OK, Radar magazine. You had me at one glance. I, most definitely, am not a Millennial. Thank GOD, or else everything in this blog would either be misspelled, ungrammatical, or punctuated with ‘like’.
Sign me up for the X revolution!
This is important enough to post in full:
Generation Slap
They’re naive, self-important, and perpetually plugged in. This is a call to arms against Millennials
By Robert Lanham
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AND HE SHALL LEAD THEM ALL Generation Yer Kevin Colvin, caught on Facebook after telling his boss that he had to miss work for a “family emergency”You Can Do Magic
Like many illustrious individuals before him who inadvertently stumbled into Internet stardom, Kevin Colvin became an overnight Internet celebrity by doing something stupid. In case you missed his five minutes of “fame,” here’s the story in a nutshell. A twentysomething intern, Kevin secured a job at Boston’s Anglo Irish Bank. Using the guise of a family emergency, Kevin decided to take a day off and thus sent the following e-mail to his bosses, Paul and Jill:Paul/Jill,
I just wanted to let you know that I will not be able to come into work tomorrow. Something came up at home and I had to go to New York this morning for the next couple of days. I apologize for the delayed notice.
Kind regards,
Kevin
Millennials are younger. Healthier. They got to do anal in high school. They think updating a spreadsheet while posting to a Twitter account about gossip on perezhilton.com is an essential corporate skillKevin’s boss, Paul Davis, apparently decided to do a little a bit of detective work and found an incriminating photo of Kevin on Facebook. He discovered that Kevin wasn’t in New York attending to an unexpected family crisis, but at a Halloween party in Worcester, Massachusetts.
And this is the clincher: In the picture, Kevin is dressed as Tinker Bell, decked out in a green ballet dress that looks like it was stolen from the wardrobe closet of an elementary school performance of Swan Lake. There’s glitter and blue makeup enveloping his eyes. He’s holding a gold, star-tipped wand in one hand and a can of Busch Light in the other. There are wings. In short, Kevin looks so high I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually used those glittery, Day-Glo wings to fly away like a hummingbird after the picture was snapped.
Mr. Davis’ response was swift and, well, perfect. Attaching Kevin’s incriminating photo to an e-mail and BCCing the entire company, he responded:
Kevin,
Thanks for letting us know—hope everything is ok in New York. (cool wand)
Cheers,
PCD
When the technology blog valleywag.com posted the entire hilarious exchange, the story spread like a San Fernando Valley wildfire. It was everywhere.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS There are an estimated 80 million bloggers out there. And they are bloggingIn Kevin’s defense, most of us have lied to our bosses and played hooky. Still, I found myself hoping that his boss, Mr. Davis, fired him with a pointed “and don’t let the door hit your wand on the way out!” for good measure. But before you dismiss me as cruel, let me explain my reasons.My lack of empathy for Kevin comes from my sense of loyalty to the generation born between the years of 1961 and 1981. Generation X. Kevin is part of the generation born between 1982 and 2002—a Millennial, formerly known as Generation Y. (They got renamed after whining too much.) They’re younger. They’re healthier. They got to do anal in high school. They think updating a spreadsheet while simultaneously posting to a Twitter account about the latest gossip on perezhilton.com is an essential corporate skill. And, like Kevin, they’re always doing stupid shit, but rarely getting called on it.
What’s more, Millennials pose a vital threat to my generation’s cultural legitimacy, not to mention our position in the workplace. A recent article in Time warns: “Older workers—that is, anyone over 30—need to know how to adapt to the values and demands of their newest colleagues. Before too long, they’ll be the bosses.”
You see? They’re out to get us.
If you look at the sheer number of Millennials, the outlook is grim. While Gen X boasts only around 30 million members, there are an estimated 80 million Millennials out there. They’re like pod people with Facebook accounts. We’re outnumbered.
MECCA The Apple Store, where Gen Yers congregate to kneel at the foot of Steve JobsThat’s why the time has come for Generation X to unite. We need to call bullshit on these naive, self-important crybabies trying to rob us of what is rightly our own. Remember how the Baby Boomers all turned into self-serving, narcissistic assholes who deified Michael Douglas in the ’80s? The time has come for us to turn into assholes, too, minus the Michael Douglas part.My generation must follow the lead of heroes like Anglo Irish Bank’s Paul Davis and clear the air of the Millennial’s generational fairy dust. Sure, the Millennials think they’re magic, but the time has come for Generation X to band together proudly and proclaim on high: “COOL WAND!”
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POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT Do today’s Gen Yers believe in themselves a little too much?A Conspiracy of Doting
It’s not really the Millennials who are to blame; it’s their parents. We’re talking about a generation of boomers who posted “My Child Is an Honor Roll Student” bumper stickers on their minivans and wanted to designate playing volleyball as being a cruel and unusual punishment. Of course the Millennials think they’re magic. They were spoiled.Generation X survived AIDS, Reagan, the Cold War. But consider the stress Millennials face today: simultaneously maintaining Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr accountsNow the boomers are teaming up with the younger generation in a new campaign to further render us obsolete. Where a Gen Xer was likely to get a tongue-lashing for borrowing a stapler from his/her boomer boss, the Millennials are finding boomers to be loving mentors, eager to show them the ropes. After all, the kids who are now coming of age and entering the workplace are, well, their babies. Boomers were doting parents from the get-go, and now, as they’re beginning to retire, they want to ensure that their children hold the keys to the throne. Even younger Gen Xers, who were in many cases also raised by boomers, are getting screwed. They have to sit back and watch their younger, Millennial siblings bask in a generational conspiracy of doting.
Let’s face facts: The boomers always detested Generation X. They felt threatened by our youth, confused by our lack of earnestness, and deeply troubled by our lack of appreciation for James Taylor. The boomers’ entire identity was wrapped around being young and progressive. Gen X was an affront to their place in the world. What’s more, they never understood us, instead insisting that our archetypal achievement—the blueprint for what made us tick—was a tawdry Ben Stiller film that featured Ethan Hawke as a pouty, manically depressed James Dean.
Since the ’90s, boomers have plotted to turn us into the redheaded stepchild of generations. We were slackers. Cynical. We loved Pauly Shore. (Okay, their animosity is legitimate here.) Even our name, Generation X, was a slur, indicating namelessness and the feeling of being overshadowed by the boom. As defined in Wikipedia, “X referred to the namelessness of a generation that was coming into an awareness of its existence as a separate group but feeling overshadowed by the boomer generation.” Overshadowed? How about kicked to the curb with nothing but the jewel case from In Utero to keep us warm?
BOOK OF THE TIMES New book Millennials Rising crowns Generation Y as the new “greatest generation”One need look no further than the local newsstand to see the favoritism the Millennials have received. Whereas Generation X was routinely denigrated by the press, the Millennials have been compared to World War II’s Greatest Generation. In Robert Strauss and Neil Howe’s Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation, the authors state authoritatively that “over the next decade, the Millennial Generation will entirely recast the image of youth from downbeat and alienated to upbeat and engaged.”Sure, Generation X survived AIDS, Reagan, the Cold War, Tipper Gore, and A Flock of Seagulls, but those adversities, suggest Strauss and Howe, pale in comparison to what Millennials face today. Consider the stress of having to juggle a 30-hour work week while simultaneously maintaining Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr accounts. It’s enough to make your head spin! And maybe the Millennials never faced Hitler’s forces on the beaches of Normandy, but had they been around in 1944 (and had the technology existed), you can bet they would have blogged about it.
Plus, who could forget 9/11? Not the Millennials. With an oh-so-precious, post-ironic earnestness, they collectively transform into Giuliani and bring up 9/11 should you question their fortitude.
Millennials Rising catalyzed the media’s love for the Millennials and the adoration has been spreading ever since. Conducting an interview for a recent edition of 60 Minutes titled “The ‘Millennials’ Are Coming,” Morley Safer asks a younger Wall Street Journal columnist rhetorically, “But isn’t this generation [the Millennials], particularly of middle-class kids, really quite special? Aren’t they, in some ways, much better than your generation, certainly mine?”
Great … Morley thinks they’re magic, too.
X’ED OUT Even Generation X’s magazine covers were hostileBlack Becomes White, X Becomes Y
The boomers’ decades-long spin campaign against Generation X has entered a new phase as they’ve begun to promote Millennials at our expense. Lest you think I’m paranoid, the proof of their plot to elevate the so-called “Internet generation” can be discovered by anyone who knows how to use Google. As it turns out, my generation founded the company. So, to prove my point, let’s Google back in time to provide a little context.On Monday, July 16, 1990, the largely baby boomer–run Time published a cover story called “Twentysomething.” It was the one of the magazine’s best-selling covers in history, and introduced Generation X—we were known as the baby busters then—to the public, largely defining how we were perceived as a generation. Those who read it will recall that the piece possessed the journalistic muster of a Dateline story on poisonous dog food imports from China. In short, “Twentysomething” was meant to alarm the public into believing they’d raised a generation of stoic nihilists who, as one interviewee stated, were destined to be America’s “carpenters and janitors.” The only thing preventing us from flushing America’s future down the toilet was our lack of initiative. We were too slack to flush.
Time hired two twentysomething turncoats to pen the piece, Ivy league alumni David M. Gross and Sophfronia Scott, two hack artists who were in no way representative of Generation X. During much of the ’90s, Gross was a corporate finance lawyer. Scott, on the other hand, contributed to cover stories for People, including “The 50 Most Beautiful People,” before becoming an online writing coach known as the “Book Sistah.” For the sake of conciseness, I’ll refer to Gross and Scott as GrossBookSistah from this point forward.
BREAK TIME The slacker stereotype dogs Generation Xers“They have trouble making decisions,” sneered GrossBookSistah’s opening sentence. “They have few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own … their anxious indecision creates a kind of ominous fog around them.”GrossBookSistah stopped just short of accusing Generation X of hating rainbows. The article managed to throw us a couple of bones, complimenting our “realism” and “good intentions,” but GrossBookSistah’s meager praise came across as a transparent attempt to provide “balance” in an article that essentially labeled Generation X as being pathetic.
Normally, I’d be content to let sleeping dogs lie—it has been nearly two decades, after all, since “Twentysomething” was published. But an onslaught of press praising Millennials for the very things my generation was despised for has begun to emerge. The double standards have opened old wounds.
Many of the generational double standards involve our shared reluctance to conform to the rules of a traditional nine-to-five job. Generation X, for instance, was derided as “inflexible” slackers who possessed no desire to climb the corporate ladder. “At a time when they should be graduating, entering the work force and starting families of their own,” scoffed GrossBookSistah, “the twentysomething crowd is balking at those rites of passage.” Those of us who did join the workforce, said GrossBookSistah, were “overly sensitive at best and lazy at worst.” One expert interviewed for the article called us a generation that “refuses to pay its dues,” while another said our reluctance to embrace the dying work ethic of the former generation left us “sounding like whiners.”
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DREAMS DEFERRED The cast of seminal Gen X film Reality BitesJump ahead 17 years, and my generation’s incessant “whining” (which, incidentally, is responsible for today’s transformed workplace) has been reframed as a sort of rugged individualism when applied to the Millennials. “Generation Y is forcing companies to think more creatively about work-life balance,” praises an article published in Time last year. Advertising Age takes things a step further, saying, “[A]gencies need to find a new employment model that better caters to Gen Y’s 21st-century skill set, enviable ambition and vibrant desire for recognition … Our job is to find new ways to motivate, inspire and reward them.” Maybe they can set up pony rides and free face-painters in the break room, right next to the Big Buck Hunter machine.
Weighing in on the Millennial’s “newfangled” workplace idealism, 60 Minutes suggests that bosses should accommodate Millennials who want to want to “roll into work with their iPods and flip-flops around noon.” An expert interviewed for the CBS program suggests that bosses should talk to Millennials “like a therapist on television might speak to a patient.”
An equally egregious example of generational bias lies in Gen X’s stigma as the “MTV Generation,” a title that was always intended as a pejorative. GrossBookSistah’s article accused Generation X of having been dumbed down by MTV, charging us with incubating a severe case of attention deficit disorder. “Their attention span,” wrote GrossBookSistah, “is as short as one zap of a TV dial.” Ironically, when applied to the Millennials, who are similarly affected by the Internet, possessing a short attention span becomes an accolade. They just call it multitasking.
In reality, logging on to Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace 15 times per hour to see how many friends you’ve accumulated is clearly nothing short of obsessive compulsive. Perhaps the Millennial’s addiction to Adderall and Red Bull are to blame, but the media has been too busy singing their praises (or doing cutting-edge exposés on “cyberstalkers”) to notice the Millennial’s chronic case of generational OCD.
GENERATION MTV Back in the day when Kennedy’s antics seemed shockingOutside of the office, the assault against Gen X was even worse. GrossBookSistah accused us of being “too detached to form caring relationships.” And instead of praising us for sneering at “Range Rovers, Rolexes, and red suspenders,” GrossBookSistah emphasized how marketers were “confounded” by a “generation so rootless and noncommittal,” transforming our frugality and anticommercialism into cheapness.
The boomer’s animosity seems particularly misplaced when you consider that Gen X’s values mirrored those of the antiestablishment hippies. One iconic example is our trademark wariness of commercialism. We were the no-logo generation, famously skeptical of marketers who tried to pigeonhole us. We created independent rock and ostracized artists who “sold out” for capital gain.
Today, when a hip band allows Outback Steakhouse to co-opt one of their most beloved songs, Millennials don’t call it selling out. It’s a cogent business decision. To Millennials, it’s perfectly acceptable to transform the lyric “Let’s pretend we don’t exist / Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica” into the jingle “Let’s go Outback tonight / Life will still be there tomorrow.” (Et tu, Of Montreal.)
Perhaps most troubling, the Millennials have effectively transformed the no-logo idealism of Gen X into the mantra “no logo except Apple.” Embracing “hip” brands is what often passes for cool with today’s trendsetters. Still, boomers continue to debase the values of my “downbeat” and “cynical” generation, perhaps tricked into thinking they have more in common with the Millennials since ponchos and hippie beards have become popular once again.
Sure, GrossBookSistah accused Gen X of being too alienated to have role models, but perhaps that’s preferable to an entire generation worshiping with bended knee at Steve Jobs’ immaculately designed Apple-shaped cathedral. Have you heard the news, they chant soundlessly, with iPods clogging their eardrums, the new MacBook has arrived! It’s magic. It’s so light it can fly!
TIME WARP Nirvana’s In UteroThe Doom Generation?
While praise for the Millennials continues to be spread as generously as margarine on an Denny’s English muffin, it’s surreal in hindsight to see how antagonistic the media was to Generation X. “Down deep, what frustrates today’s young people—and those who observe them—is their failure to create an original youth culture,” GrossBookSistah wrote, shifting from snark to antagonism. “What young adults have managed to come up with is either nuevo hipster or ultra-nerd, but almost always a bland imitation of the past.”
Ouch. Criticizing our work ethic was one thing, but our culture? That’s below the belt. (Comically, GrossBookSistah immediately discredit themselves by insisting that Bret Easton Ellis pales in comparison to boomer “originals like Tom Robbins.”)
The animosity seems particularly ill-placed given what passes for an “original youth culture” today. Namely, the cult of celebrity for which the Millennials will be remembered. Star magazine has become a more essential accoutrement for today’s aspiring hipsterati than Chuck Taylors. Sure, there are those who defend the Millennials against the accusations of superficiality, generally by suggesting that they’re more politically engaged than the disenfranchised Gen X. But let’s be honest, had George Bush, Jr., been in office when we turned 21, my generation would have sweat through our flannel shirts running to the voting booth to replace him.
Still, it’s never been sexy to be a Gen Xer. And that’s the problem. Maybe we’re responsible for the Spin Doctors, but if you cut through the bullshit, you’ll see that we’re not merely sexy. We’re fucking hot:
THEIR SPACE MySpace, the virtual Gen Y compoundWe were the first bloggers. We created rap music. Silicon Valley. McSweeney’s. Indie rock.
And we are the Internet generation. We founded Google. Wikipedia. DailyKos. Gawker. Meet-Up. MySpace. Ebay. YouTube.
We’re not slackers. We are Tiger Woods, Snoop Dogg, Parker Posey, Tina Fey, Johnny Depp, Michael Jordan, Dr. Dre and Lance Armstrong, to name a few.
You’ve earned your retirement, boomers. So rest assured that your babies are in good hands as you go. As a member of the nowhere generation, now come of age, I’m proud to announce that our time has arrived. We may not be the next Greatest Generation, but we’re pretty good at calling bullshit. So in the immortal words of Paul Davis: Cool wand.
Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair Pics vs. Pictures of Underage Models: What’s the diff?
30 04 2008[Is this also a 'sick' or 'sexual' photo? I suppose it's what we make of it. You could see a loving father/daughter or incest. I, personally, see a picture of two beautiful people who happen to be related.]
The backlash against Miley’s pictures in Vanity Fair should have been timed with a stopwatch. The reaction would have been fast, maybe even a world-reactionary record (where the ‘world’ is mostly confined to the United States, natch). The problem? People seem to be outraged that a 15-year-old girl is draped in a sheet, looking all ‘post-coital’.
Um. Yeah.
It is definitely disturbing, but hasn’t anyone been paying attention for the past 30 years or so? Fashion models are often naked, and barely 18. Other models, under 18, are scantily clad ALL THE TIME in fashion ads. But, maybe ‘fashion’ gets a pass. I’ve always been a little suspicious of the barely legal girls, looking dead sexy, trying to sell me a bra, or jeans, or whatever. You rarely see, however, any real backlash against them. Perhaps because they aren’t on the Disney channel, hardly anyone thinks of them as ‘role models’, and none of them are easily recognized except a few big names. And anyway, can you imagine your daughter worshiping Kate Moss as a role model? What would the Kate Moss merchandise look like? A small pile of cocaine, a meth-ed out boyfriend, and a fashionable bag and hat to match?
These photos are beautiful, no matter what you think they mean. Meaning is applied by the viewer. You’d have to ask Leibovitz about the intent. And who knows? Better yet, who cares?
Why is this ad any less disturbing? To some – especially in fashion – it was a direct strike at what the media and marketing/PR companies promote to us as ‘beauty’. This women is naked, but she isn’t half as sexualized as Miley.
How young do you think the girl in the middle of this ad is? Does it matter if she is actually 23, but looks 16? Isn’t it the looking 16 that the advertisers are really after?
Now, I know that most people who have been calling Miley a whore will also think these girls are whores, too. And, because of my own picture above, I’m probably in the same bag. But before we cast stones at Miley, shouldn’t we analyze the culture in which she exists? Shouldn’t we look at what we take to be normal in 2008 and ask some questions? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves some hard truths?
Sex sells. Until it doesn’t, this is just going to be ‘business as usual’. As a feminist, I waffle about my own sexuality, wearing bikinis, and trying to look good all the time. But, then I think, why not? Why can’t a woman be beautiful, celebrate it, and also be savvy or smart about how she uses it? Certainly, women in Rome wouldn’t have blinked at this picture, if they had had pictures back then. And, Greeks and Romans did provide the model for all the freedoms we so passionately support.
Maybe this is just all to do with our Puritan ancestry. We just can’t escape from our own prudery. And the irony is that prudery leads to more underground perversion. The more you make sex into a big deal, the bigger problem you will have. Which is great for the advertisers and anyone selling us anything. It’s a vicious cycle, and I can’t see it disappearing anytime soon.
These are my two cents. But, then again, what do I know? I’m just a cultural anthropologist trying to make sense of how we see China. And that’s a-whole-nother can of worms.
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Tags: art, celebrities, commentary, culture, fashion, fashion models, humor, Miley Cyrus, models, naked, nudity, photography, satire, society, Vanity Fair, women's issues
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