutiny in religion and the South can find recognition, and it is a shame to see it popularized by those who are lucky enough not to relate.
Strike Out,
Emma Chambers, Writer
