The Atlantic

The Tender Power of Astrology Memes

It’s not you, it’s Mercury retrograde.
Source: Maja Hitij / Getty

In a recent post on Courtney Perkins’s Instagram account, two gray-haired women stand with their arms around each other, their gazes purposeful, their mouths unsmiling. It’s not clear who they are or what they’re doing, but the two have planned their outfits for the occasion: One woman is wearing a turquoise T-shirt that says I get us out of trouble in a white block print. Next to her, the second woman’s coral shirt declares, I get us into trouble. She’s also wearing sunglasses, presumably because she’s the cool one.

To make the photo into a meme, Perkins, a 24-year-old comedy writer living in Los Angeles, divvied up the 12 zodiac signs under the two shirts’ proclamations. She then posted the finished product to , an astrology-meme account she created in 2017 that now has nearly half a

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