Aug 23, 2023·edited Aug 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
"Two Under Two." It's been blazing through my community in Chicago recently, and seems to be inspired by/part of a TradCore/Nostalgia Parenting trend. It's not medically advisable, it's overwhelmingly a "white lady thing on the internet" and it's something that's been historically weaponized against WOC (too many babies, baby machine, welfare mom, etc). It feels very marketing driven - quippier to say/easier to hashtag as 2 under 2 than 2 under 3? 2 under 4? Seemed to have stormed onto the scene around the time that Roe protections started getting aggressively slashed, and I couldn't help but feel like it was a subversive attempt to drive women back into the home with the promise of something special in that age grouping. Absolutely no shade for those who chose to do it and it makes them happy - truly, I have friends in this camp - but globally it feels more and more like a trend than a decision.
Yes! Good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't love #girlmom/#boymom. I'm not a mom, so I'm sure there's lots I don't know. But it feels so prescriptive and stereotypical and always dismays me.
Oh goodness yes. I'm Facebook friends with someone who constantly tags herself as a #boymom and I do not understand it at all. The photos she posts just look like the same things you'd do with any small kid as far as I can tell.
And also, I have never once seen #boydad even though #girldad and #girlmom both exist as well.
Yes this is so interesting!! My read is that it comes out of the assumed (straight, cis) preference for a child of your same gender - because a boy dad is just “dad” but a #girldad is for dads showing interest in the “feminine” things their daughters like or like learning how to braid their hair, it feels tied to the same low bar that leads dads to getting complimented for “babysitting” their kids
I have three sons and for reasons I've never been quite able to articulate, the whole hashtag boymom thing just gives me the absolute wiggins. I actually also rarely (now that I think about it) ever refer to my kids as my "boys" or my sons, like if someone says "your boys might like this" or something like that. I always just refer to them as my kids, unless I'm describing something very very specific. I like this notion you've hit on that you don't have to valorize masculinity because it's the default. The whole idea of "boymom" feels like it's somehow claiming some kind of....status, maybe? for having produced male children. I'm not sure exactly, but there's definitely something there.
I think that’s offensive, honestly. Maybe if they have a private account it’s ok, but if they don’t, I think about all the people who will see those tags and feel like crap. I hope they aren’t doing it to underscore their beliefs about a gender binary… but it still underscores it.
I think the people who participate in the hashtag and identify this way are people who have all boys or all girls (rather than both boys and girls) because of their perception that the parenting experience is different in a meaningful way, and should therefore justify a sub-grouping. (I suspect that for many, they are compensating for feeling that they are missing out on the experience of having a child of a different sex). And while I believe gender is a spectrum, the society we live in does contribute to a different experience for boys vs girls, even from before birth.
That said, even when I was just a “girl mom” myself, I too felt uncomfortable with #boymom and #girlmom because it seems like it would just reinforce outdated gender stereotypes. Also, it feels weird for me to define myself based on my child’s gender, especially because that could change.
Okay "two under two" as marketing quip is fascinating to me. (Side note: as a mom to twins, the whole "two under two" thing has always irked me. I've always had two under two (and under one, and under six months, etc., dammit!)
it’s impossible to work with 2 under 2, so I see it as: moms saying look how hard I work, even tho i’m not in the formal economy. they’re grasping for identity, validation, and recognition. they’re working in the home, but nobody recognizes the all encompassing difficulty of parenting, so this is advertising how much they do.
My assumption when I see influencer types having kids that close together is that it's to only have to go through the "get your body back" routine, including whatever surgery, once.
i’ve absolutely gotten that “getting it over with” impression, to which i say... why did you have kids? honestly also the general concept of people having kids who seem to know nothing about kids, constantly complain about their kids, and make it seem like the worst thing in the world so why did you have them???????
To be fair, while I adore my kids, I have miserable pregnancies and have had difficult postpartum recoveries so I fully understand wanting to bang out a few kids and then get your pelvic floor back allll to yourself. And having a five-year gap between my kids made sleepless nights round 2 a bitter pill to swallow.
Still doesn’t make me wish I’d had 2 under 2, though. That sounds gnarly!
This is SO interesting to me. My youngest children are 22 months apart, and for that six weeks or whatever it is, I absolutely cringe when people ask their ages, because they're so close together. I always feel slightly judged, like 'don't you know how that happens?' I was on the old side when I got married, so we intentionally had our kids close together because I didn't want to be chasing babies when I was any older than I had to be, and my kids are thick as thieves, but as a Latina, I absolutely feel like it hits different than my white peers. It makes me uncomfortable as hell.
“2 under 2” is also a byproduct of women having children later - all of my mom friends who had their first kid after 35 (and are trying to finish having kids by 40) are on the 2u2 track whether they like the catchphrase or not.
Rae, a great point about the compression of available years! Of the women in my circle who have gone this route, that hasn't seemed to be the focus/intent, but definitely a factor for many I'm sure.
Ok, this is fascinating, because also, as someone who is a year and a half into secondary infertility, 2 under 2 feels so much like bragging--like, look at me, I have enough resources to be able to do this stressful thing and I am fertile enough that I can choose when to have my children and it happens for me. It's obviously my own issues coming through, but I am so stressed by the ever widening age gap between my first and potential second child because there's this narrative of two years apart being ideal, and we should be able to control it.
That's a lot to contend with. If it makes you feel any better, the gap between my first and second child is 13 years and they still see to recognize each other as the same species, love each other, and all the good parts about having siblings. My oldest was very happy as an only child and now loves his younger brothers very much. No matter which way it goes, there are always things that are incredibly challenging and things that are so cool and you wouldn't want it any other way. Two years apart is great, and so is 13 years apart. Good luck on your journey, and I hope it brings you happiness!
I have always despised this phrasing, especially when people expand it and are like “I have 3 under 7!” When does it end? Is my mom supposed to go around telling people she has “2 under 33”?
I’ve been thinking about this more and I wonder how much of it is also a strong desire to be part of a community/group. I want to reiterate that this comment wasn’t intended to denigrate anyone who made that choice. My own mom did! But I wonder how much of the #twoundertwo aspirational trend is linked to the access that comes with a hashtag or the coding. More an indictment on society than the women drawn to that decision!
Oh my god is right. I didn’t know this was a trend and yet, I have in-laws who fits your description. I have 2 kids that I had to space due to unpaid leave. IOW, I had to save up vacation time and rebuild my status at work.
Hasn't this been a thing for a long time, though? I know a few moms a generation above me who had paid careers and close pregnancies was their "get it over with all at once" strategy to get back on the ladder (issues there FOR SURE but this would be 15+ yrs ago). And for others who started having kids "late" it feels like the "only way" to get the number of kids they want in a shorter window.
Sure! I mean entire (harmful) ancient stereotypes exist on this (“Irish twins”). My point is that social media seems to have launched it into the stratosphere (or made it more visible, acceptable, aspirational) for a very specific group of people - white women. It’s not a new thing, but it’s certainly a “thing” right now and this was intended to tease out why that might be - maternal age, capitalism, instagram, subversive retro family nostalgia, whatever!
Restock videos. Especially the refrigerator ones. I need some words on their proliferation over on TikTok: the (specialized!) clear containers. The ASMR component. The cost/privilege of it all. The performative nature. The videos that JUST restock different kinds of ice. (!!!) And why I can't keep myself from watching anyway.
I think this also aligns with some of the questions we were working through re: remodel culture, the market gaze, and the desire to make your kitchen look like a professional kitchen — restocking videos are making your fridge into a restaurant fridge, or, like, a vending machine fridge????
Do you think there’s a relationship between wanting your kitchen to look like a store or restaurant and wanting other parts of your home to look like a luxury hotel (bedroom, living room)or a spa (master bath)?
This conversation always reminds me of the scene in Downton Abbey where the Dowager Countess is flabbergasted by a new servant trying to serve the way they do at the Ritz (or whatever fancy hotel). Hotels were thought of (by that class) as a cheaper imitation of their own private homes. Homes were definitely not meant to imitate hotels!
Also having a (fully stocked) pantry the size of a small apartment. I guess it is a little bit of a post-pandemic prepping hangover as well as a display of wealth (when you post it to insta) but the house as supermarket / fortress phenomenon intrigues me
It has to, right? Looking to commercial enterprise for aesthetic inspiration, being so comfortable with the transactive nature of commerce that you want the same feeling in your home.
Yes. The Netflix show The Home Edit from a few years ago was the first time I started to think about this. I think they even use language like "backstock" to refer to the extras of things like paper towels and canned goods, and since TikTok restocks, I feel like it's everywhere. Do we want homes to look like stores because the next consumerism step is to never leave the store? I admit, I do this in my closet. I try to use all those little merchandising tricks I learned in my retail days to fold my jeans in perfect stacks, style my outfits for the week on a separate rack, respace my hangers, dress a mannequin (dress form), etc. and try to "shop" my closet before buying something new. WHY? Why do we want our home to look like a store? Those little rows in our pantries and closets feel like a rich text.
I followed the home edit instagram slightly before the Netflix show and slowly realized it gave me huge ick-Clea’s home and kids appeared frequently and the projected image of not a speck of dust anywhere, no single item ever out of place was bizarre in a deeply uncomfortable way. Of course instagram isn’t a reflection of real life but for everything in your house to be presented as basically antiseptic really felt like projection of some deep pathology.
Their Instagram has gotten rough to follow. Clea has clearly stepped back from doing so much of the content since her cancer diagnosis. And then when she does pop up, it kind of feels like it's all about her breast cancer and somehow she thinks people are unaware of breast cancer, but also weirdly performative and unrealistic (my grandmother had breast cancer, both my aunts, multiple friend's mothers and none were having their hair shaved for IG content)
Yes, Home Edit. Organizing and buying specific things to organize in. Organizing in colors and specific organizing aesthetics. Headbands and decanting everything into plastic bins.
My hugely attention deficient 9-year-old just spent the last couple of days doing this very thing. Does he generally play with legos? No. Does his brother? Not really. I think we have a billion legos as an attempt to assuage our parental guilt for how much time our kids spend playing video games, but whatever. Anyway, he spent hours on this task and was so happy when it was done. Is it sustainable? Maybe, given the aforementioned lack of use (lol) but we'll see. I can't IMAGINE doing this as a regular part of my homekeeping/maintenance.
Yes! Especially because as the parent of three elementary-aged kids, I know absolutely none of that would last more than a few hours, tops. 😂 Introduces interesting questions on repetitive labor, who is this for, etc. Also? I can't deny it looks pretty.
My 6 year old loves watching cleaning and restocking videos, and it was actually a really interesting segue into teaching her some critical thinking skills around social media (what are they trying to get you to buy here?)
I am with your 6 year old! I am totally mesmerized by cleaning and restocking videos. I can literally watch hours of people cleaning their houses while sitting on my couch and ignoring the pile of laundry that has been sitting on my dining room table for days waiting to be folded. It's deeply soothing in a way I don't really understand and maybe I just need to get it out of my system like a stupid iphone game I'm addicted to?
I follow someone on Instagram (British man, can't think of his name right now) who duets with rich people videos and the first time he showed an ice restocking video... wow! Also, those ladies who have entire cabinets of flavored coffee syrups and powdered drink packets calling it 'water', no it's non carbonated pop, lady!
You are not alone. The first time I flicked and saw "monthly ice restocking" as a post title I was deeply confused. I mean, I still am, but for other reasons now.
I was drawn in by one that showed up on my IG feed last night. Ice made with coffee (one of my fave work breakfast places does it & I fully get that!), ice made with fruit purees, ice with different fruits cut in different shapes inside, ice made with milk (I think?), everything in different molds-not just your standard cubed ice! And, there were trays of it.
I wonder how much of that was pandemic driven, too. Influencers were home, clothing was... well it just got really weird/chaotic.... and the one thing people could fixate on was making their spaces tidy and bringing the calming store environment into their home where they didn't have to mask or worry. A lot of folks were also stockpiling more on some things due to supply chain issues and limiting store trips, so they inherently had more in their home to organize and manage than perhaps they did before. (Was the case for us!)
I have no idea about "restocking," but I got hooked on a company called GoCleanCo on Instagram in early 2020. It started as a home cleaning company in the Calgary area, and when the pandemic started, her business basically shut down. She started making home videos for her Instagram account to keep the name out there, and gave people tips on disinfecting, etc., and it took off from there. When I started following her on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, she had about 30,000 followers. She now has 2.4 MILLION and is sponsored by Procter & Gamble and other big cleaning-related companies.
I was so influenced by her!! I bought her mop and rags and recommended products and ebook...and don’t even use it. I’m a Dirty Person. I hope she is enjoying her financial success, because her astronomic rise is a marvel.
Me too -- mopping the floor is probably the one cleaning task I procrastinate doing the most. I bought the mop and like it, and while I can't say I use it regularly, or as regularly as I should, I probably do mop it more often now! lol I also bought the Aquablade system and while it's pricey, is it is good!
Why does everyone in my office use the "sweating turkey" gif as a reaction to almost everything? Why is there a "sweating turkey" gif on Microsoft Teams?!
YES. The novel Several People Are Typing (written entirely in Slack messages) dives into the secret language of the reaction emoji. Highly recommend. I used to work with (and Slack!) the author, and I can trace the origin story of one very niche emoji's meaning back to its inception at a *different workplace* — a former colleague carried it here (she had left by the time I joined, and people were surprised that I immediately understood the meaning of the dusty stick)
omg I forgot about the dusty stick! This book absolutely killed me. I tried to tell my current colleagues about it but we use Teams and the difference between Teams and Slack cultures is so big as as to make them not even comparable platforms.
The closest direct translation would be side-eye, but specifically towards bad puns, dad jokes, and the like. It is definitely done in a laughing-with-you way (the most common dusty stick recipients were generally well-liked).
YES! THIS! My work chat does not have a humping emoji, but it has very strange parameters on what gifs you can send. Like there are none from South Park, but lots of totally inappropriate Always Sunny, Archer, BoJack Horseman, Family Guy...
Please, come sit next to me. Right here is a nice spot and we can have a lovely chat. Wait just a sec while I see if my work chat has the :humping: emoji.
Lived this myself recently when I used this guy in Teams: 🫠. For me and my mum friends it means we are melting down, disappearing into a puddle of overwhelm. My colleague thought I meant I was feeling the heat.
if this interests you at all, or you have lived this particular world (nightmare?), i highly recommend the brilliant debut novel Several People Are Typing. I haven’t laughed so much and felt so seen in years. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020
Read that last year and it was a solid 3/5 stars for me, but I'm glad it found it's audience elsewhere as I'm always supportive of books doing something just a little weird with format!
Aug 23, 2023·edited Aug 23, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
I'm cheating a bit because I too was trained as a cultural historian, BUT:
- Raw milk becoming a thing again (and it's strangely popular right now among TikTok influencers and Fundamentalist Christians - maybe a signifier of purity? Distrust in science? A return-to-nature sort of thing?)
- Mullets
- The narrowing of LinkedIn discourse - there's a particular style of communicating in a few categories ("Don't do this bad thing in an interview," "I was laid off but am grateful to my company nonetheless," "I'm delighted to share that...")
- Mums and garters - something I hadn't heard of until I moved to Texas
obsessed with the raw milk discourse — as someone notes below, it was a big Brooklyn moms thing but it's also such a huge thing amongst the ultra-conservative in Idaho, one of things (like anti-vaxxing) where the political spectrum really shows itself to be a circle
Back in my day, the early aughts that is, all the Bethesda and Chevy Chase folks were very much into raw milk. Perhaps it’s a case of their kids, following in the footsteps of their parents.
There's also been some interesting analysis of the fact that the mullet is tailor made for Zoom calls and remote work, because people only see your business front on camera!
as a uni student in the queer mullet camp- you're onto something. for some people it's an embracing both sides thing. i also had a friend cut her mullet into a fully short haircut and she said it felt like freeing herself from a last attempt at femininity, which made me took a look at myself!
And the meaning of a mullet is so slippery - it used to be a hip-ish hair style (80s), then was associated with rural/lower class white culture, particularly in the south, then now it's part of pro sports culture, queer culture, hipster culture? And there's a relationship with the pandemic, too, since people weren't able to get in-person haircuts for so long and decided to don a mullet for Zoom calls?
Truly a wild and rich text of a haircut - not just belonging to the "redneck" stereotype.
I have a 5 year old and see a lot of kids with mullets, and generally my assumption is it was a compromise for a parent who did not want to cut their kid's hair. At least the circa 90s rat tail hasn't come back?
My 17 year old son got a mullet! They call it a "burst fade." Omg. It's 100% a mullet and he has senior pictures in a few weeks. Cannot WAIT for him to look back at it in 10 or 20 years.
Having hosted a reunion for a college hockey team with many players in the 80s, they fucking loved looking at their old photos with mullets. I hope such joy for all former mullet havers.
Raw dairy was SUCH a thing in my mom world in North Brooklyn circa 15 years ago. There was a google group for customers of an Amish farm that delivered to all the usual suspect North Brooklyn neighborhoods. Buying raw dairy wasn't illegal, but it all had to be well-organized because one person would have to place an order with the only relative of the farmer who could go to a payphone. My son was in a Steiner school and the raw milk to anti-vaxxer pipeline is VERY real. This is indeed a massively rich text and I have much to say about it and should probably write something.
Same in suburban Atlanta in the mid-00's. You had to say the milk was for your pets for it to be legal in Georgia, and the holistic moms groups (FB group and IRL) were definitely anti-vax. Lots of muscle testing for "food sensitivity" too, hence the raw milk.
I'm from New England and went to college in TX and Mums and Garters were one of the MANY culture shocks I encountered. Also - Drill Teams, Debutantes and big "C" Christianity.
I grew up in Texas so I was definitely aware of mums, drill teams, debutantes, Christianity, but as I've lived other places I've realized just how messed up/ not normal across the US my school was. Two further examples: front yard signs to show off what activity your child was in (eg 3 foot high music note for choir, drill team figure, football helmet, etc with child's name on it), and on game day the drill team and cheerleaders had assigned football players that they had to bring treats to and decorate their locker. My husband was raised in the south and when I told him the football thing his jaw dropped.
My daughter was a cheerleader in MN, and the team had to bring buckets of cookies to the games and form two lines to hold out to the football players after the game while saying things like "great game!" The cheer coach was a former cheerleader at the school, so I assume they did that when she was on the team. I found it very retrograde, but my daughter didn't care so I didn't fuss. No decorating lockers.
I live in a suburb of Chicago (North Shore) and the yard signs for activities are a thing here, and was also in a suburb of Indianapolis where I lived before. I think the cheerleader thing happens here too.
Signs are popular in the North Shore of Chicago and certain suburbs in MN (where I live now) BUT they are not those huge 3 ft high ones, or the ones that span your lawn (some people get those when they have a child/kid graduates from pics I've seen on FB). The ones I see are the size of political signs, i.e. noticeable but not over the top.
@Pam B, I lived in one suburb of Toronto where grad signs were not a thing but then moved to another where they are. They're also a modest size, like election signs, as you mentioned.
New England/NYC here and I never saw one of those signs before Covid and then they were really for graduation. I do recall seeing them in NE PA for football several years ago - post Friday Night Lights/Varsity Blues.
Never heard of Mums and Garters. I assumed it was a trend among moms/mums groups that had suddenly rediscovered nylon stockings and garter belts until I Googled. You learn something new every day...! (I'm Canadian.)
Homecoming garters are my guilty pleasure. They're fascinating! When I was very small, we lived in TX and my babysitter had one that I was obsessed with (this would have been in the mid 80's). I didn't even remember it until my mom told me after I rediscovered them in my 20's while traveling. If you've never seen one, please google homecoming garter (and then google large homecoming garter!)
A friend's mom (in the early aughts) was convinced that pasteurized milk somehow caused homosexuality. Because in her youth they didn't have pasturized milk and also didn't have so many gay people. That was a dinner conversation to remember. Couldn't decide whether to laugh, cry, or aspirate my food.
There's a lot of reasons being a public health professional is frustrating, and raw milk is one of them. Why?? Whyyyy is pasteurization a bad thing?? Anti-vax sentiment is a little more complicated, but the anti-science overlap of the raw milk and anti-vax individuals is fascinating. I know I've read something on this before, but I think about it often.
Aside from general distrust, there's the victim of their success thing going on it seems to me. I remember listening to a conversation between a coworker who was saying "I don't see what the problem is with unpasteurized milk: people don't get [disease] any more." while another (whose elderly mother had been a rural nurse) practically screamed "because we pasteurize our milk!"
I think a related thing may be the distance from the production? I have a colleague who owns cattle near an apple orchard which gets a lot of families from the nearby city. She's had a number of weekend apple pickers (who are parking on her private land, btw) come up and insist that they should be able to buy raw milk from her.
She has beef cattle.
People simply have no clue the amount of work that goes into making our modern food and making it safe.
Edited to say: it wasn't just their inability to spot a dairy vs beef cow. Once she told them that those were beef cattle, they still asked to buy raw milk.
I worked at an ice-cream shop that was part of a working dairy farm and the family who owned the farm were so grossed out by all the asks for raw milk (as well as the attempts to just wander through their working farm with thousand pound animals about!!) My dad, who grew up on a working dairy farm, is also befuddled by the trend.
I will say I had a childhood friend whose father was a dairy farmer who definitely drank raw milk -- and I think, decades later, may have capitalized on the market for it in some way.
Oh yeah, clearly there are some who have! And both my dad and the family running the farm I worked on probably both occasionally drank raw milk themselves. But I think viewing it as a "superior" product that someone would drive far and ask for is the befuddling part for them.
Back in the late 90s I was into raw milk. For me, it was the idea that pasteurization killed off the "good" parts of the milk in addition to the pathogens because it was overly processed (which meant that even organic milk was not as good since more often than not it was ultra-pasteurized which was even worse). So it was the sense that it was healthier. Thinking back on it, there was also the appeal of the "purity" of it...you did not just buy milk from some faceless big agra company out to make money (and ruining the environment) but from a local farmer who you could trust. There was also a level of community around it - we were a bunch of crunchy moms coming together to do something fairly subversive (I don't think it was legal.) We coordinated via a private email list and would come together on pick-up days at the drop-off location. It made us part of a smaller community.
I have learned to have a lot of compassion for that version of me who was just trying to navigate being a new mom in a scary world.
The raw milk thing has also been taken over by the "wellness" people who still consumer dairy. As an aside, just before Covid I visited a dairy farmer here in NY and he said he flat out refuses to sell anyone raw milk because people do not transport it correctly and if they are not farmers or food scientists, they have zero good sense about how quickly the milk can go off with improper storage.
My family drank raw milk a lot when my kids were small. Looking back, it's true I first heard about it as an option from the anti-vaxxers in my community who also all seemed to be local/regional food fanatics. But it was also true that we lived next door to a small, organic, family dairy farm starting when my oldest was 13 months old and they let us buy raw milk by the gallon super cheap right off the bulk tank. It was the cheapest way for us to get really good quality milk. My oldest resisted weaning, but he would drink raw milk mixed with a little maple syrup to mimic the sweetness of breast milk and it didn't ever give him digestive trouble so it was a win-win for me.
Yes...I also think that the discourse around it was different back in the 90s and early aughts then it is today when it seems like everything has completely jumped the shark. Even the anti-vaxxers back in the 90s just felt more overly cautious rather than conspiracy driven (at least in my circles.) It was seen as more of a personal decision that each family made rather than a fight against a conspiracy of doctors who wanted to kill (!) babies.
I do wonder how much of this is driven by social media and how it completely shifted how the conversations were held. Back then, we were moms who came together on email lists or bulletin boards trying to figure out this stuff together, sharing what we were learning as we went. Now, with social media, it is about finding the right influencer who has figured it out and can give us the answers and tell us what we need to do.
Milk is definitely a rich text. For any London (U.K.) based culture study readers, the Wellcome Collection has an exhibition on milk in the last century on at the moment which is excellent and covers So. Many. Ideas. / is generally fascinating.
The LinkedIn posts for sure. Ninety percent of my feed reflects some the following norms: the posture must be grateful, thrilled, and/or inspired. If personal circumstances are relevant, the poster must mention that family/personal life is primary, but then thank or declare themselves inspired by an employer/manager/mentor for supporting work/life balance. If the post is about a professional accomplishment or work function, the poster must be grateful for employer/manager/mentor/team support and contributions, thrilled by the honor of being noticed or allowed to participate, and/or inspired by everyone they met in the process or at the function.
I'm grateful for the few people that still post interesting articles.
Oh, oh, I love this prompt. I just spent a week doomscrolling and writing about this so it's top of mind for me, but a rich text I think about a lot are the zillions of tiktoks under the #GutHealing, #GutTok, #GutHealth, etc. tags, especially the "before and after gut healing" videos that focus on bloating, like this one: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8F9vT8Q/.
I'd loooove to hear Virginia Sole-Smith's take on these, too. (If she's discussed this kind of content already and someone could direct me to that work, I'd be very thankful!)
I had a coworker a few years ago who was trying to “heal her own gut biome” and taking all these supplements and stuff… but not seeing any doctors. Western medicine has issues for sure, but if it’s been going on for months/years like she said? Please see someone! She was Instagram coursing her way through it and it stressed me out everytime. (And she talked about it a lot.)
This feels to me like so many other versions of an attempt to exert control where you can when so much is out of your control (like Emma said below: see diet culture). And since actual comfort/discomfort in your human torso is so ambiguous you can feel (in your gut!) like you have succeeded. Or if you haven't, it's because you just need another tweak (or to try harder).
I want to know why everyone in my elder millennial orbit is suddenly into astrology. And I’m curious why it’s the same people who are quick to tell you how unscientific Meyers Briggs is and scrupulously read Emily Oster for parenting advice, and then turn around to post nonironically about Saturn’s Return.
So, what’s up with calling people mother? The way it reclaims and upends and makes meaningless and makes sexy and knights with utmost power the title of “mother” -- I love it and it makes me uncomfortable and I have started to say it and it seems to say so much about our whole motherless overmothered motherfucked world.
Also maybe this is totally obvious but I really want to write an entire book on Swifties. The true-crime level of analysis into all Taylor does, the cultish devotion -- the proliferation of the chants and ceremonial objects (fship bracelets) and lore and obsession with ritual numbers, the in-group kindness, the rampant, rabid bullying, the brute economic power, the way Swiftiness dovetails into a certain white girl entitlement and ferocity and lack of awareness. I could write a book actually just on Gaylors omg.
Would read either of those books in a heartbeat!! Also very interested in the rich texts of the narrative Taylor Swift creates around her self/image, and super specifically the re-recordings and the vault tracks.
I have some thoughts about this!!! Lots of my friends who left the church then got into tarot and astrology — myself included — and i think there is a thrill in the “occult”. A little transgression, as a treat! That’s one of the initial sparks, but what I think keeps people coming back is the way these (plus personality tests etc) are mirrors to the self. Where you used to perhaps listen to a sermon on a sunday and do some introspection within a rigid framework of sin and forgiveness— well, now you get a reading and have a tidy little pagan framework to think about big ideas for thirty minutes before going on with your life.
This sounds dismissive, it’s not! I like tarot & i think these new age things are generally more healthy way to engage with the self than evangelical xtianity is.
This comment is getting long, but humans love to be told about themselves, and we love a mirror! And we love a ritual! In the absence of overarching social rituals, we create them!
I have so many thoughts on this, as someone who absolutely has that 'witch thing' going on in my family and both of my sisters (they're twins, and they're Geminis) read tarot, but it's also a whole other thing in which my mom and my grandmother (who is now 90, and very devoutly Catholic) have been recollecting stories of my great aunts/uncles who were very creative, very *different* types and were also working-class Mexicans and ended up in institutions. Trying to reconcile what their lives were like, and being unable to find any other suitable framework except slightly occult explanations. My tia and tio weren't crazy; they were something very different than the mainstream.
oooh thank you for sharing!! my comment was v focused on my own white exvangelical millennial experience, a v whitewashed understanding of this stuff —but historic looks at the “occult” & what it was used for, and the intersection with Catholicism and non-white communities— that’s a completely different experience! And really important to think about, especially when you look at historic understandings of mental illness or neurodivergence. A rich text!
Also witches and witchcraft- I was looking through the book section at a JoAnn's, and fully half the books included some tie-in to witchcraft- and these are craft books. Where did that come from?
So I’ve flirted with this before but am super psyched/ready for what I see as a trend towards maximalism. That said, I remember seeing something like “millenials are minimalists because all of our parents and grandparents are hoarders” AND YES.
I’ve brought up the topic of Swedish Death Cleaning to my mom, who was thankfully receptive. But the biggest problem lies with my in-laws, who currently have five acres of “treasures” in possession. 😬
My mom got SO offended when I mentioned it to her. I didn't back down on it, though and now she's starting carting bags of stuff to the thrift store, almost as much as she brings home bags of stuff from the thrift store. She's not a hoarder, she's more like a magpie. I find myself doing similar things the older I get, but man.
my current hot take is that aspirational minimalism and pseudominimalism that we see from the tech bros and instagrammers is mostly supported by other people's labor (.e.g take out or restaurant food, hiring people to clean/fix/do things instead of keeping the supplies to do it yourself), requires a lot of privilege and is still very consumer driven.
Oh, these are my favorite subjects. I actually find a really important continuity among all the bullet points on the list--and it's (Conservative) Women With Money. It is the easiest slice of culture to dismiss as trivial (Pumpkin Spice lattes, anyone?), but it informs our wider cultural norms and values in really deep ways. These are the "homey" values we raise our children in (Momfluencers), the styles we invite into our *homes* (shiplap & the Gaines), our experience of our own bodies (Peleton, Goop, diet culture...). It's what books are available and what our schools teach. It's how wealth concentrates (from the marriage markets of debutantes to sorority-frat relations). I 100000000% see this as all the SAME text.
Inspired by the RushTok dive, I also have a working theory about Mainstream Traditional Gender + Conspicuous Consumption as a *countercultural* movement, in a generation that is more queer, more socialist, more likely to unionize, with more experience in activism (climate change + gun violence esp.), than previous ones. We see so much 'content' about buying things, and things we've bought. So many faces that all look the same. Sometimes it shows up like 'tradwives' and sometimes it shows up like college kid's OOTDs. It's the Y2K fashion, which millennials and gen x remember as profoundly misogynistic. It's the hunger for good ol boy country. It's extremely white supremacist. It feels dangerous to me.
-Kathryn Jezer-Morton has written a lot about FALL & Cozy Season. As it's the final days of August, I'm seeing so much PUMPKIN content, and the Influencer Publishing Calendar is pulling us further and further away from nature. Why are we obsessed with fall??
-Contemporary evangelizing is *so subtle.* I can read "Mega Church" or "Mormon" from 100 miles away in Ballerina Farm, in the Gaines, in so much momfluencer content, but my sister in law misses the invisible Jesus signaling. To her, it's just "normal" mainstream culture.
-Air Fryers are table top convection ovens with a basket instead of shelves. InstaPots are decent slow cookers. These are not miracle brand new gadgets. They're just effective old things. Why do we need things to be *new*?
“Little treat” culture against the backdrop of late-stage capitalism! Not a judgment against little treats, I am a big fan of getting myself little treats! Like this is one of those things where on first glance I think, yeah, a little iced coffee and a pastry can make a huge difference on a crummy day, it’s not that deep. But then, within the walls of the internet - aka TikTok - it can feel like an interesting whiplash between critiques of capitalism and our current landscape and “Starbies” runs. (Which also…has there been a recent Starbucks renaissance? Or is it just that I grew up in the PNW which went through a proud anti-Starbucks, support-your-local-coffee-shop push?) I don’t know, I have a feeling this intersects with a whole lot of other consumerism texts folks are mentioning.
Here's my take from me plus my GenZ kids: everything is bad and bad for you and makes you feel bad (see also ChickfilA, WalMart, etc), so why not go to Starbs and have basically a milkshake or delicious coffee little treat?
Galvanize does some really interesting research on moderate white women and this is absolutely the outlook of the group uncertain individualists. YOLO isn't so much hedonism, it's more the world is burning, I'll never afford a house, might as well take that vacation/have spay day/treat myself to little treats.
“Everything is bad for you and makes you feel bad” — oof this resonates. This totally makes sense to me, and makes me think of all the other instances where individuals are left weighing the impact of systems-level issues.
Exactly. Especially with Gen Z, since it's basically all they've known, and they are aware of the systems issues that I KNOW I wasn't as a cishetero white Gen Xer.
As a millennial, can definitely remember my first exposure to a lot of these issues coming in a “personal responsibility” package—personal carbon footprint, etc!
"Two Under Two." It's been blazing through my community in Chicago recently, and seems to be inspired by/part of a TradCore/Nostalgia Parenting trend. It's not medically advisable, it's overwhelmingly a "white lady thing on the internet" and it's something that's been historically weaponized against WOC (too many babies, baby machine, welfare mom, etc). It feels very marketing driven - quippier to say/easier to hashtag as 2 under 2 than 2 under 3? 2 under 4? Seemed to have stormed onto the scene around the time that Roe protections started getting aggressively slashed, and I couldn't help but feel like it was a subversive attempt to drive women back into the home with the promise of something special in that age grouping. Absolutely no shade for those who chose to do it and it makes them happy - truly, I have friends in this camp - but globally it feels more and more like a trend than a decision.
OH. MY. GOD.
okay the two under two AND the #girlmom #boymom ~identities~ 🤢
Yes! Good to know I'm not the only one who doesn't love #girlmom/#boymom. I'm not a mom, so I'm sure there's lots I don't know. But it feels so prescriptive and stereotypical and always dismays me.
I am both and identify with neither.
Same!
Oh goodness yes. I'm Facebook friends with someone who constantly tags herself as a #boymom and I do not understand it at all. The photos she posts just look like the same things you'd do with any small kid as far as I can tell.
And also, I have never once seen #boydad even though #girldad and #girlmom both exist as well.
Yes this is so interesting!! My read is that it comes out of the assumed (straight, cis) preference for a child of your same gender - because a boy dad is just “dad” but a #girldad is for dads showing interest in the “feminine” things their daughters like or like learning how to braid their hair, it feels tied to the same low bar that leads dads to getting complimented for “babysitting” their kids
I have three sons and for reasons I've never been quite able to articulate, the whole hashtag boymom thing just gives me the absolute wiggins. I actually also rarely (now that I think about it) ever refer to my kids as my "boys" or my sons, like if someone says "your boys might like this" or something like that. I always just refer to them as my kids, unless I'm describing something very very specific. I like this notion you've hit on that you don't have to valorize masculinity because it's the default. The whole idea of "boymom" feels like it's somehow claiming some kind of....status, maybe? for having produced male children. I'm not sure exactly, but there's definitely something there.
The girlmom/boymom hashtags are the worst. It feels incredibly prescriptive, especially when people who do it have BABIES. Who are just BABIES.
I think that’s offensive, honestly. Maybe if they have a private account it’s ok, but if they don’t, I think about all the people who will see those tags and feel like crap. I hope they aren’t doing it to underscore their beliefs about a gender binary… but it still underscores it.
I think the people who participate in the hashtag and identify this way are people who have all boys or all girls (rather than both boys and girls) because of their perception that the parenting experience is different in a meaningful way, and should therefore justify a sub-grouping. (I suspect that for many, they are compensating for feeling that they are missing out on the experience of having a child of a different sex). And while I believe gender is a spectrum, the society we live in does contribute to a different experience for boys vs girls, even from before birth.
That said, even when I was just a “girl mom” myself, I too felt uncomfortable with #boymom and #girlmom because it seems like it would just reinforce outdated gender stereotypes. Also, it feels weird for me to define myself based on my child’s gender, especially because that could change.
Adjacent rich text: the moms who refer to their sons as "their boyfriend" on social media.
YES. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT??
NO.
OMG THIS TOO’
Okay "two under two" as marketing quip is fascinating to me. (Side note: as a mom to twins, the whole "two under two" thing has always irked me. I've always had two under two (and under one, and under six months, etc., dammit!)
it’s impossible to work with 2 under 2, so I see it as: moms saying look how hard I work, even tho i’m not in the formal economy. they’re grasping for identity, validation, and recognition. they’re working in the home, but nobody recognizes the all encompassing difficulty of parenting, so this is advertising how much they do.
My assumption when I see influencer types having kids that close together is that it's to only have to go through the "get your body back" routine, including whatever surgery, once.
YES- this is definitely a part of it. I've heard this spoken, also the idea of "getting it over with"
i’ve absolutely gotten that “getting it over with” impression, to which i say... why did you have kids? honestly also the general concept of people having kids who seem to know nothing about kids, constantly complain about their kids, and make it seem like the worst thing in the world so why did you have them???????
To be fair, while I adore my kids, I have miserable pregnancies and have had difficult postpartum recoveries so I fully understand wanting to bang out a few kids and then get your pelvic floor back allll to yourself. And having a five-year gap between my kids made sleepless nights round 2 a bitter pill to swallow.
Still doesn’t make me wish I’d had 2 under 2, though. That sounds gnarly!
Kindly - This comment is a lot.
like that TOTALLY makes perfect sense (and i’ve definitely heard people who have planned it intentionally that way)
This is SO interesting to me. My youngest children are 22 months apart, and for that six weeks or whatever it is, I absolutely cringe when people ask their ages, because they're so close together. I always feel slightly judged, like 'don't you know how that happens?' I was on the old side when I got married, so we intentionally had our kids close together because I didn't want to be chasing babies when I was any older than I had to be, and my kids are thick as thieves, but as a Latina, I absolutely feel like it hits different than my white peers. It makes me uncomfortable as hell.
Also love Rihanna but I'm scared that she's making this shit look too good for us normies.
“2 under 2” is also a byproduct of women having children later - all of my mom friends who had their first kid after 35 (and are trying to finish having kids by 40) are on the 2u2 track whether they like the catchphrase or not.
Rae, a great point about the compression of available years! Of the women in my circle who have gone this route, that hasn't seemed to be the focus/intent, but definitely a factor for many I'm sure.
Ok, this is fascinating, because also, as someone who is a year and a half into secondary infertility, 2 under 2 feels so much like bragging--like, look at me, I have enough resources to be able to do this stressful thing and I am fertile enough that I can choose when to have my children and it happens for me. It's obviously my own issues coming through, but I am so stressed by the ever widening age gap between my first and potential second child because there's this narrative of two years apart being ideal, and we should be able to control it.
That's a lot to contend with. If it makes you feel any better, the gap between my first and second child is 13 years and they still see to recognize each other as the same species, love each other, and all the good parts about having siblings. My oldest was very happy as an only child and now loves his younger brothers very much. No matter which way it goes, there are always things that are incredibly challenging and things that are so cool and you wouldn't want it any other way. Two years apart is great, and so is 13 years apart. Good luck on your journey, and I hope it brings you happiness!
This is my sister. It feels like a socially accepted rebrand to FUCK MY LIFE.
I have always despised this phrasing, especially when people expand it and are like “I have 3 under 7!” When does it end? Is my mom supposed to go around telling people she has “2 under 33”?
I am imagining my mother in a puckish mood saying, "I don't wanna brag, but I have two under forty-five."
Constantly proclaiming that you have two under two is the new proclaiming you’re super busy all the time as a signifier of stress/value/something.
Guilty! But it’s always said with a, it’ll pay off in the end tone
I’ve been thinking about this more and I wonder how much of it is also a strong desire to be part of a community/group. I want to reiterate that this comment wasn’t intended to denigrate anyone who made that choice. My own mom did! But I wonder how much of the #twoundertwo aspirational trend is linked to the access that comes with a hashtag or the coding. More an indictment on society than the women drawn to that decision!
Oh my god is right. I didn’t know this was a trend and yet, I have in-laws who fits your description. I have 2 kids that I had to space due to unpaid leave. IOW, I had to save up vacation time and rebuild my status at work.
Even if that wasn’t the case...
Hasn't this been a thing for a long time, though? I know a few moms a generation above me who had paid careers and close pregnancies was their "get it over with all at once" strategy to get back on the ladder (issues there FOR SURE but this would be 15+ yrs ago). And for others who started having kids "late" it feels like the "only way" to get the number of kids they want in a shorter window.
Sure! I mean entire (harmful) ancient stereotypes exist on this (“Irish twins”). My point is that social media seems to have launched it into the stratosphere (or made it more visible, acceptable, aspirational) for a very specific group of people - white women. It’s not a new thing, but it’s certainly a “thing” right now and this was intended to tease out why that might be - maternal age, capitalism, instagram, subversive retro family nostalgia, whatever!
Restock videos. Especially the refrigerator ones. I need some words on their proliferation over on TikTok: the (specialized!) clear containers. The ASMR component. The cost/privilege of it all. The performative nature. The videos that JUST restock different kinds of ice. (!!!) And why I can't keep myself from watching anyway.
Yes - and the question I have been noodling on for a while is:
Why is it aspirational to have your home look like a retail store? (rows of tidy beverages and snacks)
I think this also aligns with some of the questions we were working through re: remodel culture, the market gaze, and the desire to make your kitchen look like a professional kitchen — restocking videos are making your fridge into a restaurant fridge, or, like, a vending machine fridge????
Do you think there’s a relationship between wanting your kitchen to look like a store or restaurant and wanting other parts of your home to look like a luxury hotel (bedroom, living room)or a spa (master bath)?
This conversation always reminds me of the scene in Downton Abbey where the Dowager Countess is flabbergasted by a new servant trying to serve the way they do at the Ritz (or whatever fancy hotel). Hotels were thought of (by that class) as a cheaper imitation of their own private homes. Homes were definitely not meant to imitate hotels!
Also having a (fully stocked) pantry the size of a small apartment. I guess it is a little bit of a post-pandemic prepping hangover as well as a display of wealth (when you post it to insta) but the house as supermarket / fortress phenomenon intrigues me
It has to, right? Looking to commercial enterprise for aesthetic inspiration, being so comfortable with the transactive nature of commerce that you want the same feeling in your home.
I think because people think it projects both abundance and organization, things the algorithm has taught us to prize.
ABSOLUTE ABUNDANCE
(which, I will say, if you're a parent who feels like you can't control other things — you CAN control the abundance in your fridge)
But also the abundance of a store is in tension with the minimalism of a curated boutique. Both sides feel connected to capitalism.
My personal theorem is: the fewer things in the store, the more each individual thing is going to cost!
Yes. The Netflix show The Home Edit from a few years ago was the first time I started to think about this. I think they even use language like "backstock" to refer to the extras of things like paper towels and canned goods, and since TikTok restocks, I feel like it's everywhere. Do we want homes to look like stores because the next consumerism step is to never leave the store? I admit, I do this in my closet. I try to use all those little merchandising tricks I learned in my retail days to fold my jeans in perfect stacks, style my outfits for the week on a separate rack, respace my hangers, dress a mannequin (dress form), etc. and try to "shop" my closet before buying something new. WHY? Why do we want our home to look like a store? Those little rows in our pantries and closets feel like a rich text.
I mean, I would live in a Costco if they would let me.
I followed the home edit instagram slightly before the Netflix show and slowly realized it gave me huge ick-Clea’s home and kids appeared frequently and the projected image of not a speck of dust anywhere, no single item ever out of place was bizarre in a deeply uncomfortable way. Of course instagram isn’t a reflection of real life but for everything in your house to be presented as basically antiseptic really felt like projection of some deep pathology.
Their Instagram has gotten rough to follow. Clea has clearly stepped back from doing so much of the content since her cancer diagnosis. And then when she does pop up, it kind of feels like it's all about her breast cancer and somehow she thinks people are unaware of breast cancer, but also weirdly performative and unrealistic (my grandmother had breast cancer, both my aunts, multiple friend's mothers and none were having their hair shaved for IG content)
Yes, Home Edit. Organizing and buying specific things to organize in. Organizing in colors and specific organizing aesthetics. Headbands and decanting everything into plastic bins.
Those fucking knotted headbands. I hate them, but why do they make me so angry?
I love rainbows- but sorting legos by color takes the cake😵💫🤯 In what world is that sustainable?!
My hugely attention deficient 9-year-old just spent the last couple of days doing this very thing. Does he generally play with legos? No. Does his brother? Not really. I think we have a billion legos as an attempt to assuage our parental guilt for how much time our kids spend playing video games, but whatever. Anyway, he spent hours on this task and was so happy when it was done. Is it sustainable? Maybe, given the aforementioned lack of use (lol) but we'll see. I can't IMAGINE doing this as a regular part of my homekeeping/maintenance.
The Home Edit is a VERY rich text. Especially if you followed them early on and have seen the transformation/ growth.
Yes! Especially because as the parent of three elementary-aged kids, I know absolutely none of that would last more than a few hours, tops. 😂 Introduces interesting questions on repetitive labor, who is this for, etc. Also? I can't deny it looks pretty.
My 6 year old loves watching cleaning and restocking videos, and it was actually a really interesting segue into teaching her some critical thinking skills around social media (what are they trying to get you to buy here?)
I am with your 6 year old! I am totally mesmerized by cleaning and restocking videos. I can literally watch hours of people cleaning their houses while sitting on my couch and ignoring the pile of laundry that has been sitting on my dining room table for days waiting to be folded. It's deeply soothing in a way I don't really understand and maybe I just need to get it out of my system like a stupid iphone game I'm addicted to?
I will add that I ONLY let her watch these with me, she does not have access to social media right now, nor will she for a long long time
No judgement here. No judgement. Do what you gotta.
I follow someone on Instagram (British man, can't think of his name right now) who duets with rich people videos and the first time he showed an ice restocking video... wow! Also, those ladies who have entire cabinets of flavored coffee syrups and powdered drink packets calling it 'water', no it's non carbonated pop, lady!
I love this guy!!!!! Shabazsays is the @
YES! So funny! He had one about a woman going to spray her menstrual blood on her plants (YES) and I literally screamed ;)
Omg SAME
I kept scrolling to ensure someone mentioned him and his making fun of IceTok! Soooo funny
I did not know this was a thing, and I am baffled. Ice????
You are not alone. The first time I flicked and saw "monthly ice restocking" as a post title I was deeply confused. I mean, I still am, but for other reasons now.
ICE!!! It's a whole THING!
I was drawn in by one that showed up on my IG feed last night. Ice made with coffee (one of my fave work breakfast places does it & I fully get that!), ice made with fruit purees, ice with different fruits cut in different shapes inside, ice made with milk (I think?), everything in different molds-not just your standard cubed ice! And, there were trays of it.
Thank you so much for explaining this so I don’t have to hunt down the content to get my head around WTF is “ice restocking.”
I wonder how much of that was pandemic driven, too. Influencers were home, clothing was... well it just got really weird/chaotic.... and the one thing people could fixate on was making their spaces tidy and bringing the calming store environment into their home where they didn't have to mask or worry. A lot of folks were also stockpiling more on some things due to supply chain issues and limiting store trips, so they inherently had more in their home to organize and manage than perhaps they did before. (Was the case for us!)
I have no idea about "restocking," but I got hooked on a company called GoCleanCo on Instagram in early 2020. It started as a home cleaning company in the Calgary area, and when the pandemic started, her business basically shut down. She started making home videos for her Instagram account to keep the name out there, and gave people tips on disinfecting, etc., and it took off from there. When I started following her on Instagram at the start of the pandemic, she had about 30,000 followers. She now has 2.4 MILLION and is sponsored by Procter & Gamble and other big cleaning-related companies.
I was so influenced by her!! I bought her mop and rags and recommended products and ebook...and don’t even use it. I’m a Dirty Person. I hope she is enjoying her financial success, because her astronomic rise is a marvel.
Me too -- mopping the floor is probably the one cleaning task I procrastinate doing the most. I bought the mop and like it, and while I can't say I use it regularly, or as regularly as I should, I probably do mop it more often now! lol I also bought the Aquablade system and while it's pricey, is it is good!
YES! Especially the ice making videos!
Yes!! Agreed.
Rich text: work slack emoji culture!
Why does every team lead but one have a custom emoji?
Is the :eyes: emoji being used sarcastically or sincerely?
DEAR GOD WHY does this otherwise very formal consultancy have a :humping: emoji??
My work takes me into the slack channels of all kinds of businesses and I. Have. Seen. Some. Things.
this comment just made me spit out my coffee a little, thank you
Why does everyone in my office use the "sweating turkey" gif as a reaction to almost everything? Why is there a "sweating turkey" gif on Microsoft Teams?!
Oh the Microsoft Teams emojis are very strange to me. Ha. Wow.
YES. The novel Several People Are Typing (written entirely in Slack messages) dives into the secret language of the reaction emoji. Highly recommend. I used to work with (and Slack!) the author, and I can trace the origin story of one very niche emoji's meaning back to its inception at a *different workplace* — a former colleague carried it here (she had left by the time I joined, and people were surprised that I immediately understood the meaning of the dusty stick)
The dusty stick . . . ? You can't just leave a cliff hanger like that!
omg I forgot about the dusty stick! This book absolutely killed me. I tried to tell my current colleagues about it but we use Teams and the difference between Teams and Slack cultures is so big as as to make them not even comparable platforms.
Loved this book!
please tell me it means stick as in carrot and stick but the stick is disused i have to know
The closest direct translation would be side-eye, but specifically towards bad puns, dad jokes, and the like. It is definitely done in a laughing-with-you way (the most common dusty stick recipients were generally well-liked).
YES! THIS! My work chat does not have a humping emoji, but it has very strange parameters on what gifs you can send. Like there are none from South Park, but lots of totally inappropriate Always Sunny, Archer, BoJack Horseman, Family Guy...
Please, come sit next to me. Right here is a nice spot and we can have a lovely chat. Wait just a sec while I see if my work chat has the :humping: emoji.
Lived this myself recently when I used this guy in Teams: 🫠. For me and my mum friends it means we are melting down, disappearing into a puddle of overwhelm. My colleague thought I meant I was feeling the heat.
if this interests you at all, or you have lived this particular world (nightmare?), i highly recommend the brilliant debut novel Several People Are Typing. I haven’t laughed so much and felt so seen in years. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54468020
Read that last year and it was a solid 3/5 stars for me, but I'm glad it found it's audience elsewhere as I'm always supportive of books doing something just a little weird with format!
💯💯💯
I'm cheating a bit because I too was trained as a cultural historian, BUT:
- Raw milk becoming a thing again (and it's strangely popular right now among TikTok influencers and Fundamentalist Christians - maybe a signifier of purity? Distrust in science? A return-to-nature sort of thing?)
- Mullets
- The narrowing of LinkedIn discourse - there's a particular style of communicating in a few categories ("Don't do this bad thing in an interview," "I was laid off but am grateful to my company nonetheless," "I'm delighted to share that...")
- Mums and garters - something I hadn't heard of until I moved to Texas
obsessed with the raw milk discourse — as someone notes below, it was a big Brooklyn moms thing but it's also such a huge thing amongst the ultra-conservative in Idaho, one of things (like anti-vaxxing) where the political spectrum really shows itself to be a circle
Back in my day, the early aughts that is, all the Bethesda and Chevy Chase folks were very much into raw milk. Perhaps it’s a case of their kids, following in the footsteps of their parents.
MULLETS. What!! IS!! HAPPENING?!?!!!
My mullet theory is that instead of "business in the front, party in the back" it's "masc in the front, femme in the back" queer signaling?
There's also been some interesting analysis of the fact that the mullet is tailor made for Zoom calls and remote work, because people only see your business front on camera!
as a uni student in the queer mullet camp- you're onto something. for some people it's an embracing both sides thing. i also had a friend cut her mullet into a fully short haircut and she said it felt like freeing herself from a last attempt at femininity, which made me took a look at myself!
I live in a college town and the mullets will not stop. All genders, no genders- mullets everywhere.
And the meaning of a mullet is so slippery - it used to be a hip-ish hair style (80s), then was associated with rural/lower class white culture, particularly in the south, then now it's part of pro sports culture, queer culture, hipster culture? And there's a relationship with the pandemic, too, since people weren't able to get in-person haircuts for so long and decided to don a mullet for Zoom calls?
Truly a wild and rich text of a haircut - not just belonging to the "redneck" stereotype.
Highly recommend this "history of the mullet" episode of Decoder Ring: https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2020/08/the-history-of-the-mullet
I was going to suggest this! A fascinating listen. They will need a sequel given the renaissance of the old short-long.
I have a 5 year old and see a lot of kids with mullets, and generally my assumption is it was a compromise for a parent who did not want to cut their kid's hair. At least the circa 90s rat tail hasn't come back?
I told my husband you all are saying mullets are making a comeback, and his response was "They weren't bad enough the first time??"
At home (dc) I do not really ever see mullets, but last week we were in Maine and I saw toddler mullets everywhere. Why?!
Lot of kpop stars with mullets a few years ago, many more now. https://www.koreaboo.com/news/not-drill-bts-jungkook-mullet-happening/
My 17 year old son got a mullet! They call it a "burst fade." Omg. It's 100% a mullet and he has senior pictures in a few weeks. Cannot WAIT for him to look back at it in 10 or 20 years.
Having hosted a reunion for a college hockey team with many players in the 80s, they fucking loved looking at their old photos with mullets. I hope such joy for all former mullet havers.
That’s really lovely!
My husband (and my son’s dad) had his own mullet in the 90s and does not enjoy the look back, but I think my son will.
My friend's 18 year old son has a mullet and I think about this too hahaha
Raw dairy was SUCH a thing in my mom world in North Brooklyn circa 15 years ago. There was a google group for customers of an Amish farm that delivered to all the usual suspect North Brooklyn neighborhoods. Buying raw dairy wasn't illegal, but it all had to be well-organized because one person would have to place an order with the only relative of the farmer who could go to a payphone. My son was in a Steiner school and the raw milk to anti-vaxxer pipeline is VERY real. This is indeed a massively rich text and I have much to say about it and should probably write something.
Same in suburban Atlanta in the mid-00's. You had to say the milk was for your pets for it to be legal in Georgia, and the holistic moms groups (FB group and IRL) were definitely anti-vax. Lots of muscle testing for "food sensitivity" too, hence the raw milk.
I'm from New England and went to college in TX and Mums and Garters were one of the MANY culture shocks I encountered. Also - Drill Teams, Debutantes and big "C" Christianity.
I grew up in Texas so I was definitely aware of mums, drill teams, debutantes, Christianity, but as I've lived other places I've realized just how messed up/ not normal across the US my school was. Two further examples: front yard signs to show off what activity your child was in (eg 3 foot high music note for choir, drill team figure, football helmet, etc with child's name on it), and on game day the drill team and cheerleaders had assigned football players that they had to bring treats to and decorate their locker. My husband was raised in the south and when I told him the football thing his jaw dropped.
My daughter was a cheerleader in MN, and the team had to bring buckets of cookies to the games and form two lines to hold out to the football players after the game while saying things like "great game!" The cheer coach was a former cheerleader at the school, so I assume they did that when she was on the team. I found it very retrograde, but my daughter didn't care so I didn't fuss. No decorating lockers.
I live in a suburb of Chicago (North Shore) and the yard signs for activities are a thing here, and was also in a suburb of Indianapolis where I lived before. I think the cheerleader thing happens here too.
Interesting. I don't recall seeing them in Wisconsin. Maybe it's a middle of the country + bigger city thing?
Signs are popular in the North Shore of Chicago and certain suburbs in MN (where I live now) BUT they are not those huge 3 ft high ones, or the ones that span your lawn (some people get those when they have a child/kid graduates from pics I've seen on FB). The ones I see are the size of political signs, i.e. noticeable but not over the top.
@Pam B, I lived in one suburb of Toronto where grad signs were not a thing but then moved to another where they are. They're also a modest size, like election signs, as you mentioned.
New England/NYC here and I never saw one of those signs before Covid and then they were really for graduation. I do recall seeing them in NE PA for football several years ago - post Friday Night Lights/Varsity Blues.
I think it's a particular kind of suburb thing- upper middle class, somehow seems to go along with the college stickers on cars thing.
That's all incredibly wacky. Were the cheerleaders assigned to provide sexual favors, too?
I *think* people would at least get assigned their boyfriend if he was on the team, but I don't know what happened if they broke up.
Mums and Garters is an entirely new thing to me. I love the new things I learn about in this community.
Yes I just had to Google this because we didn’t even have homecoming never mind all the TX-size trappings!
Never heard of Mums and Garters. I assumed it was a trend among moms/mums groups that had suddenly rediscovered nylon stockings and garter belts until I Googled. You learn something new every day...! (I'm Canadian.)
Homecoming garters are my guilty pleasure. They're fascinating! When I was very small, we lived in TX and my babysitter had one that I was obsessed with (this would have been in the mid 80's). I didn't even remember it until my mom told me after I rediscovered them in my 20's while traveling. If you've never seen one, please google homecoming garter (and then google large homecoming garter!)
A friend's mom (in the early aughts) was convinced that pasteurized milk somehow caused homosexuality. Because in her youth they didn't have pasturized milk and also didn't have so many gay people. That was a dinner conversation to remember. Couldn't decide whether to laugh, cry, or aspirate my food.
There's a lot of reasons being a public health professional is frustrating, and raw milk is one of them. Why?? Whyyyy is pasteurization a bad thing?? Anti-vax sentiment is a little more complicated, but the anti-science overlap of the raw milk and anti-vax individuals is fascinating. I know I've read something on this before, but I think about it often.
Aside from general distrust, there's the victim of their success thing going on it seems to me. I remember listening to a conversation between a coworker who was saying "I don't see what the problem is with unpasteurized milk: people don't get [disease] any more." while another (whose elderly mother had been a rural nurse) practically screamed "because we pasteurize our milk!"
I think a related thing may be the distance from the production? I have a colleague who owns cattle near an apple orchard which gets a lot of families from the nearby city. She's had a number of weekend apple pickers (who are parking on her private land, btw) come up and insist that they should be able to buy raw milk from her.
She has beef cattle.
People simply have no clue the amount of work that goes into making our modern food and making it safe.
Edited to say: it wasn't just their inability to spot a dairy vs beef cow. Once she told them that those were beef cattle, they still asked to buy raw milk.
I worked at an ice-cream shop that was part of a working dairy farm and the family who owned the farm were so grossed out by all the asks for raw milk (as well as the attempts to just wander through their working farm with thousand pound animals about!!) My dad, who grew up on a working dairy farm, is also befuddled by the trend.
There's definitely a lack of exposure thing.
I will say I had a childhood friend whose father was a dairy farmer who definitely drank raw milk -- and I think, decades later, may have capitalized on the market for it in some way.
Oh yeah, clearly there are some who have! And both my dad and the family running the farm I worked on probably both occasionally drank raw milk themselves. But I think viewing it as a "superior" product that someone would drive far and ask for is the befuddling part for them.
Like when I saw someone make the case for not vaccinating against polio because "we never see polio anymore!"
Back in the late 90s I was into raw milk. For me, it was the idea that pasteurization killed off the "good" parts of the milk in addition to the pathogens because it was overly processed (which meant that even organic milk was not as good since more often than not it was ultra-pasteurized which was even worse). So it was the sense that it was healthier. Thinking back on it, there was also the appeal of the "purity" of it...you did not just buy milk from some faceless big agra company out to make money (and ruining the environment) but from a local farmer who you could trust. There was also a level of community around it - we were a bunch of crunchy moms coming together to do something fairly subversive (I don't think it was legal.) We coordinated via a private email list and would come together on pick-up days at the drop-off location. It made us part of a smaller community.
I have learned to have a lot of compassion for that version of me who was just trying to navigate being a new mom in a scary world.
Reading through the replies to this prompt I keep thinking “Really? That’s a thing? THAT’S a thing?” I feel old lol
The raw milk thing has also been taken over by the "wellness" people who still consumer dairy. As an aside, just before Covid I visited a dairy farmer here in NY and he said he flat out refuses to sell anyone raw milk because people do not transport it correctly and if they are not farmers or food scientists, they have zero good sense about how quickly the milk can go off with improper storage.
Yeah I know a few dairy farmers and none of them will sell it to people who ask (even if their own family's occasionally consume some).
I second mullets!! WHY are they back? Who told them that was okay? (I have strong negative feels, can you tell?)
My family drank raw milk a lot when my kids were small. Looking back, it's true I first heard about it as an option from the anti-vaxxers in my community who also all seemed to be local/regional food fanatics. But it was also true that we lived next door to a small, organic, family dairy farm starting when my oldest was 13 months old and they let us buy raw milk by the gallon super cheap right off the bulk tank. It was the cheapest way for us to get really good quality milk. My oldest resisted weaning, but he would drink raw milk mixed with a little maple syrup to mimic the sweetness of breast milk and it didn't ever give him digestive trouble so it was a win-win for me.
Yes...I also think that the discourse around it was different back in the 90s and early aughts then it is today when it seems like everything has completely jumped the shark. Even the anti-vaxxers back in the 90s just felt more overly cautious rather than conspiracy driven (at least in my circles.) It was seen as more of a personal decision that each family made rather than a fight against a conspiracy of doctors who wanted to kill (!) babies.
I do wonder how much of this is driven by social media and how it completely shifted how the conversations were held. Back then, we were moms who came together on email lists or bulletin boards trying to figure out this stuff together, sharing what we were learning as we went. Now, with social media, it is about finding the right influencer who has figured it out and can give us the answers and tell us what we need to do.
Milk is definitely a rich text. For any London (U.K.) based culture study readers, the Wellcome Collection has an exhibition on milk in the last century on at the moment which is excellent and covers So. Many. Ideas. / is generally fascinating.
Within the arts community, there were always mullets, often in the form of shags, mixies (yes that's a pixie mullet), or fauxhawks...or Edgars.
This reminds me of a GREAT article in LA TImes https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/image/story/2023-08-10/the-edgar-haircut-all-the-rage-among-the-foos
I have a friend who is editor of an agricultural journal, they just published something earlier this year about legislation of raw milk https://ambrook.com/research/legislation/legalize-raw-milk-wisconsin-dairy-safety
The LinkedIn posts for sure. Ninety percent of my feed reflects some the following norms: the posture must be grateful, thrilled, and/or inspired. If personal circumstances are relevant, the poster must mention that family/personal life is primary, but then thank or declare themselves inspired by an employer/manager/mentor for supporting work/life balance. If the post is about a professional accomplishment or work function, the poster must be grateful for employer/manager/mentor/team support and contributions, thrilled by the honor of being noticed or allowed to participate, and/or inspired by everyone they met in the process or at the function.
I'm grateful for the few people that still post interesting articles.
Grew up in Texas and I'm sure SOME grad student SOMEWHERE has written a masters thesis on Mums, gender, and class.
Mullets never went away—they’re just social class signifiers. And I love them and wish there were more of them. Great topic!!!!!
Oh, oh, I love this prompt. I just spent a week doomscrolling and writing about this so it's top of mind for me, but a rich text I think about a lot are the zillions of tiktoks under the #GutHealing, #GutTok, #GutHealth, etc. tags, especially the "before and after gut healing" videos that focus on bloating, like this one: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8F9vT8Q/.
I'd loooove to hear Virginia Sole-Smith's take on these, too. (If she's discussed this kind of content already and someone could direct me to that work, I'd be very thankful!)
Oh god. Even just the rise of the use of the word gut!
Exactly. It's (often, though not always) diet culture, rebranded!
I had a coworker a few years ago who was trying to “heal her own gut biome” and taking all these supplements and stuff… but not seeing any doctors. Western medicine has issues for sure, but if it’s been going on for months/years like she said? Please see someone! She was Instagram coursing her way through it and it stressed me out everytime. (And she talked about it a lot.)
It seems like a catch all for when we don't really understand something! "Ah, yes, it's the gut biome"
This feels to me like so many other versions of an attempt to exert control where you can when so much is out of your control (like Emma said below: see diet culture). And since actual comfort/discomfort in your human torso is so ambiguous you can feel (in your gut!) like you have succeeded. Or if you haven't, it's because you just need another tweak (or to try harder).
My (Gen Z) sister banned our mom from saying the phrase “gut biome” in her presence!
Genius!! I wish I could do that for all my social media channels 😂
Perhaps check out Christy Harrison’s work, too? The Wellness Trap is her latest book but she speaks to similar content in other mediums as well.
Yes Virginia’s podcast episode with Christy talks about this! It’s called “Elimination Diets Are Not A Panacea https://open.substack.com/pub/virginiasolesmith/p/elimination-diets-are-not-a-panacea?r=f48aw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you!! I will definitely check out her work.
I want to know why everyone in my elder millennial orbit is suddenly into astrology. And I’m curious why it’s the same people who are quick to tell you how unscientific Meyers Briggs is and scrupulously read Emily Oster for parenting advice, and then turn around to post nonironically about Saturn’s Return.
So, what’s up with calling people mother? The way it reclaims and upends and makes meaningless and makes sexy and knights with utmost power the title of “mother” -- I love it and it makes me uncomfortable and I have started to say it and it seems to say so much about our whole motherless overmothered motherfucked world.
Also maybe this is totally obvious but I really want to write an entire book on Swifties. The true-crime level of analysis into all Taylor does, the cultish devotion -- the proliferation of the chants and ceremonial objects (fship bracelets) and lore and obsession with ritual numbers, the in-group kindness, the rampant, rabid bullying, the brute economic power, the way Swiftiness dovetails into a certain white girl entitlement and ferocity and lack of awareness. I could write a book actually just on Gaylors omg.
When I learned about Gaylors I had one thought: this is exactly like QAnon. Luckily someone else wrote about it: https://www.salon.com/2022/10/31/taylor-gaylor-swift-qanon-conspiracy-esoteric-writing/
This is fucking fascinating!! Thank you for sharing
Would read either of those books in a heartbeat!! Also very interested in the rich texts of the narrative Taylor Swift creates around her self/image, and super specifically the re-recordings and the vault tracks.
Yesss so interested in this too!
Whoops lol sorry to crash this thread. I lost this comment and reposted I’m a mess
I have some thoughts about this!!! Lots of my friends who left the church then got into tarot and astrology — myself included — and i think there is a thrill in the “occult”. A little transgression, as a treat! That’s one of the initial sparks, but what I think keeps people coming back is the way these (plus personality tests etc) are mirrors to the self. Where you used to perhaps listen to a sermon on a sunday and do some introspection within a rigid framework of sin and forgiveness— well, now you get a reading and have a tidy little pagan framework to think about big ideas for thirty minutes before going on with your life.
This sounds dismissive, it’s not! I like tarot & i think these new age things are generally more healthy way to engage with the self than evangelical xtianity is.
This comment is getting long, but humans love to be told about themselves, and we love a mirror! And we love a ritual! In the absence of overarching social rituals, we create them!
I have so many thoughts on this, as someone who absolutely has that 'witch thing' going on in my family and both of my sisters (they're twins, and they're Geminis) read tarot, but it's also a whole other thing in which my mom and my grandmother (who is now 90, and very devoutly Catholic) have been recollecting stories of my great aunts/uncles who were very creative, very *different* types and were also working-class Mexicans and ended up in institutions. Trying to reconcile what their lives were like, and being unable to find any other suitable framework except slightly occult explanations. My tia and tio weren't crazy; they were something very different than the mainstream.
oooh thank you for sharing!! my comment was v focused on my own white exvangelical millennial experience, a v whitewashed understanding of this stuff —but historic looks at the “occult” & what it was used for, and the intersection with Catholicism and non-white communities— that’s a completely different experience! And really important to think about, especially when you look at historic understandings of mental illness or neurodivergence. A rich text!
And also tarot!
Also witches and witchcraft- I was looking through the book section at a JoAnn's, and fully half the books included some tie-in to witchcraft- and these are craft books. Where did that come from?
YES I would also like to know why! And I have to say, I'm kind of drawn to it and I don't know what my deal is -- I need to think about it.
In my network, it's mostly former evangelicals riding hard for astrology. It's externalizing identity formation to a cosmic force we can observe.
YESSSSSSSS
Rich text: capsule closet/minimalism/de clutter movement (along the lines of the all neutral personality less spaces).
Definitely things have been said about this one before.
So I’ve flirted with this before but am super psyched/ready for what I see as a trend towards maximalism. That said, I remember seeing something like “millenials are minimalists because all of our parents and grandparents are hoarders” AND YES.
Can concur - I'm an elder GenX here with Silent Gen hoarder parents and the stuff just makes me crazy
I’ve brought up the topic of Swedish Death Cleaning to my mom, who was thankfully receptive. But the biggest problem lies with my in-laws, who currently have five acres of “treasures” in possession. 😬
My mom got SO offended when I mentioned it to her. I didn't back down on it, though and now she's starting carting bags of stuff to the thrift store, almost as much as she brings home bags of stuff from the thrift store. She's not a hoarder, she's more like a magpie. I find myself doing similar things the older I get, but man.
I have so many hot takes on this. If anyone can recommend some longreads on this I'd be thrilled
Re capsule wardrobe I thought this piece was interesting! https://open.substack.com/pub/virginiasolesmith/p/are-capsule-wardrobes-just-for-thin?r=f48aw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I want to hear one of your hot takes!
my current hot take is that aspirational minimalism and pseudominimalism that we see from the tech bros and instagrammers is mostly supported by other people's labor (.e.g take out or restaurant food, hiring people to clean/fix/do things instead of keeping the supplies to do it yourself), requires a lot of privilege and is still very consumer driven.
I am fascinated by my own minimalist desires and have blogged about it a few times. https://oldbiddyblogging.blogspot.com/2019/02/minimalist-dreams.html
https://oldbiddyblogging.blogspot.com/2022/06/tiny-houses.html
Oh, these are my favorite subjects. I actually find a really important continuity among all the bullet points on the list--and it's (Conservative) Women With Money. It is the easiest slice of culture to dismiss as trivial (Pumpkin Spice lattes, anyone?), but it informs our wider cultural norms and values in really deep ways. These are the "homey" values we raise our children in (Momfluencers), the styles we invite into our *homes* (shiplap & the Gaines), our experience of our own bodies (Peleton, Goop, diet culture...). It's what books are available and what our schools teach. It's how wealth concentrates (from the marriage markets of debutantes to sorority-frat relations). I 100000000% see this as all the SAME text.
Inspired by the RushTok dive, I also have a working theory about Mainstream Traditional Gender + Conspicuous Consumption as a *countercultural* movement, in a generation that is more queer, more socialist, more likely to unionize, with more experience in activism (climate change + gun violence esp.), than previous ones. We see so much 'content' about buying things, and things we've bought. So many faces that all look the same. Sometimes it shows up like 'tradwives' and sometimes it shows up like college kid's OOTDs. It's the Y2K fashion, which millennials and gen x remember as profoundly misogynistic. It's the hunger for good ol boy country. It's extremely white supremacist. It feels dangerous to me.
This would be a good piece, Amanda. Just sayin’
This is so interesting!! I can already tell I’ll be mulling this over for weeks
If anything, the timing makes it more suspect (and reactionary) than anything.
Other pieces of this text that fascinate me:
-Kathryn Jezer-Morton has written a lot about FALL & Cozy Season. As it's the final days of August, I'm seeing so much PUMPKIN content, and the Influencer Publishing Calendar is pulling us further and further away from nature. Why are we obsessed with fall??
-Contemporary evangelizing is *so subtle.* I can read "Mega Church" or "Mormon" from 100 miles away in Ballerina Farm, in the Gaines, in so much momfluencer content, but my sister in law misses the invisible Jesus signaling. To her, it's just "normal" mainstream culture.
-Air Fryers are table top convection ovens with a basket instead of shelves. InstaPots are decent slow cookers. These are not miracle brand new gadgets. They're just effective old things. Why do we need things to be *new*?
This! So well articulated, thank you for putting into words what I was feeling but couldn’t quite grasp.
“Little treat” culture against the backdrop of late-stage capitalism! Not a judgment against little treats, I am a big fan of getting myself little treats! Like this is one of those things where on first glance I think, yeah, a little iced coffee and a pastry can make a huge difference on a crummy day, it’s not that deep. But then, within the walls of the internet - aka TikTok - it can feel like an interesting whiplash between critiques of capitalism and our current landscape and “Starbies” runs. (Which also…has there been a recent Starbucks renaissance? Or is it just that I grew up in the PNW which went through a proud anti-Starbucks, support-your-local-coffee-shop push?) I don’t know, I have a feeling this intersects with a whole lot of other consumerism texts folks are mentioning.
Here's my take from me plus my GenZ kids: everything is bad and bad for you and makes you feel bad (see also ChickfilA, WalMart, etc), so why not go to Starbs and have basically a milkshake or delicious coffee little treat?
Galvanize does some really interesting research on moderate white women and this is absolutely the outlook of the group uncertain individualists. YOLO isn't so much hedonism, it's more the world is burning, I'll never afford a house, might as well take that vacation/have spay day/treat myself to little treats.
“Everything is bad for you and makes you feel bad” — oof this resonates. This totally makes sense to me, and makes me think of all the other instances where individuals are left weighing the impact of systems-level issues.
Exactly. Especially with Gen Z, since it's basically all they've known, and they are aware of the systems issues that I KNOW I wasn't as a cishetero white Gen Xer.
As a millennial, can definitely remember my first exposure to a lot of these issues coming in a “personal responsibility” package—personal carbon footprint, etc!