“This is me if you even care,” the neat white Sans Serif text, contained within Instagram's signature 1080x1080-pixel square block, declared. Just underneath was a big, juicy, vinegar-dripping green gherkin, and around its middle, a pale, powderpuff-pink satin ribbon, tied tightly in a skew-whiff bow. As they so often do, the rudimentary but effective meme quickly went viral across social media at the end of December, with a tidal wave of similar, silly images also taking over TikTok and Pinterest (and likely, group chats everywhere) in the days that followed.
Though bows had been bubbling up for a while under the guise of yet another core-affixed trend dubbed coquette-core, the end of last year saw them reach fever pitch. “The great bow-pocalypse of 2023,” was the title being thrown around…
