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The vice president’s stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, has been seen at the DNC wearing a camouflage baseball cap with “HARRIS WALZ” emblazoned in orange on the front. Rolling Stone tweeted a picture of the 25-year-old model, commenting that her stepmother’s merch was “genius”—and linking to a piece that opined: “The camouflage hat reclaims the rural and Southern identity that mainstream Democrats have long ignored.”
For the record, Ella Emhoff is neither rural nor Southern—she grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Los Angeles, and is now a “multidisciplinary artist” in Brooklyn. But more importantly, the camo hats—which sold out earlier this month, netting nearly $1 million for the Harris campaign—were made for girls and gays, not deer-hunting rednecks in Alabama. They are actually a nod to pop singer Chappell Roan, a lesbian and self-proclaimed “drag queen” who sells a nearly identical hat on her own website, except the slogan is “Midwest Princess,” in reference to her hit album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.
Kamala’s camo hat is meant to appeal to people who know what Chappell Roan merch looks like—almost definitionally people who would have voted for Kamala Harris anyway. It follows the Harris campaign’s embrace of the “Brat” aesthetic, inspired by British musician Charli XCX’s album of the same name. As a member of the target audience for this sort of thing, I must ask: How many gay guys do Democrats think there are in this country?!
River Page is a reporter at The Free Press. Follow him on X @river_is_nice, and read his piece “How Rednecks Like Me Hear J.D. Vance.”
This article was a waste of time
Ella's a "model"? Ummmm.....