Best of Racked Essays

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Racked became a place where professional and non-professional writers alike could write personal pieces about the things they bought and how they presented themselves. We know oftentimes a pair of jeans is not simply a pair of jeans, nor a tube of lipstick just a tube of lipstick; you do too. Here, some of our favorite essays and op-eds.

• Body Positivity Is a Scam
• How Many Pairs of Jeans Do You Really Need?
• Can You Appropriate Your Own Culture?
• We All Have a Retail Flinch Point
• I Didn’t Know What to Wear to My Brother’s Funeral
• I Was a Strict Evangelical, Until My Faith Unraveled
• I Didn’t Look Like a Heroin Addict
• The Clothes You Inherit From Your Exes
• I Feel Like I Live in Somebody Else’s Body
• The White Wedding Dress Industrial Complex
• It’s Time to Stop Hair-Policing Children of Color
• I Keep Track of My Family on Amazon
• Why Do We Breakup Shop?
• What Do We Do With the Clothing of Grief?
• Why Is Inclusive Sizing So Hard?
• The Presumptions of ‘Boyfriend’ Clothes
• Blonde Girls in Cheongsams
• On Female Fuccboi Style
• The White Ancestor That Haunts My Mirror
• Navigating Fashion When You’re Agender
• What My Breast Implants Taught Me About Class in America
• I Flew 900 Miles on a Private Jet to Get Rejected by Kim Kardashian West
• Stop Telling Me You Can’t Wait to Attend My Indian Wedding
• Learning to Love Being Five Feet Tall
• The Reluctant Swimmer’s Guide to Life
• Comfort, Humility, and Other Things I Found in My Man Pants
• Fashion Gateway Drugs