This is the Washington Post Op-Ed Jeff Bezos Won't Let You Read

My Op-Ed was censored by Washington Post, read it here today

Near the end of 2024, after I had this piece go viral about fashion trends and our leaning conservative climate, I was reached out by Substack and the Washington Post to write an Op-Ed to be published on their site. I was excited that my ideas, research, and knowledge was being taken seriously and I was ready to share my thoughts with others outside my normal reach online. While many people who are heavily involved with internet fashion discourse understand and know that certain aesthetics and fashion trends were indicators of who would win the election, there is a whole group of people out there who don’t know what I am even talking about when I say “Clean Girl” or “Indie Sleaze”. I was writing for those people.

Again, The Official Nancy Drew Newsletter has paused paid subscriptions at this time. If you enjoy my writing and content on Substack or Tiktok, please consider making a one-time donation via Venmo (@hioklindsey). I freelance while also being the primary care-giver of my toddler. All income goes toward living everyday life.

A handful of days ago when I read about Jeff Bezos stating that the opinion pieces published by the Washington Post will only defend free markets and personal liberties, I already knew my piece was killed. This new direction is extremely clear: censorship and fascism. All I could think is this: Why would I want to hear an elaboration of ethics from a billionaire? Allowing the existence of billionaires is where we went wrong. We need to see everything we are watching as major alarms, if somehow you haven’t heard them yet it’s time to wake up. An opinion section is supposed to be opinions, not what opinions dictated by a billionaire.

Also- hey Washington Post, democracy already died in the darkness. Actually, it died in the sunlight where everyone could watch.

Here is the edited piece below, if there is interest I will include the full, much longer piece in another post before it was trimmed.

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You Can’t Tell Someone’s Political Beliefs By the Way They Dress 

Anyone can wear a camo hat from a gas station and an oversized Carhartt jacket. Does that mean they have Trump stickers on their car, or does that mean they read Marxist theory at the library? Anyone can buy a prairie dress from the Tiktok shop and bake sourdough for their four children on a farm. Does that mean none of their kids are vaccinated, or does that mean they are queer punks who see community gardens as sites of mutual aid? The truth is, we can’t always tell anymore someone’s political beliefs by the way they dress. 

I have a story for you about the time I moved to Texas. Though I had only ever lived in red states and was used to them, Texas was something new. My husband is a college professor and landed a job at Texas A&M, in the remote city of College Station. We knew living not in a bigger city in Texas would present challenges, as we are very progressive, but we were up for it. I myself am a social person, I easily make friends everywhere I go, but it became more challenging here when I started assuming people’s political beliefs by the way they dressed. 

I was desperate for a community of any kind in Texas. So I went to the farmer’s markets to make friends, having started my radical journey in the 2010s volunteering on organic farms in exchange for a room and food. I watched a family of uniquely dressed children and parents, whom I was excited to talk to, start discussing how they would rather die than drink pasteurized milk or send their children to a public school. Later at the library, I met a mom with blue hair and piercings with a baby the same age as mine. The way she dressed reminded me of the “blue haired liberal” trope of the 2010s and she was a teacher, how could she possibly not at least be a democrat? Then she started talking about transphobic conspiracy theories and how the left is destroying public education. I have a million more of these stories. 

I used to know people aligned with my values just by simply reading their personal style. In Texas, I had to stop doing that before I started making friends. I met a mom at a local library whose Lululemon said nothing about her at all. The first thing she said was how much she hated living in this “small town” and how she missed her friends. She later came to my wedding the next year. She also came to my house to read zines about abolishing prisons and we both felt a little less alone in a very conservative place. 

I’m not telling you this story to say that clothing doesn’t matter. A lot of my life is clothing. I’ve been some form of a fashion writer since the early 2010’s blogging days, and I currently make money talking and writing about fashion discourse online. Clothing matters. Clothing holds knowledge. Clothing has stories, but we too often assume people's politics from their clothes, and get it wrong a lot of the time. And I would argue, a lot of the time recently.

Fashion commenters have spent months looking back at cultural and fashion trends to find the signs of Trump’s win. Conservatism in fashion looks like everything from the erasure of plus-sized models, the whiteness and body discipline of the Clean Girl aesthetic, the apathy of “Indie Sleaze”, and even the return of the Victoria Secret Angels. The entire concept of Old Money aesthetic is literally based on elitism. Some fashion commenters, myself included, have gone further to show how internet-oriented fashion “aesthetics” and “cores” helped fashion transmit conservative values. 

Take trad wife content, for example. This became hyper-Americanized through content creators who showcased an aesthetic version of a farm life, wearing prairie dresses and having an egg apron around their waist to collect breakfast. While there is pleasure in viewing images and content surrounding a life that has no connection to you, whatever content we view still affects us. The act of homesteading in America is also rooted in settler colonialism and racism. Progressive vintage fashion content creators who dress in full 1950’s “housewife” attire now include disclaimers that they have “vintage styles, not vintage values” in their bio. Others embrace the “trad wife” lifestyle and submit to their husbands. 

True freedom of dressing can mean dressing modestly or exposing, through home-steader dresses or through mini-skirt. On Monday you can look like a “model off duty.” On Tuesday you can dress like you left class at an English Prep School. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this experimentation. But if there is no deep connection with your clothing, it’s dressing in a genre and it’s a character. Characters, while they have values, they have values the author assigns them. One might ask, who is your author when you are dressing in an aesthetic? And what values do they have in store for you already? What values will they showcase to the world? Because they could be yours as well, but they also might not be. You also might not even know what they are. 

What is important is that we think about fashion differently. To think of fashion as easily identifiable signals is the problem, because our fashion has been rooted in aesthetics dictated by internet trends. And while anyone with a microphone from Amazon and a few thousand Tiktok followers can tell you “How To Find Your Personal Style in 2025,” but the truth is our style is not found through genre. It’s not found through someone showing you styling techniques, street style interviews, or (and of course) fashion trends. Our personal style is made of memories, history, and lived experiences through our communities and our commitment to them.

You are more than an aesthetic. You embody feelings, change, agency, and beliefs. Aesthetics do not hold beliefs, they hold visuals, they hold a genre, they have authors and that author is not you. The author shouldn’t be your algorithm.