The holiday season has been marked by corporate greed for decades now. Any liberal arts student with Marxist leanings can tell you such, but it is worth repeating. Corporations have managed to sell those warm and fuzzy feelings via candles, coffee, sweaters, and the like for decades now. But with social media becoming prime breeding ground for capital, holiday branded consumerism has reached new heights. From gift guides advertising $117 coffee mugs, to Black Friday haul TikToks accumulating 1,000,000 likes, one has to wonder: has everyone lost their minds?
Gift guides in and of themselves are not demonic entities sent from the capitalist gods to destroy us all. Anyone who has to buy a present for their dad can attest to this. It becomes a problem when they are used to sell a brand. Gift guides exist for almost any brand of person, from the clean girl to the cool girl. Sorting and packaging one’s loved ones into blanket labels, or “girls”, is bizarre. This has been true since the rise in “girl” trends, but it becomes even more insidious in a time built on giving and goodwill towards one’s fellow human. It’s become less about the joy of gifting your friends and family something irreplaceable, and more about buying people's personalities. Buying a personality is never a good thing, especially when the barrier to entry is that expensive. As mentioned previously, one gift guide built for the homebody recommends an Ember coffee mug that goes for over $100. A gift guide for someone who values simple pleasures featuring something that pricey speaks volumes. What’s wrong with buying your introverted friends a neat coffee mug from the thrift store? One that feels personal and unique to them? It’s not just the gift guides that do this, there are guides for becoming “that girl” in the new year. There’s nothing wrong with giving tips and tricks for self improvement, but this type of instagram self help feels superficial. It comes off as self improvement for the social capital it provides. Appearing to be “that girl”, one who as the guide explains is fit, sports a lengthy skincare routine, and values her appearance, gives one access to social benefits they wouldn’t have otherwise. Not to be that guy, but what is being upheld with this kind of self improvement? Because it sounds an awful lot like patriarchy.
Black Friday hauls are also emblematic of archaic systems bleeding into the holiday season. For the unaware, Black Friday hauls consist of creators showing their audience everything they bought. These videos exist as escapism for a non-significant amount of people, seeing as how popular they are, but they act more like shaking shiny, late stage capitalism colored keys in the face of a nation burned by wealth inequality. Not everyone who makes this sort of content is rich. The girl who received a whopping 1.3,000,000 likes on her haul says she paid for everything herself, but what does it say about the general state of affairs if people are coping by watching content that exists entirely to show off capital?
Believe it or not, the holidays don't have to be about consumerism. The idea of getting that expensive perfume or becoming a whole new you can be appealing, but at the end of the day it's just stuff. Capital is just capital. It can't fix you or make you someone else. What matters most is community and we show our love for that community. Instead of buying, as my mom would say, crap, take the time to find something meaningful. Something that will last. Thrift stores are great places to find unique gifts for a small price. Crafting is a great skill to have regardless of the season, but it's especially useful this time of year. Finding or making the good stuff takes time, but it's so much better than feeding our capital overlords. Lord knows that's the last thing we need right now.
Written by Grace Bradley
Photography by Francesca DiMiceli @frandimiceli.photography
Directed by Lucy Geldziler @leg5
Produced and Edited by Mark Bluemle @markbluemle
Production Asst by Lauren Crivelli @laurencrivel
Styling by Caroline Slafka @carolineslafka
Talent: Lolita Lupita @lolitalupita