Each year, I like to play a game of pumpkin-themed Mad-Libs. The rules are simple: You take the most nonsensical item you can think of and then imagine it in pumpkin-spiced form. This game has made me wonder if I'm psychic because many of my own predictions have come true. A few years ago when I had the nightmare realization that pumpkin spice hummus and pumpkin spice cheese do, in fact, exist.
A cursory Google search of "pumpkin spice" items yields hundreds of options, ranging from wallpaper, toilet spray, and garbage bags, to nail polish, body washes and scrubs. Your dog and cat can get in on the fall trend, as well as your Build-A-Bears. Your stuffed animals can live "That Pumpkin Spice Life," complete with a plush PSL and a scented spice disk you can insert into the toy itself. If you're dehydrated after downing a pumpkin cream cold brew, you can drink a refreshing sparkling Honey Pumpkin water from Aura Bora.
But pumpkin spice, at least this year, is going beyond just what you can purchase and hold in your hands. It's extending to full on experiences, and yes, even a pumpkin spiced life.
Pumpkin spice is how we cope with changing seasons in a chaotic world.
With the release of the Starbucks PSL coming earlier and earlier each year (and ever-present signs of global warming changing our experience of "seasons"), Pumpkin spice is how we now mark the passing of time. Or rather, speed it up in order to summon coziness and warmth on our own time.
Using logic I've borrowed from Legally Blonde: Pumpkin spice absolutely gives people endorphins. Endorphins make you happy, and happy people will not stop buying pumpkin spice items. They just won't. It's a deliciously vicious cycle. I saw this first-hand when I worked at Trader Joe's, a fount of pumpkin-spice mania. During those shaky, unsure days of Peak Covid 2020, customers came in and clamored for pumpkin spice items as early as April.
I'm a Maple Girly when it comes to Iconic Fall Flavors, but I can see why the PSL frenzy grows with each year. Pumpkin spice is a sort of sensory cocoon we can retreat into after summer cools off. You can light your pumpkin spice diffuser, hug your pumpkin spice Squishmallow, paint a set of pumpkin spice nails, and snack on pumpkin spice Goldfish crackers and pumpkin spice avocado oil caviar as you disengage from the outside world, which is often less-than-cozy. In your living room, at least, you live in an autumnal Gilmore Girls episode, where the only worries you might have are what to order at Luke's (Monte Cristo or patty melt?) or who to ask to the dance marathon.
Pumpkin spice is a nice daydream, one you don't necessarily have to leave either, as is the case for the Pumpkin Spice Suite at The Great Wolf Lodge, where you can lounge in a pumpkin-scented room, on pumpkin-shaped pillows, and enjoy bottomless pumpkin spice lattes. If the PSL you get from Starbucks isn't enough, you can now take a dip in an entire PSL hot tub after you indulge in pumpkin spice spa treatments.
Pumpkin spice, whether you like it or not, is a mirror into how we see a lot of things.
One new product immediately caught my eye this year: DUMPkin Spice Dude Wipes. I sat down to chat with one of the founders of DUDE Wipes, Ryan Meegan, about the wipes, which started out as an April Fools Joke and then became a reality after fans begged for them.
The reviews are glowing. One reviewer named Kyle describes the product as follows: “It’s like a winter kiss from Santa on your Butt.” Another reviewer named Taylor says, "Don't know how i [sic] ever enjoyed fall before these wipes. This year, I'm ready. Now, my whole body can smell like fall, including my butt." I can attest to this, as I, too, have sampled the festive, subtly-scented DUMPkin Spice Dude Wipes.
DUDE Wipes, as Meegan states, has worked hard to disarm the ideas around men taking care of themselves, starting with their toilet habits. And with the addition of their DUMPkin Spice scent, they're also disarming the idea that pumpkin spice is just something seemingly feminine, basic, or emasculating. That's not nothing. Pumpkin spice, no matter how you feel about it, is easy to critique, primarily because it's coded as something you must be feminine in order to enjoy. To subvert the trend into an extra-large flushable wipe that is for everyone and everywhere (even the bathroom, hotel, hot tub, and Build-A-Bear)? Well, that's my idea of equality.
Pumpkins are such a humble and unsuspecting gourd. Who knew they had so much power? I won't underestimate them again, that's for sure.
