If your idea of the perfect toy for your child is a handful of wooden pegs or a cloth sack full of cream-coloured scarves; if your baby?s first birthday featured a cream and coffee-brown balloon arch; if your nursery aesthetic is warm beige contrasted with a crisp white, accentuated with a single potted plant?you might be a millennial parent.
And a viral TikTok account is calling us on our curated BS. That Sad Beige Lady, run by librarian, writer and mom Hayley DeRoche, makes fun of ?sad beige toys for sad beige children.? In hilariously nihilistic videos in which she adopts the persona (and perfect accent) of German documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog, DeRoche enlightens us on how the bleak aesthetic some of us are choosing to convey to the world is giving off serious existential crisis vibes. It’s funnier if you’re familiar with Herzog, who is well known for his dreary quotes. The account is satire, and while you might laugh-cry watching her videos (there?s a reason she has almost 182,000 followers), it?s also a rather serious commentary on momfluencer culture.
In one video about an all-white bouncy castle, for instance, DeRoche-as-Herzog says, ?It’s perfect for birthday parties to remember the emptiness of existence. You are not like the poor people with their garish primary colours. No. You are special. You feel nothing.?
In another, about a neutral set of stacking cups that she calls ?cups of sadness,? DeRoche describes the colours as ?dissociation,...