For all of the oversharing I do on the internet via this very newsletter, I’ve never considered myself a personal essayist. To be sure, this is also not a personal essay, but to me, it is likely the closest I’ll ever get to writing one on Emily For President.

Coming back from an accidental hiatus,1 I wanted to ease back into things—by which I mean that I did not want to run a trauma dump about the fact that watchdog organizations are warning that we might not have a democracy in America by Lorde summer. I did not want to excise all my thoughts on the Trump Administration’s plans to incentivize white motherhood as someone who loves Margaret Atwood and doesn’t want children.2 I did not feel like spending another Monday crashing out.

So we’ll do all that next week.

For now, I wanted to talk about the things that have been taking up space in my brain lately—what good is a newsletter if I can’t yap at a captive audience about my niche interests every once in a while? Lest you think this is a repeat of our mid-March conversation, I can assure you this piece is far less educational and insightful.

There is no meaning or clear messaging within today’s piece—I am truly just talking about the topics currently piquing my interest, which, in many ways, is the most personal thing I could write.

The Hemline Index

Last month, I was really fascinated by The Cut’s brief article on the Pretty Little Thing rebrand. For those who may not know,

PrettyLittleThing is a U.K.-based retailer known for clingy, colorful, and affordable clubwear and vacation pieces. Its website used to feature an extensive plus-size collection and regularly included women of color and curvy models. The brand has done a number of fashion shows, including a New York Fashion Week show with Naomi Campbell in 2023 and a Miami Swim Week show in 2022 (X).

But then, in early March, the brand started undergoing a number of changes:

the clothes were more modest and conservative, including austere blazers, pantsuits, and sweater sets in muted colors. The familiar models, mostly women of color, have been replaced by thin white women with “clean-girl makeup” and soft updos (X).

During Paris Fashion Week, PLT held a party that was meant to offer “‘a glimpse into the brand’s refreshed identity following its ambitious rebrand: a new era that seamlessly marries trend-driven energy with refined sophistication.’” Many started commenting on why the brand’s “refresh” indicated how the global rise of conservative politics was unavoidably shifting fashion trends and culture to the right, which, yeah, is a good take. A little obvious, but an overall valid point.

But now a far more interesting conversation is starting to take shape around the history of the economy and consumer trends, particularly regarding fashion. The Hemline Index is the theory that “skirt length (hemlines) rise or fall along with stock prices. The most common version of the theory is that skirt lengths get shorter in good economic times (1920s, 1960s) and longer in bad, such as after the 1929 Wall Street crash” (X).

@nikitadumptruckgoing more in depth on this on my substack + youtube!!!

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As Nikita (the above creator) explains both in her video and in her Substack,

the gibson girl was the “ideal american woman” from the 1890s to the mid 1910s. she had an hourglass figure achieved through a corset, wore minimal makeup, and her hair was styled in elaborate up-do’s - the gibson girl was the clean girl’s great grandmother. the gibson girl was demure, modest, and the beacon of domestic life…

what exactly was happening during the 1890s-1910s? ah of course, the panic of 1893 - a severe depression that ended the prosperous gilded age and led to 20% unemployment. that’s when the subdued, traditional gibson girl reigned supreme. sound familiar? (X)

In a direct contrast to the Gibson Girl, flappers, the women synonymous with the economically and socially prosperous Roaring 20s, “wore straight, loose-fitting yet short dresses that de-emphasized curves, cut their hair in a short bob and wore a lot of makeup. Their unrestrictive clothing was a symbol of their emancipation” (X).

Then, of course, we get the Great Depression, and

the trends and lifestyle of the typical flapper was no longer affordable. indulging in lavish partying was not only expensive but wildly out of touch, considering people’s suffering. women traded in their sparkling dresses for neutral, basic outfits that paired with everything. many of them married because financial security was more likely in a family unit than going at it alone. maybe the gibson girl had returned, but she was irrevocably changed (X).

Amid my fascination with the Hemline Index, I found a piece on the topic in The Oakland Post, an independent student-run newspaper from Oakland University. The author of the piece, Mallory Waligora, explained that skirts slowly began to shorten following World War II, until we reached

The 60s

The miniskirt became all the rage in the 60s. Women showed more legs than ever before during this time.

America was experiencing an economic boom as unemployment decreased and wages increased. A general economic growth came over the county, and women dressed accordingly, with a fun and youthful style.

The 90s

The early 1990s saw a recession, and the average American consumer was under economic stress. The 1990 recession took about three years to recover and finally improved in about 1993.

When you look at any 90s romantic comedy, such as “10 Things I Hate About You,” you can tell that famous styles of skirts in the 90s were midi and maxi skirts (X).

Why’d I include just this snippet of her piece? Because we’re talking through my niche interests, and I can quote nearly the entire script of 10 Things I Hate About You from memory—it’s a connected thought…kind of.

There have also been credible arguments against the accuracy of the Hemline Index. In 2020, writer Marlen Komar found that George Taylor, the economist attributed with coming up with the Hemline Index, didn’t actually argue the theory in his research, but instead “explored why the hosiery industry had explosive growth in the 1920s. One factor he identified was skirt length” (X).

Komar goes on to write that

when you track actual changes in the economy, the whole thesis falls apart, and it's since been debunked. Things especially get muddled when looking at the war and post-war eras, when Berg says longer skirts “were seen as a symbol of prosperity”—not the other way around. Women were no longer forced into rationing, so wearing something with so much fabric was seen as a sign of affluence.

Instead, many different factors—the economy, politics, pandemic outbreaks, and social movements—have affected which aesthetics consumers respond to. And when designers didn’t tap into those changes and sent something ‘wrong’ down the runway? Women rebelled, which eventually led to change (X).

Her ultimate argument is that “it’s not so much the economy that influences our fashion sense, but our reaction to what’s going on in the world and how that makes us feel.” Interestingly, Nikita concludes her research in favor of the validity of the Hemline Index with a sentiment that sounds like it could be an extension of Komar’s words, writing that “maybe what we’re due for isn’t a flapper comeback, but one where women don’t have to choose between survival and self-expression. I’m confident it’ll happen, because when times are bad, good times are just around the corner” (X).

In any case, I think it’s weird that so many of this year’s microtrends are encouraging women in particular to buy clothes that are designed to make us more like the women of yore that conservatives want us to become again: Manifest Destiny-core tradwives, Southern Belles who actively looked for modern ways to perpetuate slavery, throat-goat Nancy Reagan.

I guess I’m fascinated by the Hemline Index because I’m trying to figure out if PLT is merely a fast fashion reflection of Americans’ scathing disapproval of the economy in this current moment, or if it’s a harbinger of darker days for women to come.

Pop Music as a Recession Indicator

For context, I’m writing this while listening to “Ribs” by Lorde and feeling generally nostalgic about my existence. If you’ve never listened to “Ribs” by Lorde, I have so many questions for you it sounds like how being a seventeen-year-old girl felt. It’s what you listen to when you’re getting ready with friends, but also what you listen to when you need a cathartic cry. It’s a song meant to be sung while dancing in Washington Square Park just before the cops bust a pre-Lorde-pop-up-concert gathering because the singer didn’t get the right permits.

The makers of last year’s Brat Summer have decreed this is a Lorde summer, both because of the fact that we’re getting new music from the singer and because her music is somewhat of a recession indicator.

We talked a bit about recession pop with Abi Marin last summer, namely about how

in a 2018 piece for Vox, Scott Timberg wrote about how pop music—like all forms of pop culture—equally responds to the environment it is released into and offers an escape from whatever hardships consumers may be facing. But following the 2008 financial crisis, we saw a trend in music colloquially known as “recession pop” that was pure escapism:

consumerist anthems that assure us we can spend our way to a new reality, sexless songs about sex that reduce physical intimacy to its mechanical attractions and rote motions, and vague empowerment chants that try to lifelessly propel us up off the ground (X).

As I read that section in Akhil Vaidya’s essay from this past April in Hot Knife, I heard “I Gotta Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas in my head…only for that to be cited as a perfect example of recession pop in a CNBC article. Simply put, the pop music that came out of the late 2000s and early 2010s was “‘all about dancing and having a good time, in contrast to the actual economic circumstances…They were feel-good songs to get us out of a difficult time and they were the medicine we needed’” (X).

We went on to discuss how last year’s plethora of high-quality pop music wasn’t indicative of an economic recession but a societal “vibecession.” As I later covered in my first true foray into economics, the economy was actually doing fairly well under the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency. But because Americans had been burned so badly by inflation earlier in his term, the country’s opinions of the economy had remained pessimistic. Ergo, recession pop without a recession.

Now that we might be heading into a proper recession3, pop music has only gotten stronger: Lady Gaga’s back and eliciting Satanic ritual allegations, HAIM just announced their new album, and Lorde is releasing her own music for the first time since 2021. We are at an unprecedented level of back re: recession pop.

But I think it’s cool that the point I made last year still stands: even though the children yearn for musical escapism, we’re no longer satisfied with empty synth beats.

I compared the flop criticism Katy Perry received for her absolute flop reductive single “Woman’s World” with the success of Charli xcx’s album brat, on which she “grapples with how she feels when pitted against other women in the industry and whether she wants to start a family in the same breath that she sings what might be my favorite lyric of the year: ‘That city sewer slut's the vibe / Internationally recognized.’”4

By all this, I mean to say, yes, the sounds of pop music today are danceable and deeply reminiscent of the days of will.i.am’s music supremacy. But the songs themselves are exceedingly more honest about our lived experiences in a way “Give Me Everything” never was…Every day is a weird time to be alive and I feel like the pop music we’re getting right now reflects that. It’s silly and vulnerable and palatable and real (X).

At the dawn of the new summer, society is once again fed up with Katheryn Hudson’s performative nonsense and waiting for a canonically good pop princess to punch us in the fucking gut again return to her rightful place at the top of the charts. I can’t say nature is healing in good faith, as our economy may be fucked (or fine…? Does anyone know how this is going to shake out?), but as someone who Spotify dubbed a pink pilates strut princess, I think I’m going to be okay this Lorde summer.

Yesterday’s New Moon in Taurus

Astrologically, this year has been off to a shit start.

We started the year in a Mars retrograde, which may have been why January felt like it lasted for 30 years. A retrograde is when a planet appears to be moving in reverse from where we are on Earth. In astrology, a planet’s retrograde is essentially one never-ending opposite day. It takes all the things a planet represents, puts its thing down, flips it, and reverses it.

For instance, Mercury is the planet of technology and communication so when it retrogrades (as everyone on the Internet is wont to fear), we can expect our phones and computers to crap out, our texts to be misinterpreted, or our lines of communicating to be generally scrambled.

To understand the rough start to the year, astrologer Aliza Kelly explained that

when Mars—the planet of action, ambition, and raw energy—goes backward, it’s like your inner engine sputters just as you’re about to hit the gas. Your usually steady, consistent drive is abruptly out of sync, forcing you to rethink your approach to challenges, motivation, and conflict (X).

We also had a Venus retrograde that only just ended on April 12th that impacted “what [we] desire, who [we] love, and how [we] define beauty and worth” (X). It was ill-advised to make unplanned changes to your physical appearance or hard launch relationships with people you only knew for two weeks. And then we did, in fact, have a dreaded Mercury retrograde in that same window.

As if all of these retrogrades weren’t enough, we also went through an eclipse season that may have brought up some emotional sore spots. If you found yourself feeling more introspective and vulnerable in March, you could be entitled to financial compensation.

thecosmiclatte

A post shared by @thecosmiclatte

But yesterday saw a new moon that finally offers us a glimmer of hope. The supermoon took place in the earth sign Taurus, a sign known for its taste for luxury, creature comforts, and stability. It is ruled by the planet Venus, which in the simplest terms, symbolizes love and money. As Cafe Astrology explains it further,

Venus rules our sentiments, what we value, and the pleasure we take in life. Grace, charm, and beauty are all ruled by Venus. Through Venus, we learn about our tastes, pleasures, artistic inclinations, and what makes us happy.

In other words, a new moon in Taurus (post-Venus retrograde) is the astrological equivalent of a deep sigh, or a pause to catch your breath. It’s aspirational instead of dreamy, with your wants and goals about money and relationships feeling more tangible. If you feel at all connected to spiritual practices rooted in astrology, this is a great week not only to visualize and manifest the things you want, but to treat yourself and enjoy life in true Taurus fashion.

Now, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I would be remiss not to mention that I am desperately clinging to this Good Moon because in July, the planet Uranus is moving into Gemini. Uranus is an outer planet, which means its orbit is slow compared to Earth’s, and it moves signs every 84 years. And…um…well…”every 84 years we seem to experience some sort of historic conflict, and Uranus always seems to be in Gemini during that time: Previous Uranus in Gemini dates are 1941–1949, 1858–1866, and 1774–1782” (X). So just make of that what you will.

By the way, if none of this is your cup of tea, so be it. But I’m bored with these lackluster attestations that astrology is dumb or frivolous. It brings a good many people comfort—myself included—at no one’s expense.5

Long Live the Ultimate Diva

In Emily For President’s first In Memoriam, we honor the short but ceaselessly entertaining career of Kitara Ravache, known professionally as George Santos.

Too often these days, political drama pertains to things like mass deportations, slashing Medicare funding, generally hating women, and saying things that are blatantly racist. But for a brief, shining moment, we had a Bravo-esque celebrity on Capitol Hill—our very own compulsive liar who wasn’t afraid to be a messy bitch.

Was Santos’ political ideology built on the hateful foundation set out by MAGA Republicans? Yes. Who’s to say—can you genuinely name a policy stance he advocated for? I can’t, but I do remember that time he paraded around in front of reporters with what could only feasibly be described as a stolen infant.

And sure, he may have spent campaign finances on Sephora and Botox. But a time when our elected officials seem to forget that we have a representative democracy where they are meant to act on behalf of their constituents, some of us felt the most seen by a queen who had 2 mL of Juvederm and a perfectly shade-matched foundation.

George Santos may be serving seven years in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, but he’ll serve a life sentence in our hearts.

That’s all for today, friends, but I’ll see you next week! It feels so good to be back!!!

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