I’m A Millennial with a Side Part and I’m Okay

So apparently the Zoomers hate Millennials now. Or, well, the news found some tweets and deemed it so. Which means a handful of peeps took to TikTok to poke jokes at Millennials and a handful of Millennials responded and que the onslaught of quasi-journalism websites telling us who to hate again.

It’s Okay Because I Hate Myself

I kind of agree with this shit. In a way. Because it’s manufactured division and I kind of like that we’re being mocked for this garbage while it’s considered “trendy”, at least, in a Millennial way. But hey, I’m just a writer and a parent hoping to still keep my toes dipped in reality. I don’t want to turn into one of the older folks at my church worrying about kids having access to condoms and stuff. Because that was a thing I dealt with in my sad 90s youth.

And that is also a thing that Millennials do, is tell all these stories about things we consider to be “old” that happened in the 90s, which really wasn’t that long ago and doesn’t make us special. I do, however, appreciate the nostalgia I get when I see those spaghetti-strap maxi dresses being sold over a ribbed t-shirt.

I had one of those when I as 13 and felt so grown up and cool and trendy. And this is how I know my mom felt when bell-bottoms came back and she was all I USED TO WEAR THOSE. Everything gets recycled and it’s weird to see the change in demographics change in real time when I’m now 34, which isn’t that old. Or at least, not Fox News demographic old.

It just feels old because college doesn’t feel that long ago. And high school doesn’t feel that long ago. And now my kid’s in Kindergarten and I’m reflecting back on a lot of things I still remember about being a kid. Which was in the 90s. Just in case you didn’t know.

*insert GIF here*

I still want to be able to write the occasional high school story and not feel like I’m V.C. Andrews’ ghostwriter trying to write a high school girl.

Millennials Love Talking About Getting Old

I bought a Purple seat cushion recently because my ass was killing me every time I sat down. It’s a mom thing, I think. The seat cushion worked. But then it make me sit up a bit higher over my laptop and my neck started to hurt. So I stacked some boxes under my laptop and now my neck AND shoulders are perpetually killing me and I have no idea why.

I often ask my Boomer coworkers if this was how it started for them. It was. And now it’s happen to me. And yes, I shared this Britney Spears meme on Facebook to express my pain.

Because I had no other way, okay?

Millennials Love Skinny Jeans

Look, I wear them on the off-chance that I wear jeans, because they’re still like, culturally relevant? But I’ve got thick thighs and these fucking jeans don’t ever look on me like they do on the models. I remember watching an Oprah episode where Stacy London from What Not to Wear said that only a certain kind of woman with long skinny legs could wear skinny jeans and make them work, which was kind of bullshit because she was wearing them and everyone in the audience was wearing them. That episode showed a great many style of jeans on a myriad of different women (albeit with a now VERY non-trendy dark wash) and it was GREAT, but HEYYYYYYY, all we can still find at most places is fucking skinny dumbass jeans.

Remember when Jessica Simpson wore mom jeans? I thought it would become a new trend back then but everybody just made fun of her for it. Which was stupid. The mom jean trend came back like 15 years too late and I’m glad all these Zoomers are putting on the pants that I only DREAMED of wearing when low rise jeans were all one could buy from the stores at the mall.

Two great perks about skinny jeans, though. If you’re short, you don’t have to worry. Which is probably why I still wear them. BUT, a good boyfriend-cut pair of mom jeans also aids in this, so if I had to choose I’d go with the mom jean, unless it’s winter and I have to shove my jeans into my basic bitch Hunter boots.

Sorry I’m so cringe.

Millennials Love the Side Part

I’ll be uncool and stick with my side part. Granted, my header picture doesn’t have much of a side part because I naturally have a centre part. But with that centre part came a price. I spent all of teen years with it and now I have too many memories of this centre-part look paired with early-aughts rectangle glasses to change.

@sra_krod

i got bullied for this hairstyle. I refuse to give up my side part ☹️ #FYP #foryourpage #eldermillenial #middlepart #teamsidepart #nerd

♬ original sound – Kristina

Millennials Love Coffee and Wine

Coffee and wine is def a stupid Millennial mom trope. I’ve seen PLENTY of duo coffee mug and wine glass sets at work to fucking hate this stereotype.

1. Everybody needs coffee to live in North America. It’s a societal norm. Granted, though, a lot of Millennials rely on coffee being a personality thing because, well, Starbucks? I remember hate-watching iJustine in my early 20’s and she literally made liking coffee and iPods her entire personality and I was always like THAT’S NOT A FUCKING PERSONALITY!
2. I really hate the “mom juice” stereotype. Like, I get that having a drink at the end of the night helps soothe the nerves but like, dang, there are a lot of moms out there with legit drinking problems and it’d be nice to actually address them properly instead of capitalism perpetually selling gag products about this shit.

It’s funny to me that the Zoomers never mention the whole craft beer trend, because craft beer to me has always been a Millennial thing. Last craft beer fest I went to was made up exclusively of 100% Millennials and live indie rock I was like, OH GOD, THIS IS A GENERATIONAL THING.

And yes, I think those craft beer floats you can buy from the brew pubs are kind of cringe. Even brew pubs are pretty cringe. That one single universally industrial look to them? The culture itself is like, Boomer bingo hall level stereotype level. But for Millennials.

Millennials Love Joking About “Adulting”

And I fucking hate it. Being an adult is hard and sucks but when I do my taxes and I feel like my dad, I secretly contain that excitement and try to pretend to be super sophisticated and smart and shrug it off like it ain’t no big deal. Because it never felt like a big deal when my dad did it WITHOUT tax software.

Maybe this is just my insecurities bleeding out, but uh, I never felt secure doing anything adult in my life and I feel like that’s just how it’s always been. And we live in a more self-sustaining kind of culture now so we literally just have to feel ashamed if we can’t do anything on our own, without help.

So when we DO accomplish things associated with adulthood, we had to make up this dumb fucking term to joke about it. I don’t know why. Probably because the internet exists and we’re forced to joke about everything on here. And here I am, talking about adulting.

Everything Is Marketed at Millennials Now

Rae Dunn mugs? Blonde the Label sweatshirts? EVERYTHING FOR MOMS WITH THAT STUPID ASS CURSIVE FUCKING FONT? I work retail and I hate it all. I see the cliche, the stereotypes, the messy buns, the buffalo plaid flannel shirts, the Blundstone boots, the long-ass descriptive Twitter bios, of which of course I have.

Even Kate Spade rebranded and changed their logo from that banging green shade to the standard “millennial pink” shade that’s still EVERYWHERE in a better attempt to cater to us.

We’re all just insecure and sad and scared of becoming irrelevant. So we cling to all this stupid stuff to make us feel like we’re still relevant. We somehow think gifs at the best way to express things and I CAN’T STAND IT because Twitter was supposed to be about expressing yourself in 140 characters. Now it’s 180 characters, which means we can write ALLLLLLLL the essays we excruciatingly learned to write for free in high school and then went broke paying to learn how to write in first year English in college.

Least, that was experience.

Every so often I jump in on a “respond with a GIF” Twitter thread and I feel dumb for perpetuating the stereotype. But I mean, it’s just, it’s the Millennial way. And now we’re all old enough to have stereotypes made about us. You can sell all sorts of dumb shit to Millennials because as much as we get defensive, deep down we all know.

As for the Zoomers…

And I don’t think you all eat Tide Pods. That was a news story that went way overboard.

I won’t annoy you with my presence on TikTok.

However, I do very much appreciate all you lefty Twitch streamers. Like I hope you all go out and vote in a way the Boomers could never get us to go out to do, even despite all the annoying celebrity-ridden commercials telling us to participate in democracy. I don’t know why so many of us still don’t, even despite the fact that our dreams were fucked and we’re all gonna die from climate change and now worry about our kids dying from climate change and we can’t afford anything and can’t do anything with our college degrees.

So now we’re trying to be writers. Or start side gigs, or rather, side “hustles” which is the most embarrasing way to admit that you haven’t lived your dreams. So then we become boss babes and join MLM’s and try to get our old high school friends to spend more money that we don’t have because we’re still paying off student loans.

But you Zoomers know this. You know all this. And it’s okay if you make fun of me for needing my ridiculously-long Starbucks order. I’ve lived long enough for other people to see my character traits and I kind of deserve the mockery. I can handle the criticism.

Enjoy the mom jeans. I’m serious.

Also…

Should I stop using GIFs in my Grown-Ass V.C. Andrews reviews? Because now I’m insecure.