If you’ve been called “basic” for enjoying fall, you may be entitled to financial compensation. This isn’t actually true, but I wish it were. I’d be a billionaire.
Every few years, social media decides to make fun of people for something perfectly normal or harmless. It’s an endless cycle of something being enjoyable, then finding out it’s getting roasted on Twitter until it eventually stops being “cringe.” What if we just . . . didn’t do that?
The trends that are being enjoyed (and thus crapped on) seem to be enjoyed by women mostly. While I could write a whole book on social media’s sexism hidden beneath making fun of “Karens” or suburban trends, I will stick to the one that applies to me.
What is wrong with enjoying fall? Do you people not like fun?
I used to buy into this trend of calling things “tacky” or “cheugy” just because people purchased a few too many pieces of “It’s fall, y’all” decor. I enjoyed the “Christian Girl Fall” aesthetic ironically. I’d repost things making fun of the quintessential Christian Girls in their brown leather riding boots, chunky knit scarves and those fake Gucci belts from Amazon everyone had in 2019.
To a certain extent, I felt like I was making fun of myself: I wear sweaters! I put filters on my photos! But at some point, I realized that the people making fun of Christian Girls weren’t being tongue-in-cheek, and I wasn’t really either.
After retweeting or sharing, I still felt like I was above the people who were just being enthusiastic; they bought gingham throws and pumpkin tea lights for their apartments. I was cooler; instead of enjoying things and spending maybe $20 total on some serotonin, I was lying in the dark with my 15-year-old duvet, laughing at strangers. I wasn’t like other girls!
Putting down others for being seemingly “too normal” helps you feel special when in reality, you’re just another bitter loser who’s chronically online. You just have a faux sense of intellectualism simply because you don’t buy into harmless trends. You aren’t smarter for not enjoying mainstream things – which is still difficult for my former emo, Tumblr soft-grunge self to believe. Thankfully, my superiority complex seems to be in remission.
My ironic enjoyment eventually became actual enjoyment; I like wearing cozy oversized sweaters. I like wearing plaid flannels. I like taking pictures in pumpkin patches. And, God, what is wrong with that? At what point did we decide that enjoying simple things was so embarrassing?
Most fall haters wanted to criticize women without being called out for sexist remarks, so they hid behind the guise of critiquing consumerism. But as every leftist will tell you when you call them out for enjoying Marvel, there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.
Now, I know the “Christian Girl Autumn” debate died down after the original 2019 tweet, it still haunts me. Every year, men post about women drinking pumpkin spice lattes or only wearing warm tones in fall.
I opened Facebook (first mistake) in the year of our Lord 2022 to find a plethora of friends tagging their boyfriends and husbands in these memes, saying: “This is so me! He hates it haha.” Women are reposting this content to make fun of themselves, and some of them don’t realize they’re being mocked.
My sister in Christ, why aren’t you instead dunking on the ill-fitting bootcut jeans and Iron Man t-shirt he’ll wear in all of your cute fall photo shoots? We are desensitized to the disdain some men have for women enjoying themselves.
So, for the love of God and every Christian Girl (who may not even be Christian, like myself), remove the word “basic” from your lexicon, edgelord. Please just let people enjoy things. Buy a Halloween-themed Snoopy blanket and drink a pumpkin cream cold brew. You’ll feel better, I promise.
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Alexandria Darmody (she/they) was the editor-in-chief for the Journal in fall of 2022. She graduated with a degree in journalism along with an FTVP minor. She's also written for the Webster-Kirkwood Times and was involved with the university's speech and debate team.
