Illustration by Jaimee Lee Haddad
Every other Thursday, Nima invites a viral social media trend back to her place, and dissects it under a Middle Eastern ring light.
The economic collapse in Lebanon is all but subtle. There are indicators of economic recession far more serious than the trends I’m about to highlight, but no one really reads Chronically Online for economic analysis.
I always found it absurd when in American movies someone would buy one or two apples at a time in a grocery store, while my dad — and yours, I’m guessing — could never fathom asking the dekkanje for anything less than a bagful. And that’s not even a testament to our love for apples.
I always wanted to be like my dad in that sense, and I was able to be for a while. Throughout the past few years, I noticed that I am more concerned with not wasting fruit (and money) than I am with the image I’m creating of myself. While this could be a sign of maturity, it can also be a sign that I have no purchasing power.
Our day-to-day choices have always been an economic indicator, even in ways that may seem irrelevant. After the economic downturn in 2001, triggered by the 9/11 attacks, the chairman of Estee Lauder created the Lipstick Index, which theorizes that women will go for smaller luxuries during economic trouble, like buying a high-end lipstick instead of more expensive products.
We can see the impact of the economy on personal style as well. Why is fast fashion so much more popular now? How is it possible that I can still wear items my mom bought for herself more than 20 years ago, but I can’t realistically expect anything I buy now from fast fashion brands to last more than a few years? When did thrift stores and second-hand outlets become more common and acceptable in Lebanon? There’s a pattern here, and nothing exists in isolation.
Contrary to its name, the money piece trend could also be a recession indicator. Having dyed blonde hair is ridiculously difficult to maintain. Since we can’t all afford to go to the hairdresser every other week, we dye two small face-framing pieces to highlight our appearance instead.
As the economy takes a turn for the worse, a lot of the cosmetic “upkeep” for women is being replaced with less demanding trends. I’m sure you’ve seen some beauty influencers go back to their natural hair color and dissolve their lip fillers.
Think about the girl-math trend. If I pay $500 for a new purse, then if I wear it every day for a year, it's only costing me a little over a dollar each day. Do you think we would really come up with such an elaborate way to justify purchases and soften the blow of expensive choices if we had the money?
I might not ever be able to really prove these patterns to you, but I can point them out, and we can sit with them for a second. Here’s a list of trends that are suspicious to me, for multiple reasons:
- The clean-girl aesthetic and the ‘less-is-more approach’
- Minimalist decor to make apartments more likely to get rented/sold
- Being skinny is now trendy again, much like the late 2000s/early 2010s market crash era
- Restaurants are using smaller plates to create the illusion of a bigger portion
- Happy hour is extended at many bars in Beirut
- DIY projects
- Polyamory?
Of course, all of these things can be explained in many different ways. Social aspects play a role, individual experiences might reject this narrative and I present absolutely no math to support these claims.
However, what is prominent to me is the entire shift in perspective, and the heightened awareness of consuming habits and what they mean. Even if all these indicators fail to illustrate how the economic collapse sometimes trickles down to people in less violent ways, the fact that this is a conversation that is happening should tell you something.
Remember that scene in Friends where, after Monica’s fancy dinner to celebrate her promotion, Ross says, “I just don’t think of money as an issue [in my life],” and Rachel answers with, “That’s cause you have it?”