Why Everyone Should Hate Fall as Much as I Do

Most of my friends have heard this all before. I hate fall. 

My friends also know that's inaccurate hyperbole.  I don't hate it. (I save actual hate for winter.) When I talk about my not-actual dislike of the season, it's more about the end of summer, the food, the dislike of the hype, and the endless social media memes.  In fact, since the advent of social media, the hype is what annoys me the most.

And of course, my friends rightly say, "Rachel, shut up and let people like what they like. Stop acting like a whiny pick-me girl. Liking summer better doesn't make you better than anyone else."

And of course, you're right, That's not what this post is about.

Today I want to talk about the aspect of the season I truly take issue with, and it's high time the world woke up to it.

Over the years, social media have driven (yes, media is a plural noun) an image of the season into all our heads - and there is something insidious about it. When August comes to a close, the memes begin to fill the internet about sweaters and boots, pumpkin spice, Halloween, autumn leaves, and crisp air. (I take huge issues with that last one. Apples are crisp. Doritos are crisp. Air has no texture. It's gaseous not solid. If your air is crisp, then we need to contact the EPA.) The images vary a little, but they run on the same theme. There are colorful trees, farms, and country roads. The people in these memes are immaculately dresses in plaid shirts, designer sweaters, and boots. The homes featured are always decorated to excess.  

Fall is no longer a season. It's a lifestyle brand. Like anything else, our corporate overlords have taken a pleasant and popular idea, and commodified it.

What I see in our culture is no longer a preference for weather conditions, but as an aspirational lifestyle. We don't derive our pleasure in the season by enjoying the weather and seeing some leaves on the trees.  The pleasure comes from some kind of mythical dream of what fall is supposed to be.  It's about being one of those beautiful people posing on hay bales in an apple orchard wearing sweaters and sipping pumpkin coffee.  

In the world of social media, every day from the first of September to the first of December is filled with mild-but-cool air, no insects, brilliant leaf displays, and sunshine. These conditions make it conducive to engage in apple picking, pumpkin picking, harvest fairs, and hayrides. (The truth is the weather is still hot in peak apple season and can turn cold and rainy when November hits.) Now The Pumpkin Industrial Complex is looking at your fall-loving social media posts with dollar signs in their eyes.

Imagine this. You are looking at your Instagram feed and you see your favorite influencer in an apple orchard or a pumpkin patch.  She is a white woman dressed in an adorable sweater, a plaid scarf, and a beautiful pair of boots. Her heterosexual white partner wears a plaid flannel shirt and rugged-but-stylish work boots. She cradles a pumpkin spice latte in her hands.  She poses next to a pile of pumpkins, or on a ladder at an apple tree, or next to a hay wagon. The post informs you the sweater is from J. Crew, the scarf is from Old Navy, and the boots are from Amazon. His shirt is from H&M and his sturdy boots are from Urban Outfitters. The caption also mentions how much she loves her Starbucks PSL.

First, let's talk about the apple orchard. I'm all for supporting small family farms, but is agritainment true support of a small farm? When I go to the barn on weekends in the fall, I pass a few orchards and farm festivals. Most of them are gigantic operations. The apple trees are are only a part of a large complex of garden centers, "country stores" and food concessions, sometimes with accompanying bars, wine shops, breweries, and restaurants. There is one farmers' market and garden center in particular that has a large ongoing "fall festival" throughout September and October with carnival rides and a corn maze. One of its main activities is pumpkin picking. This contrived activity consists of a hayride to the pumpkin patch, which isn't an actual pumpkin patch, but a field where someone spread pumpkins around on the ground. Customers can pretend they are harvesting pumpkins, but are merely picking them up out of the dirt in a show of harvesting them. 

I'm sure most legitimate apple farms would prefer not to have their apples harvested by people who see farm labor as a pleasant day outing.  Farms need workers willing to pick until the end of the day and not until the kids are bored. I know many farms depend on immigrant labor and ten years of crackdowns on undocumented workers may make pickers harder to come by, but how many farms are willing and able to provide other forms of entertainment in order to get more labor? Families don't want to only pick apples. They want to buy cider doughnuts, go on hayrides, and feed goats. Does charging customers parking fees to do free labor make up for the added expense of keeping them occupied once they are bored with picking apples (or are tired of the bugs, the heat, and the mud)?

So to begin with, we are opening our wallets at the farm - or the farm simulations - on apples, pumpkins, hayrides, pony rides, food, face painting, and food pellets at the petting zoo. These farms (or garden centers pretending to be farms) have made money off your desire to have some kind of authentic rustic experience.

Furthermore, it's the people in the cities and the suburbs heading out to the farms (or pseudo-farms). This requires driving.  Oil companies now have a way to make up for the post-summer-travel slump. People will pile into their rugged, gas-guzzling, off-road-capable (although they rarely-to-never go off road) SUVS.  Before they hit the road they have to fill that giant tank full of fossil fuels. The will burn most of it traveling all that way to pick those apples and pumpkins. So we not only spend a fortune on gas, but the oil companies profit while the planet burns.

Now let's talk about that cute fall outfit in that Instagram photo. It is fully on-trend and sponsored by the fast fashion brands the influencer is wearing. The retail giants are happy to peddle their latest fashions made by exploited workers in Asia that are shipped all over the globe using more fuel. Let's not forget the exploited workers in the Amazon warehouses here in this country. Next year the new trends will take over, or the cheap clothes will fall apart, and that Instagram outfit will be in a landfill. 

Finally, there is that pumpkin spice latte. Pumpkins are only harvested in the fall, but pumpkin pie spice is available all year. Even if the specific spice blend isn't available all year, one can always buy cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg. Spiced coffee isn't that special. The only reason it's special is the scarcity. A pumpkin spice latte is only available at certain times of the year, so that "get-them-before-they're-gone mentality kicks in. Starbucks is the leader in this movement and it dominates the globe, exploiting labor both in its stores and on the coffee plantations around the globe.

Then there is the horror that is Halloween. The horror isn't the ghosts and monsters. The horror is the waste and the expense. The Spirit of Halloween stores begin occupying any available empty retail space in August. They flood the market with disposable costumes and plastic decorations.

Halloween is second only to Christmas is spending. Last year Americans spent $10.6 billion on Halloween.  This includes human costumes, pet costumes (do I need to say more about this one?) decorations, greeting cards, candy, and haunted attractions.  How much of the average person's budget is sent down the drain on these items?  Some adults want a new costume every year and children outgrow last year's costumes.  Cheap decorations fall apart and need to be replaced. Greeting cards are read and tossed once the Thanksgiving planning starts. Let's not forget these costumes and decorations come at a massive human and environmental cost in manufacturing and shipping.

Years ago I watched a TV where Suze Orman helped a family get its budget under control. She started out by going to Walmart with the family and assessing how much unnecessary stuff they were buying. It was Halloween and the mother was filling her cart with new decorations. Orman promptly tossed it all out. I know this is borderline shaming people for avocado toast and lattes, but if the average consumer Halloween budget is over $100 every year, it seems those expenses can be put to better use and generate less waste. 

Marketers have figured out how to commodify using three specific propaganda techniques. It's all quite clever and devious. 

First, it's no accident the Halloween decorations are in the stores when there is still a month of summer left. Christmas, the only spending holiday bigger than Halloween, starts the retail season once Halloween is over. Rather than make fall go from the Autumnal Equinox to Thanksgiving, the retail season is August through Halloween.  This allows an extra month of fall spending and it doesn't cut into Christmas spending.

Next, marketers capitalize on the finite aspects of the season and put consumers in the scarcity mindset. Pumpkins are only available in the fall, so you have to buy as many of them as possible. Halloween is only one day, so the celebration needs to be extended for at least a month. Even those tokens that can be available all year round are not. One doesn't need fresh pumpkins to make a spiced latte, but keeping the availability limited adds to their perceived value. 

Another marketing ploy preys on your sense of nostalgia. Some of this is personal nostalgia. We look back fondly on our childhood memories of Halloween. We think of the back-to-school anticipation. We think of the coziness of a family Thanksgiving at home. Even if these memories aren't so special, we romanticize the idea of how our fall holidays should have been. We also have nostalgia for some time in the past when we see life as simpler. The fall obsession makes us nostalgic for an old-fashioned farm life we never experienced. The retail industry devours this sense of nostalgia for breakfast and spits out cheap crap for you to consume as a substitute for authenticity.

Finally, marketers play on your FOMO. Social media have created the FOMO monster. We see the rest of the world on Instagram out apple picking in Hunter boots and J. Crew sweaters. We see the houses quaintly decorated with pumpkins and dried corn or else are their own haunted attractions filled with graveyards, witches, and vampires. We see Halloween costumes worthy of a horror movie. We see the lattes and the cider doughnuts and the pumpkin muffins and the pumpkin beer. We need a piece of that. If we aren't out there experiencing all of this, then we aren't fully experiencing the season. 

I think it's time to step away from all of this. If we truly value a simpler time, then maybe it's time to simplify the season. What do we truly value? 

Most importantly, you can find ways to indulge in the season without going broke and being a bit kinder to the planet.

Do you love apples that much? Do you want to support local farmers? Then go to a farmers' market. There you will find a huge variety of apples all season. The apple orchards will only have what's on the trees at the time (and the best varieties are in the late summer and not in beautiful October). You can also buy plenty of other fresh local and seasonal produce. If you don't feel up to making an apple pie yourself, there are vendors who provide them as well. 

If you want a new outfit, you don't have to rely on fast fashion. Start investing in quality classic clothes from ethical companies and keep them for as long as you can. You can change your outfits up with accessories if you need to keep it fresh, and it's easy to find locally made accessories. You can shop at thrift stores and websites like The Real Real, ThredUp, and Poshmark. You can use a rental service (I like Armoire). 

Instead of buying your coffee from massive retail chains and creating more waste, brew your coffee at home and create your own spiced lattes (please don't use K Cups). Add some nutmeg and cinnamon to the grounds or make your own spiced syrup.  Heat some milk and give it a good whisking and you have the makings of a latte.

If you want to decorate for Halloween, then try to be more conscientious about it. Do you need to buy a new supply of plastic decorations every year? Pumpkins and gourds are natural and can be fed to wildlife after the season is over (better them than me). Rather than go to Walmart or Spirit of Halloween for your decorations made in China, how about looking at Etsy or local craft fairs? You can probably find some fun items at thrift shops as well.

Think about where your Halloween costume comes from. Do you want a plastic costume made overseas by cheap labor and shipped thousands of miles on fossil fuels? Can you rent a costume? Can you make one out of clothes in your wardrobe? Can you find some fun items at a thrift store? Can you (and I know this one is tough to swallow) wear last year's costume?

If you love nature and changing leaves, then visit a beautiful park. There might be one closer to your hometown than you realize. You don't need to do farm labor or attend crowded, over-hyped events to enjoy the beauty of the season. Step away from the crowds. Be truly close to nature. 

Not only will all of this be easier on your wallet and easier on the planet, but it will be easier on your brain as well. Think of how good it will feel to simply enjoy a nice day without the internet telling you how you should be spending it.