TikTok’s love of all things ‘aesthetic’ invades airport with potentially annoying trend

For many travellers the most stressful time of their trip comes before they leave.

A growing social media trend – known online as “airport tray aesthetic” – is helping to make the obligatory pre-boarding security scan just that more stressful for some, and more artistic for others.

Although the rules may differ from airport to airport, regular airline travellers know the security check drill.

Empty your pockets, take out your laptop, take off your belt, put everything in a tray.

This familiar routine has been taken to another level by social media posters who take the opportunity to artfully arrange their items on a tray before immortalising it on TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest.

Neat trick

To be clear, these are not quick snaps of hastily dumped phones, jackets and loose change, rather carefully-curated arrangements of choice travel items all achieved with often dozens of fellow travellers waiting in line behind you.

Posting on TikTok, user @_shoppursue recently filmed herself and her friends carefully arranging their trays alongside the caption: ‘POV: you’re determined to get the girls trip aesthetic airport tray photos’.

The results were colour-coded masterpieces, but judging from the comments on her post not everyone shares their style sensibilities.

This would never fly at Newark airport 😭 they’d make me cry so fast,” one viewer posted.

Another noted: “Oh honey what airport is this in bc in nyc (New York City) I would’ve been screamed at 😭😭😭”.

Annoying trend

Airport tray aesthetic is just the latest in a growing trend of people curating and displaying their possessions, following artistic imaginings of bedside tables, bookshelves to bedside tables and even the inside of refrigerators, known as ‘fridgescaping’.

But unlike these home-based trends, airport tray aesthetic has the potential to annoy fellow travellers.

The United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which oversees airport screening checkpoints, played down the trend but did issue a warning.

“As long as the staged glamour photos are not causing delays or issues with other passengers in the checkpoint, there are no issues,” CNN quoted a TSA spokesperson as saying.

“Travellers should take care to secure their IDs, passports and any light items on top that could be swept out of the bins when they go into the machines,” they added.

Art for art’s sake

But it appears that for some TikTokers, an airport may not even be needed to achieve the ideal post.

Piper Taich posted a tutorial on TikTok giving a step-by-step guide to her airport tray designs, with no airport in sight.

In the video, which has so far attracted more than 1.9 million views, Taich explains that her ‘airport’ tray was actually bought on Amazon and her boarding pass was the work of Photoshop.

“If you’re asking what the point of this is, the point is that it’s fun and that it’s art,” Taich said.

“It’s a really fun way to express my love of fashion and thrifting and artistic direction.”