Are you a white woman who measures self-worth by social acceptance? Are you desperate to prove that you aren’t one of those evil, racist, homophobic people who voted for a fascist? Are you eager to continue pandering to minorities by insisting that you voted for a woman of color? Good news! Just as people wore safety pins to indicate support for vulnerable minorities and hideous pink hats as a feminist symbol in 2016, there’s a new fashionable accessory to indicate your moral superiority after such a devastating election: Wear a blue friendship bracelet. After you’ve finished filming yourself screaming about the results and have uploaded that video to TikTok, put on your “future is female” shirt and hop in your climate-friendly electric vehicle to drive to the nearest craft store that sells blue beads and string. If you’re particularly inspired, you can even buy some beads with letters to add a phrase into the bracelet, such as “safe space” and “solidarity.” Once you’re home — and, of course, you stopped during the drive back to leave a bouquet of flowers outside a Kamala mural —  you have to do the work and make the anti-fascist bracelet. Democracy requires it. 

Actually, wait. I was wrong. Between the time I started writing and finished the first paragraph, the progressive movement changed. I’m sorry on behalf of the demonic white women who voted for Trump, and I’m sorry for my own actions. I — a privileged, cisgender, straight, Ivy-educated, brunette, non-disabled, enviably skinny white woman — should have advised you to buy the bracelets from black-owned jewelry companies. Staring at $10, you can buy the blue-and-gold “unity bracelet” set sold by the Etsy shop “Beaded and Balanced.” (Better act fast because the shop has already sold over 200 of them.)

Alternatively, you can buy “solidarity bracelets” from “Melanin and Moon Minerals.” Not only do those bracelets represent your commitment to the Kamala campaign, but they are also made from sodalite and therefore have magical powers: “Sodalite promotes self-expression and speaking your truth. Sodalite is good for emotional balance, clarity of the mind, and boosting your intuition. It can help you bring logic to a situation at hand!” (There have been more than 500 orders for that bracelet.)

Oh wait. Dammit. Things changed again. It is so hard being a good progressive because we don’t know what we’re supposed to think tomorrow, or what we were supposed to think yesterday. Let us defer to someone who can educate us: “We didn’t need safety pins. We didn’t need pink hats. We didn’t need blue bracelets. We didn’t need marches. We didn’t even need Zooms. We needed you to get granny, antie, sister, daughter, cousin, mama, memaw, mamaw to the doggone voting booth.” Indeed, the bracelets were just a low-effort performative way to signal our positions. We need to engage in real activism and confront our evil family members who own MAGA hats. So, forget I said anything about the bracelets.