I remember being at my after-school Office Max job watching the TV pulled to the front of the store with my coworkers. I remember clutching my steering wheel as I listened to the second tower fall on my drive to school. Some of the tweeted replies explained generation cohorts in two shared experiences: those who watched their parents' lives decay under The Great Recession and those who watched 9/11. Pearce asked in the survey about the more intangible markers that define a generation. That said, I'm horrified at the return of plastic chokers and butterfly clips, and I'm anxiously waiting for the bleached-tipped hair on the Four Horsemen of the '90s Fashion Apocalypse to run in, aptly, during the tail end of the pandemic. Suddenly, am I an Old due to me being convinced by a stylist that I should part my hair to one side. I'm amused at the online discussion on where the part in our hair is now what defines us. They were the ones to have around in a pandemic, already weary, already tired, already understanding of the fact that we're all alone in the end, and likely secretly crossing their fingers that flannel will make a comeback. When I tried to crowdsource stereotypes of elder millennials from my friends, my problem was that most of my friends are Gen Xers - cynical, sarcastic, aloof people who are probably some of the most honest and fun people I've met. We had little to nothing but our degree in common, and they received some real glee at observing my firsts - first time renting a car, first time house shopping, first pregnancy. ![]() I remember being a 25-year-old befriended in grad school by those inching toward 40. If your math is rusty, that's 25-year-olds all the way to 40-year-olds. Millennials are defined by Pew Research as adults born between 19. My advice is to just think of the range in the same way: You're an Earth sign with your moon rising in Old Person. I'm also somewhat against splitting hairs with Xennials and Zennials, those who feel like they walk in the bog of stereotypes and relate to both. Generations are like astrology - fun to debate, but when you give too much emphasis on how it shapes your life and future, people should be allowed to give you the side eye. Matt Pearce, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, noted in a survey investigating elder millennials on Twitter that "generations are arbitrary, made-up categories with no firm boundaries, yet they are a durable, entrenched fiction we all deploy as a shorthand to interpret and order the inherent chaos of our social condition." There's a broad band of diversity in our cohort, not just racial and ethnic diversity, which is more than any generation before us and expanded by Gen Z, but also the diverse ways we've experienced the generation. ![]() I speak to both my houseplants and to my two children. ![]() I have a mortgage and recently invested in new windows. I am not religious, but I'm not an atheist. I don't have student loan debt, but I have advanced degrees.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |