Embrace Being Gen X in a Millenial World (And Vice Versa!)

So I have been neglecting blogging a bit lately, apologies! I have been busy writing, just not blog stuff. Janet of Someone Somewhere is publishing two zines after getting back into zines, which she used to make (read her piece on that here), and amazingly kindly is putting two things I wrote into her 90’s zine (what! I am never cool enough for that!). So I’ve been scouring my brain and trying to remember things that somehow feel like they happened yesterday but at the same time the mental cobwebs remind me they were in fact AGES ago. My little trip down memory lane has reminded me a bit of where I come from, and made me contemplate my online presence as an “old” and all of that jazz.

It’s weird being a Gen X blogger sometimes. In my case, most bloggers (I have encountered, anyway) my age are usually either super amazing fashion bloggers or Mummy bloggers. I veer between feeling super old and not relating to a lot of (life) stuff millennial writers are writing about, or super immature and unsophisticated compared to most women my age. I guess it’s partly a child free thing. But the things I want to talk about don’t seem that common amongst many of my peers: (sic) “Who has time for television, other than Outlander, when you have a toddler?” etc. Gen X is no longer the center of the cultural zeitgeist, just as the baby boomers weren’t when I was young. It’s the circle of life.

But now we have this strange world where a lot of people my age ARE online, yet sometimes it feels like we are invisible. Like we sort of just blend in with how pop culture is spoken about amongst the young ones. It’s almost like we no longer have our own identity or place in the world. I mean, I grew up with all of this avant garde modernist literature about my trailblazing generation from Douglas Coupland and Bret Easton Ellis, there was a veritable music revolution in the 90’s, I definitely felt like I was part of a generation with a cultural personality in my twenties.

Gen X is mostly with it enough to keep up with technology and pop culture today, and yet somehow we don’t really seem to be bothered. I speak only of my own experience, but Twitter is largely a ghost town for anyone over 35 (who isn’t famous).Which I find sort of sad, Twitter is just the sort of thing Gen Xers should be good at, it’s much more fun than reading our friends moan about the weather on Facebook, honestly!

I guess most of us, like our parents before us and theirs before them are settled into suburban family life, and content with feeling vaguely young so long as we still wear Converse and attend an occasional concert. I watch my kidded up friends share “Millenials are dumb, they can't rewind a cassette with a pencil!” etc. videos on Facebook and yes, the Holderness Family videos too (WHAT HAVE WE BECOME!) and can’t help but feel sort of sorry for my generation.

Are we really so beyond caring, so…old? Have we given up trying to be relevant just like that? Or is that decision already made for us without us knowing? (sorry this is all getting a bit Carrie Bradshaw – ask your Mom Gen Z readers ;-).

I’m not under the delusion that my generation is the future, but I do feel like our collective knowledge and understanding of the 20^th century is maybe deeply undervalued. Maybe that’s why there are so many “Remember when” type nostalgia listicle fests on t.v. here in the U.K. (which often go straight over my head, the 70s and 80s in Britain were cray –see I’m still hip, I’m using ten year old slang!). I do not question that I am old, at all (someone I follow on Twitter recently referred to a music playlist from 2007 as “old school” and wow…yep, f*cking ancient I am! ;-).

There is a moment in the show Flaked (on Netflix) where Will Arnett’s character Chip, who is dating a millennial, says in passing an instruction to her “And Bob’s your uncle”, which is received with a blank stare, and he sort of can’t believe she doesn’t know what that means, but rather than explaining it plays it off, because to explain such a seemingly basic slang phrase would make him seem old? Or is he embarrassed that he is dating someone who doesn’t recognize it? 

It’s kind of a low key but crucial little moment. His character is living the life of a 20 something hipster: with his ludicrous money pit shop and rent free existence, he has more in common with Hannah from Girls than most 40 somethings. And yet he cannot escape his age, something it feels Arnett wants the audience to know almost as an afterthought in this era of “We’re all still cool...right?”. I related to it anyway!

I remember when I was a kid in the 80’s and things like The Big Chill and Thirtysomething came out, and having that feeling of “Why are the grownups acting like they still matter?" (I was a kid!), and also “Why is Jeff Goldblum my soul mate?” (;-0). But I loved The Big Chill soundtrack with such a passion, all of the Motown hits were instantly my favourite thing ever, and then along came Dirty Dancing and Stand By Me with their similarly retro settings and music, and I never thought twice about liking it.

Whereas today it feels like everyone who is young is so self-aware and must only ever like un-current things in a knowing or ironic way. Nothing makes you sound more aged that the “Damned Hipsters!” refrain, but seriously, if you are old enough to remember life before hipsters, you remember how much simpler and sweeter life could be as a young person in the world. 

There were more rough edges, sure, but it felt good to live in pre-gentrified neighbourhoods and pay less rent and feel a tiny hint of danger occasionally.

It’s why when I watched Girls (admittedly a show I am far too aged for); which is set in my former neighbourhood, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I was expecting to maybe have a slight nostalgia fest, when it may as well have been set in Topeka, Kansas for the lack of any recognition I felt.

I slowly got into the show somewhat as a window into the lives of the current 20 something generation in New York (and to be fair I know Girls in no way is representative of anything but the most privileged slice), but it really never reflected much if anything I experienced in my time there. I do think at her best Dunham does write human relationships well, and that is eternal/generation-less, but none of my friends fell into University teaching jobs before they hit 30 with very little experience as Hannah eventually and predictably comfortably does.  

Anyway I digress…as usual. What is my point (I hear you say and ask myself). I don’t know. I guess I just wish Gen X’ers would wake up a tiny bit and stop being so irrelevant and boring. Life has moved on since Nirvana, and yes maybe that was your heyday and mine too, but life is for the living and sometimes it feels like we as mid adults are just treading water. And yes I speak for myself too. I have thoroughly underperformed in life. But I haven’t given up either. I’m not ready for Boden and Food Festivals with a hint of soft rock and wellies and prosecco every day just yet. 

Maybe I’m just immature for my age (highly likely!). But also, maybe millenials can stop presuming that anyone over 30 has nothing of interest to say (unlikely but hey). We can tell you stories about the hot Dads in Riverdale and the magic of mixtapes and drive in movies and other things you will likely never experience! (actually an embarassingly large impetus for this post was partly down to all of my thoughts on how weirdly 90s Riverdale is, almost taunting us former goths and ravers out of pop culture retirement! ;-).

When I was younger I had two close friends who were seven and ten years older than me. They just happened into my life. And our friendship was natural and real and not a struggle at all. Nowadays I will occasionally meet a younger person I get on great with (hi Iga Berry!), but mostly I feel like I don’t speak their language and they are not interested in speaking mine, which I think is kind of sad. No, maybe we won’t be best friends, but believe me when I say every cool person you are hanging out with now will likely not be your friend forever, either.

It's easy as we get older to stick with what/who we know, just as it's natural in youth to gravitate towards our peers, but it’s also good to have diverse experiences in our social circle as we go on in life. Some of the best life advice or lessons I have been given were from my older friends, and while it’s a tiny bit awkward for me to be the old friend now because in my head I am still Winona Ryder in Heathers, not Stranger Things(!), I am actually embracing it a bit.

So yeah, I think on both sides it would be fun if we could not be so awkward/antagonistic with each other as the generations go by. Because I hate to tell you whipper snappers, someday surprisingly not very far away someone will make YOU feel old, and wow is that going to burst your bubble if you continue to live only in it (just as it has for many a Gen X’er to see a kid in a Kurt Cobain shirt and realize they weren’t even born when he died!). Go with your Mom or Dad to a concert. Join a book club with people who aren’t all your age. This advice goes both ways. And please, Gen X’ers, find a new shoe other than Converse (you know they are doing your fallen arches no favours!) ;-).

And remember, every single stage of our inner Winona Ryder is one we will all encounter eventually in life, they are all cool, they all have merit (ok maybe not so much the shoplifting, but hey, resilience in life is key!). Just like Winona, we need to maintain what originally made us feel uniquely us and for a moment in time hip, while of course growing up a bit along the way. Maybe that's not so impossible?