Where Did All the Pussy Hats Go?
The madness is quickening, the resolutions are breaking, only one accessory can save us.
Hi friends!
How did so much happen since I last sat my ass down to write this newsletter? The year is young, but the news cycle and the consortium of our algorithm-addled brain worms have already coalesced to create a fresh potpourri of insanity and, well, it’s not smelling good.
The past couple of weeks have given us: a water cup stampede, relentless water cup think pieces, the genocide trial and 100 day mark in the Israel-Hamas war, the hootenanny of political dysfunction that was the Iowa caucus, a Houthi pirate thirst trap, the demise of Che Diaz, and 47 new aesthetic trends that will be in a landfill come June.
That’s far from an exhaustive list, but how much can we take? At this point, the only Jew tunnel worth discussing is the one I’m digging so I have somewhere to go when I need a break from the internet.
I am proud to report that I made it a full 17 days into “dry January” before the Unhingement demanded I stop torturing myself with mental clarity and once again know peace. With the vibes here in America whispering “doomsday prep,” there are way worse things than smoking a little weed.
We can’t all be Martha, some of us are Snoop, and in 2024 we allow ourselves the grace to accept that. If those weeks of mental clarity gave me anything, it was too many hours to think about the irrelevance of being a virtuous little bitch about my habits in these times we find ourselves enduring.
According to my primary source of truth, deranged meme account sponcon, most people quit their resolutions 18 days in, so I was just ahead of the trend, right where I like to be. This wasn’t a resolution for me, per se, but it was my first experiment in my resolution to bring my attention span back from fruit fly to human lady.
I suspect that watching tiktoks stoned has been rotting my beautiful brain (so fun though, highly recommend) but my experiment was inconclusive because I kept soberly watching tiktoks and didn’t exactly have a control. I did, however, finish a book that had been languishing on my nightstand since early December and then read half of a new novel. Since good ol’ book readin’ is a valuable rubric by which to measure the success of this endeavor, and those two halves make a whole, a win is a win.
Time is silly, but this weekend marks seven years since the women’s marches, when millions of us took to the streets the day after Trump’s inauguration, many sporting the accessory of the season — the hauntingly pink pussy hat. It was the single biggest day of protest in American history and no one got arrested since the fashion police took the day off.
Things were simpler back then — we had yet to actually endure the Trump presidency, covid was just a glimmer in a bat’s eye, anyone with a uterus could still get an abortion if necessary — and we somehow managed to agree that this man was bad and peacefully, powerfully got together to shout about it.
This was before he even did the terrible (treasonous?) shit he has now spun into democracy-destroying lore believed by a massive chunk of this country’s population. This was before virtue signaling made the transition from an occasional display of outrage to a mandatory ask of any person or corporation with a social media profile. And, most importantly, this was before everyone’s opinions on … everything … became so extreme and divisive that there is no way we could get that many people in one place around one issue so peacefully that years out the biggest unsolved mystery from the day is: where are the hats?
The MAGA hat managed to survive the era. I feel like people are still wearing them? Wouldn’t know, I’m a Canadian-born coastal elite who has literally never seen one in person. But the endurance of that hat’s ability to both divide and unite with its stark simplicity and ugly typeface defies any trend cycle I’ve ever seen.
But what became of the pussy hats? They’re not being worn, clearly. I have never seen one in a thrift store or charity shop. I don’t have one because I simply would never, but I know some of you do, so where are you keeping it?
This winter, I yearn to see someone’s auntie wearing one to walk the dog. I want to go to a coffee shop and see an elderly millennial pull one from her tote bag on her way out the door. The way things are going, we need visual hope, a signifier to unite us, and it seems that the humble pussy hat is the only one we have?
Also open to more gender-inclusive merch suggestions but with Biden looking more and more like Joan Rivers and the way he’s handling … everything … it’s gonna have to be something anti-Trump to really gain traction. Let’s not make more work for ourselves when we already have the pussy hats made and they’re just waiting to be resurrected. It feels like the natural fit to me.
After a thorough process that included listening to a podcast a friend sent me even though two men scream-talking about tech is my waking nightmare, I have decided that I cannot and will not let the Nazis displace me from my home here on Substack. I love writing this newsletter and the admin of moving it would annoy me so much that the forces of evil would win.
Plus, since having a good noodle on it, I’m pretty sure that Substack HQ is hiding behind free speech because they don’t want to pay the huge amount of money proper content moderation would require. I have spent over a decade in a codependent professional relationship with these platforms and I have seen and heard some shit, even on the platforms you wouldn’t expect. Dealing with the dark side of content is hard and takes a lot of resources and I’m guessing they crunched the numbers and realized losing a few big fish would cost them less. Most of you read this in your inbox anyway, so hey, it is what it is? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hope you’re staying cozy, wherever you are! And to my beloved readers in Australia who are enjoying an ozone-free summer, soak up some sun for the rest of us. Have a great weekend and I will try and write to you soon before it all spirals too far, because we know it will, but at least we have each other and a compassionate early end to our new years resolutions to get through it all.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz