by Abby Cahill

As the air cools and becomes crisp enough to sting as it swirls through one’s open lungs, and the deciduous trees begin to release their paint-swatch fragment leaves into the chilly breeze, autumn makes her arrival known. Amidst layers of ochre-colored sweaters and flannels, gaggles of children trick-or-treating in costume, and across misty blue apple orchards, lovers of the season wring their scarves and anxiously await the arrival of one of the signature symbols of autumn; pumpkin spice.

 “Um, Natalie,” the curly-headed young woman replied tentatively, peering across the dark countertop to the green-aproned barista taking down Natalie’s name to match her order. Natalie Czarra, a first-year college student at Sweet Briar College in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, and a self-proclaimed “super fan” of pumpkin spice, thanked the barista and wandered over to a well-lit table by a window overlooking a busy street bustling with college students in sweatshirts from nearby universities to wait for her drink. Czarra, pretty, with a pale face framed by dark and shapely eyebrows and wide eyes, describes her first experience with the now iconic and traditional flavor experience,“When I was sixteen my voice teacher picked us up after school to practice our vocals and brought us pumpkin spice lattes- kind of as a ‘thanks for doing this’.” Czarra picked up her Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte with extra cinnamon from the counter as soon as her name was called, and wrapped her hands around it, savored its fragrant warmth as she strode back over to the table, set it on the distressed wood after a preliminary sip, and took her MacBook charger from her bag. This Starbucks is perfumed and peaceful, despite a line at the counter fluctuating around seven people. A cover of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” breezed through the thick air as groups of stylish college students in light washed jeans and horn-rimmed glasses that may or may not have been prescription sipped their drinks and typed the word count away on their stickered laptops.

Throughout the months of September to December, pumpkin spice flavored anything reigns supreme, dominating the advertisement market and facilitating the creation of promotional, limited edition items, a phenomenon that generated more than $500 million dollars of uptick in the national economy last year, according to Forbes estimates. Through an extravagant social media presence, with active accounts across a variety of platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat, companies such as Starbucks connect with a loyal base of pumpkin consumers. This sense of limited edition exclusivity is a tried and true marketing technique; the creation of buzz around the release of a product often significantly contributes to sales. Coupled with active social media accounts- take Starbucks for example, with around 6.56 million followers on Twitter- the pumpkin spice economy reminds consumers of each company selling goods, prompts spending extra money on specialty items, raises general awareness about a company, and, of course, the larger conversation around pumpkin spice can be considered free publicity. Additionally, Starbucks thrives on visual-based sites. For example, on Snapchat, an application most often used by the younger generation, Starbucks has offered Frappuccino-themed filters which allow users to interact with the brand. Pinterest and Instagram provide the perfect venue for photos of eye-catching frappes or latte art. The company has several Pinboards featuring cozy drinking spaces, coffees, and neat appliances for tea and coffee consumption. Czarra tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, checking the messages on her iPhone. The Starbucks logo, a familiar reverse silhouette of a crowned mermaid against a deep green background, is everywhere throughout the cozy café space, and it follows consumers as they exit with their drinks and bustle back to their days, to set their cups on desks in libraries, to carry them down the streets, and to post their misspelled names on Snapchat.

 

The actual flavor of pumpkin spice traces its roots back to the ubiquitous, all American pumpkin pie, with its classic favors of robust cinnamon, nutmeg, spicy cloves and ginger, and sometimes a sprinkle of allspice, and, of course, pumpkin. “It doesn’t taste like coffee so much, it tastes like pumpkin bread that I used to have when I was little” says Czarra, pulling a MacBook bestickered with icons of RipNDip, Vans, and Berklee College of Music, where she spent a summer term, out of her patterned bag and plugging it into the wall charger. Nostalgia is another aspect of the pumpkin spice appeal. For many consumers, the warming mixture of spices is reminiscent of family cooking, especially pumpkin-tinged meals and sweets made around the holidays. “[Pumpkin and coffee] trigger [my memories of] going to our family farm when we were trying to sell it. We had a wood stove and after splitting wood for it we would warm up with coffee. [The flavor] reminds me of my spending time with my parents in that setting.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, pumpkin pie spice started to be sold premeasured and packaged by McCormick, designed for uniformity and convenience in for baking. Undeniably, the pumpkin spice flavor has come a long way from the pie crust, infiltrating more products than ever, to include cleaning products, almost every variety of foodstuff, lotions, soaps, deodorants, beers, and even dog treats. According to Nielsen data, the sales of pumpkin flavored food, personal, and household goods have gone up almost 80 percent since 2011, with yogurt, cereal, and beer brands seeing a 320, 180, and 90 percent increase in their respective pumpkin flavored sales. Inside most grocery stores, shelves upon shelves of products with the iconic and instantly recognizable orange packaging of the season, often lumped together in an exclusive, pumpkin spice section, await droves of rosy-cheeked, flannel-clad, scarved consumers to purchase them. “I think it has gone a tad too far- like with the deodorant. But anything food-wise is okay, maybe not candles or cologne,” Czarra supplies when considering how adventurous she would be in experimenting with pumpkin spice products. Pumpkin spice products have been in circulation since the 1950s, on a small, almost niche market scale. As recently as 2012, the pumpkin spice flavor had infiltrated an astonishing number of markets, and began to represent a ritualistic, common flavor of the fall. However, the most iconic, and pioneering, of all pumpkin spice items is the Pumpkin Spice Latte, originally offered at Starbucks Coffee in 2003.

Peter Dukes, often credited as the creator of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, was part of a team of Starbucks associates trying to come up with a fall seasonal beverage to be offered at various locations of the chain. At first, the proposed combination of pumpkin and coffee was not especially well received, with focus groups becoming hung up on how unprecedented the combination was.  However, once the company began testing the drink in Starbucks stores, it became obvious that pumpkin spice had the potential to become the next big thing. “I’ll never forget coming in and pulling the numbers and looking at the numbers and how well it sold and then you just knew you had a winner,” Dukes told Household Namein 2004. Since the inception of the most iconic example of pumpkin spice, the numbers, and the popularity, of the flavor has only grown, ballooning into an expansive and profitable commodity that has continued to develop year after year.

The emblematic hot cardboard sleeve encompassing a not-so-subtly saccharine concoction of espresso, steamed milk, whipped cream, and a mysterious, vaguely pumpkin “Pumpkin Spice Sauce”, was released earlier than ever this year, on August 28th, to a mixed reaction from consumers. “I wasn’t ready for it because I usually drink Pumpkin Spice lattes when it’s cold outside. It puts me in the spirit for fall; being released in August was a bit wild,” says Czarra, now dressed for the fall season and cozy in a deep green Sweet Briar College sweatshirt, fleecy gray UGG boots, and a white and burgundy scarf. Despite this, Czarra admits that she made a point to go to Starbucks the day of the release. It is understandable that Starbucks may want to get in on the pumpkin spice season early, after all, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has proven to be their bestselling seasonal drink for several years in a row. The latte also has an extremely dedicated, and vocal, support group; fans of the specialty coffee even have their own title, as members of the Orange Sleeve Society. However, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has curated a slightly darker, murkier reputation of its own, often being considered “basic”, an opaque descriptor often employed with a negative connotation.

Noreen Malone, a features editor at New York Magazine who wrote an analysis of the term basic in 2014, defines the word, “some women were using it to describe other women who they didn’t think had interesting taste.” Since around 2015, coincidentally the same year that Pumpkin Spice Sauce began to contain actual pumpkin, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has come to symbolize the epitome of basic, popular culture.Someway, somehow, the once homey and inviting pumpkin spice flavor became a symbol less fitting for the autumn season and more as an insulting indicator of a “basic bitch”. Czarra, intermittedly typing an essay and sipping, agrees with the assessment of basicness, “It’s a fair argument- well not an argument but a fair stereotype. It [pumpkin spice] caters to a lot of interested teenage girls. But pumpkin spice, it’s a staple, you can’t go to a Thanksgiving dinner and not have pumpkin pie. I think there’s a lot of hype, but teenage girls are the demographic mostly responsible for making it so popular.” The “basic bitch”, a term found to be equally as endearing because of its alliteration as the fun its pokes at almost always female punchlines, exists permanently clothed in leggings, UGGS, and a North Face jacket, usually clutching a Pumpkin Spice Latte in a gel-manicured clutch. Urban Dictionary scathingly defines a basic bitch, “tragically/laughably unaware of her utter lack of specialness and intrigue.” The user responsible for this definition also asserts that this genre of femininity shares the common thread of “being expendable and unnoteworthy and, in some cases, having absolutely no redeeming qualities.”

Someone who is considered basic is undeniably girly in the most traditional sense. She desires eventual marriage and baby showers, and probably has a Pinterest board or two dedicated to her dream wedding. However, despite it seeming innocent enough initially, though a little judgmental and mean-spirited, there are several deeper underlying issues with presumptions about “basicness”. Calling someone basic immediately insinuates that the speaker possesses a greater level of discretion in determining what is and is not basic than the person they are describing, therefore the speaker is not basic and has the authority to criticize someone else’s unoriginality or thoughtlessness. Also, there is no readily discernable male counterpart to the idea of basicness. Interests that are generalized to women, shopping, gossiping, social media, and even not-at-all-manly coffees, are trademarks of basicness. In contrast, men are not targeted for mockery at all in this sense. Czarra stumbles to defend her originality, despite the fact that she’s almost finished with her latte, “I don’t define myself as basic because I think it’s too predictable. If someone were to look at me they would automatically know what I’m like. It doesn’t fit my personality- my style. I don’t think that you should be considered basic based on some criteria that society makes for you.”

In several ways the determining factors of basicness revolve around consumption patterns, what brands is the “basic bitch” wearing, what movies is she watching, which books of Rupi Kaur poetry does she read, where does she get her avocado toast, and what type of latte is steaming up her glasses? The basic girl is patronized, not for having consumer habits, but for failing to place them in cooler, more underground, and usually more expensive brands. Starbucks, and the Pumpkin Spice Latte phenomenon are an extremely clear example of American consumerism and capitalism. To drink a sugary, slightly spiced pumpkin-ish latte is even worse than simply expressing an aversion to “real coffee”, it is essentially a dim-witted female revealing her utter repulsion to everything cool and interesting. The concept of basicness, by patronizing traditionally female preferences and perpetuating the idea that the formation of self revolves around the products that you purchase, enforces a male dominated and heavily consumerist American culture.

The pumpkin spice latte, 380 delicious calories conveniently distilled into a Grande sized green and white paper cup, has come to represent not only the autumn season, but also millions of dollars in industry, and in many ways, unsavory aspects of our collective culture. The pumpkin spice phenomenon continues to develop. Will the industry, not to mention the social ramifications of damaging stereotypes, ever stop growing? Czarra stands, and as she walks through the door, into the blustery autumnal outside makes a final remark, “It was a pretty good latte”.