Fritinancy

New writing on Medium: An F for "effortless"

Effortless style, effortless meditation, effortless cash flow, effortless HR, effortless entertaining, effortless change: If it’s worth doing, we’re being told, it’s worth doing with as little effort as possible.

A small sampling of the dozens of “effortless” brands and book titles that have multiplied over the last 20 or so years

In my latest story for Medium, “Against Effortlessness,” I investigate the buzzword and compare it with “We Try Harder,” Avis’s long-running slogan that made a virtue of effort. And I find evidence that the effortless tide may be turning. Read the story, clap (up to 50 times!) if you like it, and sign up for Medium to read more from me and other writers. It’s worth the effort!

 

Word of the week: Elevated

Suddenly, it seems, elevated is everywhere all at once.

Word of the week: Magenta

Every December since 1999, the color mavens at Pantone have announced a color of the year for the upcoming twelve-month period. The Pantone color for 2023, revealed earlier this month, is Viva Magenta, a color that

balances boldness with a feeling of fun. This dynamic mix exudes rebellion, but not at the expense of softness. It embodies an expression of fierce grace, inspiring us to show up with confidence and humanity. The digital space has accelerated globalization, and as a result, we are more deeply connected to each other than ever before. We can never fully understand what lies beneath the surface of the friends and strangers we meet, but we can always work to deepen our empathy. The Color of the Year 2023 speaks to our desire to take on new challenges and try the unconventional while meeting others with compassion.

That’s a lot of words for a color that looks like this.

 

Unless it looks like this.

Image via Pantone.com

Red? Purple? It’s a mystery.

 

Women’s high-top sneaker in Viva Magenta from Cariuma.

Cheeky little messages

Here’s a trend I’ve been tracking: tiny bits of marketing copy in unexpected places—garment labels, the undersides of container lids, inside shipping boxes. What makes these messages noteworthy is their tone: either a cheeky wink or a scrap of fortune-cookie wisdom.

Here’s an example of the fortune-cookie style.

“My life is a picture of my mind”: label on a top by Flax (a brand name that is also a generic fiber name—confusing!). I have no idea what this means.

 

And here’s another.

“Let every space fulfill its true potential”: inside the package of an Elfa file cart.

 

And here’s one of the cheeky-perky messages.

“Let’s do this again sometime”: inside the wrapper of a Honey Mama’s tangerine-tahini chocolate bar (which, btw, is crazy-delicious and also crazy-expensive).

 

Wrecked

Or should it be rekt, as the kids spell it?

OK, that’s probably not what these companies had in mind when they chose their names. (Keep reading for alternate theories.) Still, it’s what I can’t help thinking every time I pass one of their billboards or bus advertisements, narrowly avoiding a wreck as I pause to ponder.

“Dear” in the headlights

Earlier this week I received a fundraising email whose salutation was “Look,” which seemed just a little … testy. But what do I know; I was schooled in the “Dear Sir or Madam” era. It made me wonder which forms of address are acceptable in 2021, which are a little edgy, and which are too quaint to be taken seriously.

“Dear ___,” it goes without saying, now falls into the third category—in correspondence, anyway. When traveling grammar advisor Ellen Jovin conducted a Twitter poll last year, the “Dear ___” salutation received zero votes. 

What percentage of your work emails begin with the word "Dear"?

— Ellen is at the Grammar Table (@GrammarTable) October 10, 2020

Click through to see additional polls.

In the titles of books, movies, and plays, though, “Dear” practically de rigueur. Maybe it’s ironic. Maybe it’s nostalgic. But there’s no denying it’s popular.

Book-title mini-trend: The declarative sentence

As I’ve noted here frequently, book and movie titles, like brand names, follow fashions and formulas. One of the longest-running contemporary trends is the “girl” title, a favorite for at least six years now. New examples (all published, or slated for publication, in 2021) include The Girls I’ve Been, Girl A, Black Girl Call Home, The Other Black Girl, Girlhood, Sunshine Girl, and The Girls with No Names.

The Declarative Sentence trend is more of a rising star, not yet overwhelming the best-seller lists but already inspiring imitations. The formula is: [Personal Name] + [Form of the Verb ‘To Be’] + [Phrase or Phrasal Verb]. The three examples that caught my attention—all novels written by women—use the present tense of to be.

Word of the week: Cottagecore

Around the world, clothing sales have plummeted since mid-March, when shops closed their doors to slow the spread of COVID-19 and “slob-chic” became the order of the day. According to one estimate published in early August, US apparel sales could shrink by as much as 50 percent in 2020.

There was one odd, notable exception: a frilly, glittery, hyperfeminine, wholly impractical pink dress, printed all over with red strawberries, that became “a viral sensation,” according to Glamour reporter Adrienne Matei, with sales spiking 1,000 percent between late July and mid-August. Created by a 24-year-old designer from Kosovo with the lyrical name Lirika Matoshi, “the strawberry dress,” as it became known, costs $490 and has inspired TikTok tributes, anime fan art, and, inevitably, cheap knockoffs on Amazon and Etsy. The dress is “a bright spot in a dark year,” Matei writes: a perfect representation of “one of 2020’s most popular trends: the ‘cottagecore’ aesthetic, a sweetly pastoral paean to the countryside popularized by the internet’s young romantics.”

 

Strawberry-print midi dress by Lirika Matoshi.

Choosy

As if the pandemic hasn’t already tested all of us in countless ways, now even our entertainment comes in the form of a multiple-choice exam.

Every. Thing.

Books and podcasts that focus on one thing are so early-21st-century. In 2020 the way to grab eyes and ears is by promising every. damn. thing.

Here’s a long list that undoubtedly doesn’t include everything.