DIRT

How 2024 recontextualized what it means to live an inspired, messy and authentic life.

I was raised in the age of dirt. I was probably four years old when the first Jackass movie came out.  I was about seven years old when my parents tried to shield my ears from the R-Rated sounds of Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” and when ENews put the paparazzi’s crotchshot of Britney Spears on TV.  I was eight when they tried to change the channel once the boozy, sailor-mouthed Real Housewives of Orange County started airing. Regardless, I'd just watch Video on Trial or Tosh.0 when they were sleeping anyway.

My parents tried to counteract my hyper-exposure to digital media with earthly activities. At the same time as showing Peaches’ “Fuck the Pain Away” to my friends at summer camp, I’d be cleaning chicken shit off the coops in the barn. I’d stare at my muddy cleats during soccer games and listen to the boy next to me reenact dirty Family Guy jokes. I’d bloody my new Aeropostale sweaters when trying to scale the rough-edged park sign. 

 The dirt on my skin, playing in my ears, unfolding before my eyes were all reflections of a cultural moment that dared people to be as messy as possible. In my eyes, this age of dirt was an age of innocence. Rough and salacious at times, sure, but it was exciting to watch people I knew and others in the public eye be applauded for being their unapologetic selves. How else would we leave a trace behind? You could screen, say, be anything you wanted with minimal repercussions because we were meeting each other as we were, whether it be on the soccer field or online. 

My friends and I would post any bloody injury, silly face, inside joke or unique outfit we’d photographed. Chances are there was someone out there who could resonate with our authenticity. Shareable moments like these inspired spaces like Tumblr and ASKfm where queer and BIPOC kids could express their identities and desires without censorship. We’d bond with each other over a shared sense of commitment to our identities and what we stood for. It was a movement that transcended households,  inspiring large-scale, queer-led initiatives like DIS Magazine and VFiles, where our untraditional ways of being were reflected and celebrated. The permanence of these experiences living forever on the internet felt empowering—a testament to living in the moment and standing by your interpretation of it.

What I wish I knew back then is that dirt isn’t all fun and games. Its testament to independence for all was how the moment brought death upon itself. As much as dirt made it easier for me to stand by my ideas it also made it easy for those who wanted to spread hatred to do the same. Particularly straight, white, politically conservative men. 

Tabloids teetered from being fun into being misogynistic and exploitative, centering stories about women in crisis on the front page. A free-use internet made space for independently owned conservative journals like Breitbart and The Daily Wire to produce and accuse other publications of spreading “fake news.” While conservatives were able to get their information from the source of their choosing, my favourite outlets got bought out by companies like Yahoo! which forbid explicit content on their sites. A lot of the free-spirited people I’d come to know online were suddenly snuffed out by a wave of censorship. All this led to the point where dirt had fully hemorrhaged: when Donald Trump was elected to office, during my first year of university. 

What was supposed to be my time to fully come into myself became four years plagued by hypervigilance. In that climate, we got to see a different meaning of “playing dirty,” where we were meant to brush off jokes about sexual violence from an elected official as “locker room banter.” A climate where the election sent shockwaves through my country. Walking around my university’s relatively liberal campus now meant seeing women with “ABORTION KILLS” posters celebrating the repeal of Roe V. Wade. There was even less safety on the streets of my hometown, where I'd initially learned to express myself as messily as needed. In the driveway where I’d once laughed off grazing my knees I had to explain to the cops why I wasn’t a threat to the neighbourhood. I’d later find out a neighbour called them after they saw me walking with my hood up at night.

The ensuing years seemed to cement the feeling that there was no longer a safe space for me or my friends to get dirty. The hyper surveillance that arose from the Blue Lives Matter movement was only increased by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did I feel restricted from being myself both as a Black and queer individual but I was being encouraged to literally stay clean; or else. I was instructed at my front-facing jobs to meet folks spewing hate speech and medical misinformation with a straight face. When they could come as their full selves, I was required to hold myself back. In the pursuit of protection from illness and bigotry, I worked to silence myself.  I forgot about the part of me that craved mess and slipped into the rhythm of sustaining a sanitised lifestyle. I adhered to the new cultural habits of dressing up for Zoom meetings, obsessively investing in crafty hobbies and performing for the internet in Instagram and TikTok posts. This performative cycle of cleanliness spoke to a greater sense of heteronormativity permeating the culture. The more society regressed towards a “traditional” age, my unfiltered expressions of the self had nowhere to go but back inside the “closet.”  Yet this was the pressure cooker needed to get the cultural consciousness on board with getting dirty again.

Being put back in the closet reminded me that dirt grows in the dark, away from the eye of the majority. In my isolation, I channelled my repression into media that demonstrated the mess behind perfection. It started with studying the relics of my childhood like America’s Next Top Model and Making the Band where audiences could see the blood, sweat and tears that went into the making of a pop product. But even those “behind the scenes” spaces were spiked with offensive, manufactured drama to demonstrate the stratification between oppressors and the oppressed (who could forget Tyra Banks and the judges ridiculing a Black contestant for struggling to read off a teleprompter?). 

It was when I went farther back into the world of New Queer Cinema that I learned how the “dirty” spirit has origins in inclusive queer and BIPOC communities. Works by Derek Jarman, Andy Warhol, Barbara Hammer and Kenneth Anger illustrated through low-cost means just how inseparable dirt is from the everyday lives of minorities and how we find ways to thrive in that space. Throughout their filmographies, they rendered ambitious and sexually liberated experiences heteronormative society deemed “salacious” as poetic and awe-inspiring. 

I eventually applied my studies in the field when I went to an illegal rave under the DVP, two months shy of the end of lockdown. The circumstances were such a stark contrast from everything I'd internalised those past two years. I had to travel through the rain to get to the location and follow the rave as it got shut down twice in two different places. But once I heard the hard trance music pounding deep in the forest, I ran towards the sound. We came together that night to thrash around like uncaged dogs in the mud. I now have a pair of ruined bell bottoms as a souvenir from that night of being held in a communal embrace.

Ever since then, I’ve gone out of my way to dirty myself in ways that figuratively and literally preserve my unique identity. The two years post-lockdown and Trump administration were just a warmup for the dirty comeback that would be 2024. The year was preceded by my participation in October’s Nuit Blanche, a night filled with art centred around commemorating the forgotten labour that minorities perform to keep society running. Between Jenine Marsh’s exposure of debris gathering beneath Nathan Phillips Square and Divya Mehra’s gigantic sculpture of a plastic shopping bag, I danced with bags of soil with a troupe of queer BIPOC performers for Eve Tagny’s Assemblies performance. 

Representing the perils and passions of underappreciated labour with a group of people who could uniquely understand was the most rewarding mess I've ever participated in. The craving for more of that feeling led me back to the rave space, where the dancing was just as free, clothing got just as dirty, and the community was just as inclusive. I stained a pair of white sneakers brown in the underground caves of New York’s hottest, sex-positive techno club, BASEMENT. I followed that up by stretching a $200 James Perse henley shirt to five times its size at For the Lovers, dancing frenetically in the McCormack Street Warehouse until 4 a.m. There were individual moments where I studied dirt, such as reading the 2024 edition of Lazlo Krasznahorkai’s Satantango, a book that confronts human desperation in times of poverty against a backdrop of sun-starved, mildewy 1980s Hungary. If I wasn’t reading about it I was watching the same desperation unfold on the silver screen. Particularly with Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness where characters played by Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau and Jesse Plemons expose their most primal selves in the pursuit of their heart’s desires. 

2024 would also be the year CUNT Mag would truly pop off, a nightlife magazine where the creator Rhea Singh and I would chronicle our moments of debauchery for public consumption. What started as a small effort to preserve our unique experiences as queer teens of colour became a guide for what people should be getting up to each weekend. Now when we throw parties for each issue the turnout extends from the “dialed in” scenester to the general public who just want to have a fun, liberated time. 

As someone who spent a lot of their life experiencing dirt in fringe spaces,  I recognize the way our ‘dirty’ lifestyles are being sought after by a wider audience is a sign of cultural unrest. “BRAT summer,” for example, has existed in many iterations prior to Charli xcx’s mainstream breakthrough, in fact, she’s been bratty since the early 2010s when she released “Vroom Vroom.” The groundbreaking and left-of-centre producers who made “Vroom Vroom,” SOPHIE and A.G. Cook were playing their signature future-pop sounds to tiny crowds of queer kids long before they helped construct the world of Brat.  

In 2024, Charli xcx has switched out performing in basements for sold-out arena concerts where she licks her own spit off the stage. The unapologetic dirtiness has become a trend among other pop stars of her caliber. Doja Cat told her fans she hates them then went on to perform in a mud pit for her Coachella performance of “Wet Vagina.” Sabrina Carpenter is the most played songstress on the radio, singing barely subliminal lyrics about being insatiably horny.  

Dirt has transcended the gaze of the average consumer to the luxury world, where these unapologetic women are becoming sponsors for high fashion brands. Take Miu Miu for example, whose Fall/Winter 2024 campaign featured gothic rock singer Ethel Cain sporting their distressed leather bags and matronly cashmere sweaters.  These clothes are manufactured to have a ‘lived in’ vibe: the memories you’d normally imprint on clothing during a night out now come pre-made. This can be seen in the newest ‘artisanal’ collection from Maison Martin Margiela, where models (and actress Gwendoline Christie) were sent down the runway wearing torn tights, stained formal-wear, bustiers wrapped around foam padding and broken doll makeup done by Pat McGrath. 

Even our television programming is getting the manufactured “dirty” treatment through true crime shows like Ryan Murphy’s controversial Menendez Brothers-themed season of Monster or prestige shows like HBO’s acclaimed Industry. In a successful and unexpected twist, reality TV got metatextual when an internet troll successfully infiltrated the inner circle of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, exposing the ways they produce themselves on camera vs in the privacy of DMs. 

On one hand, it’s exciting to see everyone get to participate in the underground. It’s a signal that the underrepresented are finally getting their flowers for breaking the mould. While it does require refashioning the limitlessness of dirt to its most sellable parts, it does give artists an opportunity to reach new audiences and thus make more money. 

Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s SWEAT Tour has redesigned raves that would usually be held in warehouses at midnight, for a crowd that goes to bed at that hour. Two friends of mine came to that show with an hour to change out of their work clothes into their rave-fit and an hour to get back home in time for a good night’s sleep. The eagerness for those with more “traditional” lifestyles to participate in these subcultures also signals a return to what it means to be dirty. Although they’ve been stylized, for the most part, these ideologically traditional folks are embracing their experiences in the dirt without pretense and are choosing to embrace the authenticity of the moment. 

Artists and public figures, particularly women, are getting the chance to stand by their values in ways they couldn’t have in the 2000s. Gone are the days of being victimized on the front page of TMZ, now celebrities like Julia Fox unashamedly call the paparazzi on themselves. I owe a lot to these figures for dropping the performance of perceived innocence. Because of them, my friends whose idea of a night out is dinner and a movie have started joining me in thrilling activities they may not have otherwise done. All in the name of “living that life,” as Charli puts it on her smash hit “Von Dutch.”.

The time I’ve spent participating in, denying and returning to the underground has given me a perspective on how it could all go wrong again. One Tuesday afternoon in September I found myself sitting in JUICE, the hair salon and nightclub that grew from indie outlet to Ossington sensation among scenesters and finance bros alike. Rhea bartends there by day and served me an ice-cold Peroni which got us talking about the messy days before CUNT Mag blew up. We felt marked by our experience together, going to queer-centric parties in basements, parking garages, and wide open fields. We were used to the idea of having to party anywhere we could feel safe or heard. This practice of scrounging for community is what sanctified the act of getting dirty as a healing ritual for us. 

The paranoia that comes with this intimacy with dirt is the fear that the overexposure will lead to a similar appropriation experienced in the 2000s. “Dirty isn’t its exact meaning, You have a backbone, you have a spine, you have grit, you have adventure,” Rhea said as she wiped down the table before us. We agree that dirt wasn’t created in a think tank, but the pluralization of the moment could make it seem so and therefore easier for straight, white, conservatives to co-opt. “I worry sometimes that the people who want to have BRAT summers aren’t doing it authentically. They’re clean-cut, 9-5 girlies. So many of them will want to remember their life when they’re young as dirty but they’ll look down on people who actually live a dirty life,” said Rhea. The most obvious example of this is historically pro-police political figures like Kamala Harris and disgraced NYC Mayor Eric Adams attaching themselves to Brat despite the lyrics to “365” being “Should we have a little key, should we do a little line.” The false posturing is potentially worse for dirt, not only because it gives bigotry an insidious entry point, but it just makes the moment less cool.

So how do we preserve the spirit of dirt while continuing to be inclusive? Rhea and I got to talking about how despite our reservations, the mainstreaming of dirt has helped us build a bigger community of people who live with that same ethos. We talk of Lucy, the CUNT Mag photographer whose uncanny flash images speak to the spontaneity of nightlife that only a drunken conversation could capture. We talk of Rafin, the sound engineer at Standard Time who makes the club a brighter space through his inclusive, stop-and-talk-to-you nature. We talk of Kevin who is always wearing the most perfectly tailored outfit but moves through the dancefloor without pomp and circumstance. We talk of Ardin and Joseph who host and DJ Toronto’s hottest new party, Bisoux, where they play a selection of 2000s-2010s electroclash hits from the dirtiest days of the radio. We talk of a friend of hers whose name I don’t know, but who is always kind to me and tellingly authentic within the short time we speak to each other. At the Bisoux parties, they can always be seen in a fabulous distressed skirt. Standing outside Bambi’s one night in the rain, they told me that they made that piece from torn up cotton t-shirts. Rhea deems them, “One of the best examples of ‘dirty’ in the most chic beautiful way. They’re what you’d imagine New York to be, but in a person.” These are the characters to keep close in the event we ever get so lost in the commercialization of dirt that we forget its essence.

Care and intention, we argue, are what’s pertinent in debating whether you’ve spent years in the dirt or are just trying it on for a night. The best thing about the mainstreaming of ‘dirt’ is that its values of authenticity are contagious. By the end of this cultural moment we’ll all be covered in the same mud and grime anyway, it’ll be impossible to tell who started what. But it will all come from the desire to live life your own way.

Photos: Julia Tsaknis. Models: Olivia Rain Connick, Jayden Pithwa. Wardrobe: STUFF, Alexander Nicholson