Gourd Vibrations
The leaves are turning brown.
The days are getting darker and colder.
There are big tins of Quality Street for sale in Tesco.
Autumn is on its way and there, shining in the 7pm twilight, is an orange beacon.
A sweet, creamy, spicy, coffee-cup-shaped beacon.
Spice It Up
Despite its name, pumpkin spice contains absolutely 0% pumpkin. It’s a mixture of clove, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, similar to English ‘mixed spice’ or the historic poudre douce. Rather than being kept specifically for sweet dishes, this mix has been used across cuisines and flavour profiles for centuries.
Historic pumpkin pie recipes call for the filling to be seasoned with ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, or any combination of all three, occasionally with the addition of clove. Sound familiar? The same spices are used for apple pie, mulling, and even in hot cross buns. Commercial blends of spices, marketed as ‘pumpkin pie spice’, began to be sold across the USA in the early 20th century.
Adding pumpkin spice to coffee became a commercial trend in the 1990s (looking at you, Tori Amos), and Torani started selling a pumpkin spice syrup in 2003, a year before Starbucks officially launched the now-iconic PSL. Following consumer feedback, Starbucks changed their recipe in 2015 to actually contain pumpkin puree, and the iced PSL was launched in the USA in 2017, right at the beginning of the iced coffee boom.
Selling Like Hot Cakes Lattes
Like Saturday morning cartoons, cereal box toys, and reruns of The Vicar Of Dibley, pumpkin spice is nostalgic. It’s cosy. In the US, it’s associated with holidays, family, and baking - a bit like the feeling of having your first mince pie of the year, usually at something weirdly early, like an October department meeting that someone brought them to because they found a box in M&S*.
The pumpkin spice latte brings all of these feelings of cosiness and the holidays into one simple, portable accessory. That first hit of sweetness, the whipped cream and the spicy cinnamon dusting – it’s all the crispness of autumn mornings in a cup.
And it’s endlessly Instagrammable.
The ‘basic’ aesthetic trend of the 2010s was a real force for launching the PSL into the mainstream. Pair that with the Christian Girl Autumn trend of 2019, and suddenly the PSL has been relegated to the same status as the iced matcha, glasses of prosecco, and moisturising your face.
This brings us to what I’m going to call the iced coffee problem. Pumpkin spice, whether due to seasonality, historic association, or Instagram, is associated with women, making it girly.
The seasonal timing of peak pumpkin spice can’t be ignored. Starbucks launched their PSL to its members on August 27th this year, with a wider public release date of September 3rd; Costa Coffee also launched their autumn menu on August 27th, and Blank Street launched their member-only autumn drinks on August 30th. The end of August means the start of September, and a return to homework, timetables, and school runs.
After the extra invisible work the summer calls for, like extra childcare, holiday planning, and continuously smearing sun cream onto wriggling toddlers, for women, September is a return to normality and a lessening of responsibility.
Charlie Brown at The Sauce writes:
Psychologists also attribute the popularity of Fall to the comfort of returning to a steady routine. Kids go back to school. Things are (generally) less hectic. Household order is restored. Considering women still take on the lion’s share of childcare and household labour, it’s no wonder some of them have a particular love for this time of year. And if the pumpkin spice latte is the official drink of Fall, it stands to reason they would be incredibly popular with women.
Pumpkin spice being associated with both the holidays and girliness means that it is inherently linked to invisible labour.
Think about Christmas - most of the planning, gift-wrapping, shopping, decorating, and, of course, kitchen work has been historically done by matriarchal figures. Professional cooking is done by male chefs; domestic cooking is done by women.
The ‘P’ Word
If we follow the societal narrative then, like astrology, cosy gaming, and cocktails, the girly version of something is worse than the ordinary (read: straight masculine) version. As Jaya Saxena writes in Women Aren’t Ruining Food:
When men enjoy something, they elevate it. But when women enjoy something, they ruin it.
There have been some discussions around whether pumpkin spice might have gone too far in recent years - Pumpkin Spice Spam, anyone? - but the protein-ification of almost every single food is a similar marketing drive that is almost entirely unavoidable. Are we calling this ‘basic’?
No.
Protein is something to load up on, to overdo, to make part of your personality as a gym bro. Men can have what they like. Men can consume as many high-protein Mars Bars and underseasoned chicken breasts as humanly possible because it builds muscle. You can’t overindulge in protein because it’s ‘healthy’.
And women are reduced to single-serving, 100-cal snack packs.
Or, as the case may be, a cup of coffee.
Back To Basics
Rebecca Jennings writes in VOX that
hating pumpkin spice lattes is our way of othering those who drink them, and in the process, marking ourselves as decidedly un-basic.
It’s 2026. Identity politics are being weaponised across the political sphere. Meta Glasses are everywhere. AI slop is filling our feeds. Donald Trump is renaming bodies of water (again).
And the worst thing you can be is basic?
Basic means UGGs and yoga pants, heart emojis and Instagram stories. Pitch Perfect. An iPhone. Big jumpers. A Stanley cup. Netflix.
A PSL.
Really, being basic just sounds like being comfortable and hydrated.
Given that 47% of PSL-enjoyers are middle-aged men, it’s time for the PSL to be de-politicised. Normalised. Un-othered.
After all, it’s just coffee.
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