Basic Bitches, Collective Delusion, and The Long American History of Being Defensive About Pumpkins
This year Starbucks released the pumpkin spice latte on August 27, the earliest date yet and before Labor Day, another contender for the official marker of fall in America. It’s not cold anywhere on August 27 and no leaves are yet changing, but by some definitions, it was fall.
What is fall? The most common answer is that fall is when the weather changes from summer hot to winter cold — though this has never been true in large parts of this country and others, though it’s often not true even in the places you expect it to be, though it will likely prove even less true as climate change alters seasons around the world. (In Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens, the unnaturally idyllic English village of Lower Tadfield always has the exact “right” weather for every season, sunshine every summer day and snow on Christmas, but then it’s also the home of the Antichrist.)
Fall in Los Angeles is not a fact of nature but a set of social gestures, a collective wish. I do my part by changing into a wardrobe of fall clothes that are no warmer than their summer counterparts but are in autumnal colors and textures: suede joggers, a wine-colored tank, a cropped, open-knit, sleeveless “sweater” only by the most generous definition of that word.
