Dunn-drunk

the unconventionally similar motivations for two disparate phenomena

Ever heard one of those phrases like, “Life is what happens between coffee and wine?”

Maybe it was written in long, sans serif quirky freehand on a mug that ostensibly is full of either coffee or wine at any given moment. (A mug that, for some reason, might fetch hundreds of dollars from collectors on eBay).

Now, for the person you imagine holding this so-cringy-it’s-almost-funny-again mug: is it a blond white Midwestern mom with a minivan and a Stanley Cup (to replace a recently deceased Hydroflask)? We realize Pacific Dispatch is historically unfair towards this demographic (see our articles about parenthood, Disney adults, astrology, and the suburbs) but this group is a very good microcosm of the nuances and quirks of modern American culture — and we respect them for *puts on Gen Z voice* living their best lives. 

So let’s get into the meat and potatoes: we’re going to talk about wine moms and Rae Dunn fans. The Venn diagram between these two demographics is startlingly circular, and while the origins behind the phenomena are similar, the results are very different. 

Rae Dunn: a style that can best be described as simple playful quirky inoffensive farmhouse. Synonyms: “live laugh love”, “TJMaxx deluxe”, “cottagecore Airbnb”. 

If you live in North America, there’s an 82% chance you know the Rae Dunn aesthetic (don’t check our sources, but if you’re in doubt, run a Google Image search on the name). The brand originally started out as a ceramic company founded by artist-of-various-mediums Rae Dunn, a California native who currently lives in San Francisco. She gravitated toward slightly uneven and imperfect shapes (in the Japanese wabi-sabi style) with unsubtle messages, such as a milk pitcher with “milk” scrawled across the front. Whatever one may say about its artistic merits, the line has become a smashing success, spreading like wildfire through middle class and middle class-adjacent suburbia.

The line is sold exclusively at TJX stores, like TJMaxx, Home Goods, and Marshalls. There are videos out there of women fighting over the stuff, because only a certain amount of items go to each store; and if for some reason an item is considered “rare,” there are many clamoring to get ahold of it, either for their personal collection or to resell. Employees of TJX stores have reported being warned about the “Rae Dunn women” and seeing some come into the store up to five times a day to scope out merchandise, even going so far as to track new shipments on Facebook groups. 

One wonders whether a mass-produced retail home decor item sold in fixed quantities possesses any qualities that make it rare — but clearly some don’t wonder that. It’s a mystery which items resell for ten-fold or more times their original sale price; a pig-shaped cookie jar with the word OINK on the side can reportedly fetch hundreds of dollars on eBay, despite selling for under twenty dollars when it was on the TJMaxx shelves. A seller on Mercari has put up an item called “Rae Dunn Very Large Pear” for $1,134 while a different seller posted “ RAE DUNN MEDIUM PEAR” for $949. Just some ceramic pears, not even a jar or mug. We’re as confused as you are, so let’s move on. 

We’d like to avoid fueling the unfair criticism of hobbies enjoyed by women rather than men; after all, collecting ceramics is not so inherently different from collecting coins or sports memorabilia. But we can’t help but think that the underlying motivation behind the collecting of ceramics says something specific about American women — we’ll get to that shortly.

And though we can’t be absolutely sure, it seems like the same women bidding on a pig-shaped cookie jar on eBay are also those buying “Wine gets better with age, I get better with wine” signs from the nearby TJMaxx shelf. 

Although funny-bordering-on-worrying jokes about drinking are nothing new to American society — think of every keychain or fridge magnet you’ve seen declaring alcohol “both the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems” — the growth and normalization of “wine mom” culture, particularly since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is reaching concerning levels in the eyes of many. It’s impossible to enter a big-box store without passing by racks upon racks of cutesy home decor items inscribed with odes to the joys of drinking wine.

Alcoholism among women, particularly women ages 18 to 44, is rising, as are the health effects of prolonged alcohol use disorder like liver cirrhosis, heart disease, and cancer. An NPR article from June 2021, during both the throes and the burgeoning aftermath of the pandemic, declared that Women Now Drink As Much As Men — Not So Much For Pleasure, But To Cope. More context makes the statistic even more concerning: drinking among young adults is down overall, but among women rates are falling more slowly and binge-drinking is increasing. In women over 26, alcohol consumption is rising more quickly than it is among men and is associated with anxiety, stress, and trauma, putting them at higher risk of substance abuse disorders; health consequences strike men and women unequally, with women facing risks at lower levels and time-periods of consumption. The stereotype of an alcoholic being a gaunt and haggard deadbeat with a brown-bagged bottle and a five-o’clock shadow is no longer representative of the disease in America.

Perhaps the trend is unsurprising given the ever-amplifying pressures to which mothers are increasingly subjected: not only do women have to deal with rising childcare costs and comparisons to “perfect mothers” on social media, they increasingly have to handle these along with the stress of a full-time professional life and career ambitions. No one is immune: stay-at-home mothers are judged and thought of as uneducated, often having to balance precarious finances in a world where even two working parents can’t buy a house together; mothers who work suffer from guilt from being away from their children or are shamed for wanting things outside motherhood; and child-free or childless women are judged as cold and unfeminine for eschewing, either by choice or circumstance, a life with children. All this on top of the glass ceiling, the unequal mental load, and general financial instability makes it very difficult to survive, much less thrive. 

While there’s clearly a fine line between genuine concern and the sexism that would culturally differentiate “wine moms” and “beer dads,” there’s no question that wine mom culture has taken a dangerous turn towards being normalized and joked about despite its detrimental effects on American women. The circumstances that have created this phenomenon don’t have easy answers, but if we want to preserve the already-compromised sanity and already-unprioritized health of overworked and underpaid mothers, it’s imperative we do something about it. 

So why did we choose to look at these two topics together? One so lighthearted, even amusing, and the other representative of a deeper, darker set of issues?

Because we think there is something tying the two together. In North American culture, women face a crisis of identity. Even if it never develops into a full-fledged visible crisis, it occurs in the subconscious in every choice and every decision you make throughout the course of your life. For a more complete picture, check out the monologue in Barbie, but essentially, there is never a right way to just be. And for mothers in America, that identity is constant pressure and never permanent: you have to work a full-time job that pays enough and be a mother and manage a household with varying levels of burden-sharing and be a complete person with your own identity and you drink just to cope with all of that, and collecting little ceramics is the one little escape you have. And then eventually your kids grow up and don’t need you as much as they used to and then who even are you anymore? What do you even do with all the free time that was once filled with parenthood and the money spent on kids’ clothes and school supplies and karate classes? Society doesn’t provide a blueprint, and it becomes increasingly difficult to feel understood by popular media, perpetually obsessed with youth and appearance. Thus, both substance abuse and consumerist collecting hobbies, both specifically advertising to middle-aged women as a target demographic, often emerge to fill the void.

The answer to all of this is not easy or simple. It’s always an interesting exercise to think about whether it’s even worth considering large structural, societal, cultural changes — whether they are implementable with enough time or whether they are too lofty to be at all practical solutions. If attitudes about motherhood have a long way to go, it’s only as long as feminism has to go too, because they are inextricably linked. And maybe tacky porcelain houseware really isn’t the foremost crisis of our time, but if our hypothesis is correct, it’s symbolic of bigger problems upon which we should focus our ongoing fight for the betterment of society. 

P.S. We couldn’t resist buying some stupid shit and calling it research, so we have purchased two Rae Dunn items off Poshmark Canada: a holographic bottle that says “Magic Potion” and a simple white mug with the label “Rise & Grind.” They’re pretty solid; we recommend (but only if you agree that a single household does not need more than fifteen mugs).