AILSA CHANG, HOST:
So yesterday, when President Trump announced his plans to build a new class of Navy warships named after himself, there was a particular sentence that stood out to us, and not because of what it might mean for national security.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me because I'm a very aesthetic person.
CHANG: I'm a very aesthetic person. The way the president used the word aesthetic, it just sounded kind of off to some ears. But to the youngest among us, it was apparently right on trend. Here to explain is Shane O'Neill. He wrote about the word aesthetic for his Washington Post pop culture newsletter. It's called Seriously? Hi, Shane.
SHANE O'NEILL: Hello. It's such a pleasure to be here - seriously.
CHANG: Hello, hello (laughter). Seriously great to have you. So first of all, I just want to say congratulations to you because your newsletter came out about the word aesthetic on December 11, which is totally prescient. How did you devote a day to a deep dive on the word aesthetic so many days ago?
O'NEILL: All glory goes to my editors. To be totally frank, I was like, oh, people have been using the word aesthetic like this for four years now. Why would we be writing about it in 2025? But when I was talking to a lot of my colleagues who were like, no, I have never heard anyone use it like this, I realized there actually was quite a generational divide in the using of the word. So I am glad that I was talked into writing about it because it was interesting. And, you know, obviously, I'm psychic, so...
CHANG: (Laughter) Obviously. Well, let's talk about the generational divide because I, as someone who's almost 50, I'm used to hearing the word aesthetic used like a noun - you know, like her aesthetic - to get at how something looks, or as an adverb, to talk about how something's aesthetically pleasing. Now the president's using it as an adjective. Can you talk more about that? Because I'm understanding you're hearing that same usage from your younger colleagues. Do you think President Trump is just hanging around a lot of young people?
O'NEILL: My guess - this is what I'll say...
CHANG: Yeah.
O'NEILL: ...I'm 42 years old, so I'm not shading anyone for this, but, like, a person of his age or generation, if I were a betting man, I would say I bet he just meant to say, I'm an aesthetically oriented person or I'm a person with good aesthetics, and just sort of - you know, he speaks off the cuff a lot, so I think it might have just been a coincidence.
CHANG: But is there more to the way young people are using the word aesthetic than simply meaning I got good taste or it's aesthetically pleasing?
O'NEILL: So it does mean aesthetically pleasing, but it also tends to mean aesthetically cohesive. You can trace this all the way back to Plato if you want to talk about aesthetics, but for our purposes, we can just go back to maybe, like, the Tumblr era. Tumblr had a reblog function, and that encouraged this mixing and matching, and it gave rise to brand-new aesthetics. One really good example of this is seapunk. Seapunk basically only existed as an online aesthetic. There was technically, like, seapunk music, but basically, the seapunk aesthetic was just online and it was just sort of cobbled together from various, you know, old GIFs or clips of Ecco the Dolphin from Sega Genesis.
CHANG: (Laughter).
O'NEILL: So all that is just to say that, like, people were creating new aesthetics and still using the word in the way that, you know, you and I would understand...
CHANG: Yeah.
O'NEILL: ...The word aesthetic to be, of saying, like...
CHANG: Like the vibe.
O'NEILL: Exactly. And it is specifically referring to, you know, the sound, the look, the feel - like, the aesthetic.
CHANG: Right. Right, right, right.
O'NEILL: What happened was that as people started getting even more online during COVID lockdowns, aesthetics became even more important, especially - the example that one scholar used was that, like, if you are in college and you're taking all of your classes from your basement, then the idea of cultivating a dark academia aesthetic is even more important because your...
CHANG: Sure.
O'NEILL: ...Your school life is so boring.
CHANG: (Laughter).
O'NEILL: Like, the energy that maybe you would be putting into trying to, you know, pick someone up in your class or dress nicely is just going more - it's being more poured into this.
CHANG: OK, well, if there are any older people out there who are getting cranky about the use of the word aesthetic these days, can we talk about how language is always evolving and, you know, that's a natural thing? It's usually a good thing, but it doesn't mean it's easy. So what advice do you have for those of us who are just trying to keep up, trying to, like, stay cool, trying to stay updated, but sometimes we get frustrated because we're not on pace with the change and we sound weird when we talk?
O'NEILL: I mean, I think it's important to just have some humility about this and also understand that context changes all the time.
CHANG: Yeah.
O'NEILL: I think a real good example of this - and this was actually on the TV show "Freaks And Geeks" - there's a scene where one of the teenagers says, like, oh, that sucks. And the mother is just like, how dare you use that disgusting phrase? I think we forget that that was a really shocking phrase for a long time...
CHANG: True, yeah.
O'NEILL: ...And now it's basically just whatever. However, if you're really feeling strongly about this, if you really don't like it, I do have a solution, which is just start using it yourself. Like...
CHANG: Yes. That is my strategy.
O'NEILL: Once a young person hears, like, a typical NPR listener using the phrase aesthetic...
CHANG: Yeah.
O'NEILL: ...That's the highest - that's the best way I can think of to make...
CHANG: To kill it.
O'NEILL: ...It disappear, yeah.
CHANG: (Laughter) Shane O'Neill. He writes the pop culture newsletter called Seriously? for The Washington Post. Thank you so much, Shane.
O'NEILL: It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
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