As the cooler days roll in and the leaves begin to slowly but surely change, the feeling of fall settles in. It’s most iconic indicator of the season is surely pumpkin. The often bright orange crop elicits a feeling of warmth, comfort foods, Halloween and thanksgiving, and thick knit sweaters. Although another staple has seemed to set in on recent culture which is most notably marked by a shift in the franchise Starbucks menu. With the turn of September, a notable addition of pumpkin (as well as other fall flavored drinks) are added to the menu. Accommodating this change is a rise of systematically making fun of white girls and their obsession with pumpkin spice. So what is the big deal with Pumpkin Spice? Why does making a simple series of shallow jokes matter when there are lines of white girls at every pumpkin spiced venue?
It seems no matter what a girl likes, she is always the butt of some deprecating joke on how dumb or ditzy or boring she is. The intelligence and individualism of each female is subverted by a blanket joke on some generalized characteristic shared by most girls. The last thing anyone wants is another girl who wears leggings, what next, a girl wearing comfortable, warm shoes in a season of cold weather?!
Female identifying persons enjoy life to the fullest, so be it that there are pumpkins in everything. Girls fall into this terrible trap where they are teased for liking the same things as everyone else (pumpkin spice, uggs, yoga pants) yet when they like things that are not the norm they’re cut off by “gatekeepers” who keep girls out of male dominated fields (artisanal beverages, foodie culture, etc.) Where is the win for girls, when can they comfortably exist in enjoying themselves which causes no harm to anyone (and being butthurt about the idea that women are taking up male space does not count).
The answer lies in the subversion of these jokes. They depend on undermining women, on belittling a group of marginalized people. Without paying attention to the past, there is no consequence associated. The affiliation of pumpkin spice to basic white girls is one, on the basis of often times appropriated African American Vernacular English and the colonialism involved in the importation of spices to the Western World.
The spice trade was an immense and global trading system that lasted and sustained many countries in Africa and Asia. This network was disturbed by the violent takeover of these countries by colonial European powers. These power shifts exposed more spices such as nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon to the West as well as making them more readily available. As spices saturated the culture of these countries in Europe and in the development of the U.S., they became an essential part of cuisine. Now, the misplaced association of white people with certain spices is artificially displaced from the toil of indigenous peoples. It has now reached the point where the highlight of white girls is cinnamon flavorings that make up most of “pumpkin spice” and the valuable flavors of vanilla is associated with faint of heart white folk.
There are deeper, underlying tones of racism and sexism in pumpkin spice jokes. These microaggressions are, in fact, merely “micro-” issues in comparison to the carnage that the world experiences, to the extreme acts of violence and the blatant verbal racism and sexism that still permeates media and our culture. However, the existence of these issues do not diminish the fact that these jokes are wrong. The basis of these jokes play on subtler oppression on the basis of race and gender. These issues need to be highlighted for there to be a change which in this case comes with a simple solution: get better jokes.
Comedy is often times considered a light-hearted, easy-going form of expression. Comedians are often seen as abstract in their involvement in politics and heavy hitting topics, however this is entirely untrue. As shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, and The Colbert Report have proven, comedy can be a means of subliming current issues, of bringing to light the wrongs in the world in a way people can understand and not have to be depressed about. Jokes have power, and every word no matter how funny, shapes society and the views that people generally have. When rape jokes are made, it subverts the idea that rape is a bad thing, and when jokes against white girls with pumpkin spice products are made, it belittles them and objectifies the colonial takeover of Asian countries whose prolonged suffering is now normative for white people.
White girls are not the simple, fall-loving over generalization of an entire gender. The term "such a white girl" is to perpetuate an underlying system of oppression and sustain an overtone of white male superiority. Food has no gender. Spices and seasons are simply things to enjoy, and jokes shouldn’t ride on the feelings and history of marginalized groups. So to every white girl, women, man, and person, enjoy that pumpkin spice latte, for everyone deserves to enjoy a delicious beverage without the obtuse criticisms of the fragile male egotism that perseveres through culture as a weed in the winter.
