"I was in my twenties then, and I’d grown up with a certain expectation, watching films, of what my sexual life was going to be like, and then it wasn’t that."

"The world had begun to be so saturated by sexual imagery in porn and the expectations were shifting. Not that there’s anything wrong with porn, but it does change the way people are expecting you to behave in a natural sexual situation. And so I was just confounded, and I think Girls expressed a lot of that confusion, anxiety, and frankly, pain."

Said Lena Dunham, quoted in "Lena Dunham on Too Much and her long-awaited return to TV: 'I stepped back from acting after my body was dissected'/Eight years on from ‘Girls’, the HBO comedy that made her name – and made her a lightning rod for criticism – Dunham is back with a 10-part romcom, ‘Too Much’. Ellie Harrison hears from the writer, along with her new lead stars Meg Stalter and Will Sharpe, about their London-set love story, which is well worth the wait" (Independent).

Did Lena Dunham have her body "dissected"? When I read that in the headline I thought it was a reference to her health problems (notably, endometriosis). But no: "When Girls was on television, discourse about Dunham’s appearance was rabid. Howard Stern called her 'a little fat girl' on national radio. One newspaper described her as a 'pathological exhibitionist.' 'Having my body dissected was a reason that I chose in general to step back from acting a little bit more and focus on my writing and my directing, and also just make different kinds of choices as an actor,' she says now."

"Today, parents still have obligations to their children. But it seems the children’s duties have become optional."

"'With parents and adult children today, the adult child feels like, "If you failed me in your responsibility as a parent" — in ways, of course, that are increasingly hard to define— "then I owe you nothing as an adult child,"' says [psychologist Joshua] Coleman. Which means that it now often seems like having a child entails an enormous amount of financial, emotional and spiritual investment, with a hovering possibility that your children will cut contact with you after they reach young adulthood and the increasing likelihood that they will hold you responsible — not only for their suffering and struggles but even for your decision to bring them into the misery-inducing world in the first place.

Writes Michal Leibowitz, in "Why Millennials Dread Having Babies" (NYT).

"Let's just take Superbowl Sunday. Mmkay? It's gonna affect beer. Mmkay? Most of it — Corona, here — comes from Mexico. It's gonna affect your guac. Because what is guacamole made of? Avocados. Both from Mexico."

Chuck Schumer claims that President Trump's tariffs will raise the price of beer because "most of it comes from Mexico" while holding a can of corona.

This might be the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen a politician do lmfao. pic.twitter.com/z4Z0W22gUe

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 3, 2025

Chuck Schumer is attempting to lure Americans away from Trump by tempting us with the humble indulgences beer and guacamole — drinking and snacking — paired with watching television. But even if Americans were hopelessly addicted to these fattening pleasures, we could still, easily, choose a non-Mexican beer and serve those tortilla chips with melted cheese instead of that avocado paste. That might work out well for Wisconsin — home of beer and cheese — and quite badly for Mexico. What is it going to do with all those avocados if we say we'd rather push for Mexico to help us with the border problem than continue to mindlessly consume that that green goo... that sludge... that guck... 

This is fresh fruit, farmed in vast quantity in Mexico, where it will rot if not sold. What am I missing? We will easily win this trade war. And I'm sure Schumer knows all this and is embarrassed to be smarmily plying us with a beer and an avocado.

By the way, Americans didn't use to care about avocados at all. Here's an 2015 article in The Atlantic — "The Selling of the Avocado/How the 'alligator pear' went from obscure delicacy to America's favorite fruit":

"Japan stole our Halloween magic that tracks cause it died here about 10 years ago."

"I live in japan... you know... walkable cities and all. Halloween is BOOMING here! I handed out candy to 500 kids in just a mid-sized town here (went through ten 50-pack boxes) and my friends went to Nagoya and said there were THOUSANDS of people dressed up this year and it's only getting bigger because people hear about how fun it is and CAN ACTUALLY GET TO THE EVENTS!"

From a Reddit post asking what millennials did (supposedly) that ruined Halloween.

Interesting about Japan. As for America, it might be that millennials think they need to escort their kids from door to door, but if they do that, who will be home to give out candy to the kids that come to their door? I think you need lots of 2-parent families. Leaving out a bowl of candy doesn't work, because there's no one to see the costumes (and it's not surprising that kids dump the whole bowl). 

Other issues: "trunk or treat" format is replacing the door to door approach. And: "Was giving out Halloween candy in my neighborhood and not a single kid said the phrase 'trick or treat.' Literally not a single child."

"Gen Z may like crew socks, but they’ve remained relatively silent on the issue on TikTok, and don’t seem to care..."

"... when asked on other parts of social media. Meanwhile, the most popular TikToks on the trend war are explainer videos and millennials on the defensive. “This country is in a crisis,” wrote menswear writer and commentator Derek Guy on X after a poll from the sportswear company Bennetts revealed 50.3 percent of its voters preferred 'normal' crew socks. Other videos showed Generation Y bravely wearing hidden socks in public, reluctantly wearing taller socks to stay on trend, or, like Spence, creating makeshift ankle socks by folding longer socks under their heels."

I'm reading "Your socks are showing your age/Millennials have cutthroat defenses of their low-cut socks as Gen Z embraces crew socks" (WaPo)(free access link, in case you need pictures).

It's interesting, from my perspective, to watch millennials facing up to a younger generation that regards them as old, especially when the focus is something that — unlike the inevitable decline toward death — is completely trivial — here, the height of the tops of your socks. 

My advice, from the advanced age of 73, is:

With Jon Stewart's return to "The Daily Show," I was going to say it's fine, because Generation X did not get its full and fair chance to make its mark on the culture.

But Jon Stewart is 61. He was born in 1962. He's a BOOMER!

Boomers, Boomers, Boomers. We were born to dominate the culture forever. I say "forever," because without us... well, it's all always been about us. What is anything without us? 

Generation X is and was always in our shadow. Eventually, we'll pass on, but it will be too late for them. The Millennials — The Generation Created by Us, the Boomers — have always overshadowed Gen X, and as the Boomers vacate cultural space The Millennials will seize it as their rightful entitlement.

Now, let me cherry-pick from news articles about the return of Jon Stewart to "The Daily Show":

"By the time the boomers began having kids of their own, in the nineteen-eighties, their countercultural dreams had long since crumbled."

"They had to figure out what new message about the meaning of work to pass on to their children, the so-called millennials (born between 1981 and 1996). In looking for a compromise between corporate conformity, which they still distrusted, and their own failed attempts to reject work altogether, the boomers came up with a clever solution: telling the millennial to seek work that they loved.... The destabilizing impact of the 9/11 and the financial crises that followed cast doubt on the idea that our jobs should be our ultimate source of fulfillment...."

Writes Cal Newport in "The Year in Quiet Quitting/A new generation discovers that it’s hard to balance work with a well-lived life" (The New Yorker).

"How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?"

Straight-out misogyny from Matt Gaetz: 

 

Gaetz is himself a millennial — he's 39 — so what can account for his creepy nastiness? Was he under-educated, over-loved, and excessively catered-to by his happy wife Ginger Luckey, and too easily accepted on that Seeking Arrangements website? I don't know. I'm just trying to keep up with his free-wheeling, hilarious approach to the psychoanalysis of people he loathes.

"[M]illennials and Gen Z in particular seem wedded (old monogamy alert!) to the idea that the 'normal' way of doing things is almost always oppressive and must be either reclaimed or disavowed."

"Especially in the sexual realm, anything that could be viewed as traditional or average is passé. As the lecturer and essayist Phil Christman wrote in a Substack post, his students 'have a bias, so strong that I wonder if it’s hard-wired, to believe that complexity itself is new. In the past, people were drones who acted on the tenets of Religion, or Society, or The Way Things Were Then, whereas now people think about what they do.'... So for generations coming of age today... unprotected sex becomes the appropriately mysterious (if vaguely nauseating) 'fluid bonding.' If you need an emotional bond to want sex with someone, it sounds more inscrutable, and thus tolerable, if you call yourself 'demisexual.'... And monogamy, the most old-fashioned arrangement of all, must be smuggled into acceptability via the label 'radical.'"

Writes Christine Emba in "How radical is ‘radical monogamy,’ really?" (WaPo). 

She's bouncing off this Vice article by Nick Levine, "What Is 'Radical Monogamy'?" Levine tells us there's "reflexive monogamy" — "blindly accepting that it is somehow morally superior to have just one sexual partner" — and then there's "the more informed and conscious choice" of monogamy that gets the spicy label "radical monogamy." 

Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn’t really work today.... because it is often predicated on heteronormativity and misogyny and very frequently breeds boredom, disloyalty and stagnation."

“Radical monogamy works for me because I've always wanted a gigantic love. I wanted to be one person’s joy and delight and I wanted them to be mine,” they say. "Then I grew up and I was told that was ridiculous, unrealistic and unhealthy, so I gave up on monogamy and practised polyamory. But now I’ve come around to believing that all those other people’s messages were wrong. If approached with intentionality, effort and a willingness to grow, it is possible to have a love that’s big and magical.”

I spent some time trying to figure out who "they" referred to before realizing that Levine was still quoting Vincent and Vincent must use "they" as their pronoun. That was confusing! Apparently, the notation that an individual goes by "they" is now dispensable. That was boring! Vice has moved on to demanding that the reader step up and figure it out. 

But about the substance of that indented quote. It made me laugh because of the way it ended with the dream of "a love that’s big and magical." In the end, for all that straining to be radical, it comes back around to a puffy romantic vision. 

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! 

It's okay, you can still have your "intentionality." The intentional pursuit of magical love!

"Many young people have an unfortunate perspective derived from coming of age amid national humiliations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"In school, they’ve learned more about the United States’ shortcomings than about her triumphs and the nation’s indispensability as a global force for good. The crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed that blind spot.... The Cold War generation better understands the stakes.... It’s prudent to be cautious about drawing World War II analogies, but it’s proper to recount the carnage that followed America’s turning inward during the 1930s...."

From "Why Biden should deliver a European history lesson during the State of the Union" by James Hohmann (WaPo). 

How old is Hohmann? I wondered. It wasn't easy to Google, but I think he graduated from college in 2009, which might make him about 35. It's safe to say he's a millennial. 

I went looking for his age when I read "The Cold War generation better understands the stakes." Usually, we're called Baby Boomers, and our understanding of "the stakes" was powerfully shaped by Vietnam, and that took place under the compulsion of the military draft.

You'd better take that into account when you say we're different from these kids today who grew up under "the national humiliations in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Your 7-year-old has perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the moment. Righting wrongs — and there are always more than enough to choose from — is virtuous..."

"... if sometimes humorless. But inventing infractions merely to put people in the wrong is not." 

The advice columnist "Miss Manners" answers a woman whose daughter chided her for using the automatic door button when she is not disabled.

The words "Your 7-year-old has perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the moment" feel humorous, and I hope the girl has a frivolous foible that she will outgrow. Or maybe she has a sense of humor and the mother is the humorless one who's overly afflicted by the zeitgeist. But it's terrifying to think that Generation Alpha is going to be grimly looking for meaningless micro-offenses.

I've said it before — I'm investing my hope in the babies — "those who will be born over the next 5 years, and kids up to the age of 10": "What are these people going to be like — after living through the lockdown and witnessing the heightened, hysterical, hypocritical empathy of the millennials." I said: "I was hoping they rebel against the prudery and the repression of the millennials."

But what if they lean into the worst tendencies of the millennials and Gen Z?

"At a retail business based in New York, managers were distressed to encounter young employees who wanted paid time off when coping with anxiety or period cramps."

"At a supplement company, a Gen Z worker questioned why she would be expected to clock in for a standard eight-hour day when she might get through her to-do list by the afternoon. At a biotech venture, entry-level staff members delegated tasks to the founder. And spanning sectors and start-ups, the youngest members of the work force have demanded what they see as a long overdue shift away from corporate neutrality toward a more open expression of values, whether through executives displaying their pronouns on Slack or putting out statements in support of the protests for Black Lives Matter.... At many businesses, Gen Z employees are given increasing leeway to drive internal culture, too. Emily Fletcher, 42, who runs Ziva Meditation, noticed that at her company retreat the junior people were the ones who were most comfortable stretching the bounds of what is considered professional conversation.... 'They celebrate human emotion, instead of having an outdated framework of what corporate should be,' Ms. Fletcher said. Her company culture has relaxed even more, she added, since the departure of her oldest employee, who was 48. 'Now everyone feels safe to be a little more weird.'"

From "The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them/Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a longstanding trend, but many employers said there’s a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste" by Emma Goldberg (NYT)

"There was an unspoken understanding among women that we were on a collective and never-ending diet. It was a hellish time..."

"... but it seemed completely normal. And I haven’t even touched on Bridget Jones.... a film series portraying a 130lb woman as a disgusting sad lump....  Of course this is not to suggest that millennials are the first or last generation to be subject to unattainable beauty standards. While the body positivity movement has done so much to shift the conversations we have about our bodies, Gen-Zers are already beginning to deconstruct their own relationship to TikTok and Instagram’s faux empowerment of the 'slim thicc' ideal-type. I mourn the life I could have lived if the Nineties had just let me weigh what I weighed."

From "Millennials were traumatised by Nineties fatphobia" (Evening Standard).

"Slim-thicc" refers to an overweight woman with a relatively small waist and a somewhat flat stomach. It seems to be fat acceptance within the narrow range of the conventional appreciation of voluptuousness. That is, you can weigh a lot and look great but only if it's distributed according to a certain traditional preference. That's the ideal that, in the future, Gen-Zers will look back on in articles about what traumatized them in the 2020s.

"A few weeks ago, I met my first Millennial grandparent. I was interviewing a woman in her late 30s..."

"... about President Joe Biden’s new child-tax-credit proposal, and she mentioned that it would benefit not just her two young kids but her older son’s kid too. The incidental meeting was a reminder both that Millennials are getting older and that they are doing so without growing up, at least not in the way that many of them might wish. The woman I interviewed does not own a home, nor is she anywhere close to affording one. She has nothing in the way of savings. Nevertheless, she is a grandmother, catapulting into middle age."

From "Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up/ Today’s economic conditions are not just holding Millennials back. They are stratifying them, leading to unequal experiences within the generation as well as between it and other cohorts" by Annie Lowrey (The Atlantic).

ADDED: How did anyone "grow up" in the past? We had "economic conditions" back then too. I'm not blogging this article because I agree with it. I just thought the notion of millennials as grandparents was interesting. I myself am still not a grandparent, but I had to stop and think that my sons are old enough to be grandparents, and I am therefore old enough to be a great grandparent!

"[L]ast year, Hsu Hsiu-e, 84 and Chang Wan-ji, 83—a married couple who own a laundromat in Taiwan—became global social media stars thanks to their Instagram account..."

"... @wantshowasyoung. The pair pose in compelling outfits styled from clothes their laundromat customers have left behind. The account is now up to over 654,000 followers and the pair was recently named the ambassadors for Taipei Fashion Week." 

From "Grandpa Style: Why 20-Somethings Are Dressing Like Senior Citizens/Thanks to Instagram accounts like @Gramparents and books like ‘Chinatown Pretty,’ milllenials and Gen-Z are coming to appreciate their gray-haired elders’ fashion sense" (WSJ). 

 I'm amused by the way the WSJ tried so hard to get the double letters in "millennial" right and came up with "milllenials." 

Anyway... @wantshowasyoung isn't about youngish people dressing like really old people. It's old people wanting to "show as young" — look young. I'm blogging this little side issue, because I like the Instagram account. Such a perfect idea. Example:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 萬秀的洗衣店｜WANT SHOW as young (@wantshowasyoung)

As for millennials and Gen Zers dressing like "grandfathers," my favorite example of this is the YouTube icon Review Brah, who explains here — in his mesmerizing style — why he dresses like that: 

"The term Generation Alpha is usually credited to Mark McCrindle, a generational researcher in Australia who... told me that the name originated from an online survey he ran in 2008..."

"... that yielded a slew of now-discarded monikers, many of which focused on technology (the 'Onliners,' 'Generation Surf,' the 'Technos') or gave the next round of humans the burden of undoing the damage done by the last (the 'Regeneration,' 'Generation Hope,' the 'Saviors,' 'Generation Y-not'). One popular option from the survey was 'Generation A,' but, McCrindle told me in an email, he thought the name for a cohort that would shape the future shouldn’t 'be labelled by going back to the beginning.' So once the Latin alphabet was exhausted, he hopped over to the Greek one—'the start of something new.' A consensus has formed around Generation Alpha, but it may be a temporary one. The generic 'Generation [Letter]' format began with Generation X. 'It was meant to be a placeholder for something a bit uncertain or mysterious, almost like X in some algebraic equation,' [sociology professor Dan] Woodman told me. Generation Y followed, though it was usurped, at least in the U.S., by Millennials; nothing has overthrown Generation Z. Placeholder names, in a way, make generational generalizations easier. 'They’re almost like empty labels that you can put anything in,' Woodman said. He thinks Generation Alpha will stick for at least a little while, but can also see how it might get replaced by something 'a little more descriptive.' The history of generational labeling is littered with names that gained some traction, but not enough. Gen X has been referred to as 'Baby Busters,' the 'slacker generation,' 'latchkey kids,' and the 'MTV Generation,' though the placeholder won out. The same, so far, has been the case for Gen Z, whose proposed alternate names include 'iGeneration,' the 'Homeland Generation,' 'Multi-Gen,' 'Post Gen,' and the 'Pluralistic Generation.'" 

From "Oh No, They’ve Come Up With Another Generation Label/How much do members of “Generation Alpha,” or any generation, really have in common?" in The Atlantic — but that was back last February. Now we could consider Generation Covid, as these poor kids are getting a big chunk of their childhood distanced and muted. It's making them different, and we'll see how they turn out.

I looked up that article because I mentioned Generation Alpha in the podcast yesterday. I was hoping they rebel against the prudery and the repression of the millennials. I said I was talking to them, talking to "babies." Are they they babies of America right now, these people I'm investing my hopes in? Yeah! Babies, those who will be born over the next 5 years, and kids up to the age of 10. What are these people going to be like — after living through the lockdown and witnessing the heightened, hysterical, hypocritical empathy of the millennials.

"I’m 26. I don’t have any prior autoimmune or respiratory conditions."

"I work out six times a week, and abstain from cigarettes. I thought my role in the current health crisis would be as an ally to the elderly and compromised. Then, I was hospitalized for Covid-19.... As a generation with a supposed commitment to social justice, we should be stepping up in our role as allies to more vulnerable populations. Yet, somehow the message of staying home still isn’t permeating our ageism and ableism. Millennials, if you can’t be good allies, at least stay home to protect yourselves... Millennials are reported to care deeply about wellness and social justice...."

From "I’m 26. Coronavirus Sent Me to the Hospital/Millennials: If you can’t stay at home for others, do it for yourselves" by Fiona Lowenstein (NYT).

Supposed to be committed to social justice.... reported to care deeply about social justice....

Could it be that this commitment and caring was just a luxury of good times? If so, here's the selfish interest alternative you may have thought you were too good for.

Whatever. Just do the right thing, kids. Protecting yourself protects everybody. It's okay if your heart isn't pretty.

"Roswell finally outed himself as rich when he volunteered to front the travel costs for a group of Oberlin students who wanted to attend a climate-change conference."

"That’s when two housemates told him about an organization called Resource Generation (RG). A nonprofit group based in New York, Resource Generation focuses on organizing wealthy young people to recognize their unearned privilege, make peace with it — and then relinquish much of it by giving away a large percentage of their money.... At conferences, in webinars and in local working groups, and through RG books and peer-to-peer mentorship, members learn how to shed entitled assumptions. One bedrock Resource Generation practice is educating members to work closely with community organizations in what it calls 'right relationship' — not dictating how donated funds should be used, but supporting local leaders, who are often poor or working class and are closest to the problems they seek to address.... According to Roswell, his mother, for one, worries that he is moving too quickly, making reckless decisions about enormous sums.... 'I think the mirror I’ve been holding up has been helpful, and that my family is changing how they’re approaching their own giving.' Ultimately, however, philanthropy’s real goal, he says, should be 'to make itself not exist anymore.'"

From "The Millennials Who Want to Get Rid of Their Class Privilege/Their families built fortunes. These young people joined a group that coaches them on how to give the money away" (WaPo).

Photographs at the link include one with the caption "Resource Generation member David Roswell and girlfriend Maggie Heraty at his kiln in Durham, N.C." But there was nothing in the article about his kiln. Nothing other than the note that "in addition to his political organizing [he] spends his days working as a ceramist." Is "ceramist" (i.e, potter) his career or is it some pastime or affectation? I think it would be nice to have secure independent wealth and to "spend one's days" doing pottery but difficult to rid yourself of all your wealth and depend on pottery for a living.

"The enthusiasm of Ms. Eilish’s devotees denotes a striking turnabout, a new generation’s rejection of the flirty babe aesthetic embodied by contemporary idols like Ariana Grande..."

"... in favor of something more crazily improvised and less strenuously sexual. At 18, [Billie] Eilish, who often goes without makeup, favors a pastiche of outsize 1980s and ’90s hip-hop and skater looks. That look speaks assertively to a Gen Z crowd chary of artifice and aggressive displays of sensuality. 'Her look is not about vanity,' said Lucie Greene, a trend forecaster and brand strategist. 'She is flipping the idea of beauty to something surreal, something influenced by gaming and the cyberculture. These are not the filtered images of millennials'....Her style resonates, [Amanda Petrusich wrote in The New Yorker], 'in a cultural moment when we are all trying very hard to sort out real people from the ones who are merely savvy and ambitious enough to know the right way to curate and present an authentic-seeming vibe.'"

From "Billie Eilish: Gen Z’s Outrageous Fashion Role Model/The Grammy-winning artist is reinventing conventional notions of femininity" by Ruth La Ferla (NYT).

I'm glad these kids today are "chary of artifice and aggressive displays of sensuality" (as the NYT puts it).

I like seeing Generation Z rise up and challenge the millennials. Time for millennials to see younger people not enjoying them. It's one thing to feel the older generation's criticism, quite another to have the criticism coming from the new people.

ADDED: "I've never been to school. I grew up homeschooled, stayed homeschooled, never was not homeschooled," said Billie Eilish, quoted in Reason, in "Sibling Grammy Winners Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell Praise Homeschooling."

"I think there’s the potential for the whole range of human emotions, right from humiliation when you give someone a gift. It’s important to us how others feel about our behavior and how it comes across."

Said a psychologist, quoted in "Millennials Want To Ban Secret Santa Because It Gives Them Anxiety" (The Daily Wire).

I'm tired of the reflexive attacks on "snowflake" millennials. Save it for when they really deserve it. Feeling bad about "Secret Santa" events at work is not some special new problem. It's always made people feel bad! I've only been stuck inside one of these things once in my life, and it was way back in the 1970s. It was bad then and it's still bad. I'll bet there are episodes of "The Office" about Secret Santa parties that made everyone — Boomers, Gen Xers, and millennials — feel bad. I don't know, and the reason I don't know is that office stuff like that makes me feel so bad that I cannot enjoy watching a sitcom about it. And this is leftover bad feeling from the 1970s. Millennials want to ban Secret Santa because it gives them anxiety?! Everyone wants to ban Secret Santa because it gives them anxiety. Now, that's hyperbole, so don't tell me you like Secret Santa. Obviously, some people like it. I'm sure on "The Office" there are episodes that reveal what kind of people like Secret Santa and take the lead in making sure the horrible festivity is perpetuated.

Okay, I looked it up. There is a "Secret Santa" episode of "The Office," Season 6, Episode 13. I'm not going to watch it.