We are all used to hearing about the dire plight of Gen Z. They are addicted to social media. Fragile and over-therapised. Obsessed with identity. Activists without wisdom. Reactive without nuance. That’s how the story goes. But the animal spirit of the young is more tenacious than we give it credit for. Youthful vitality, it seems, is hard to destroy.
We may over-notice a certain type of youth — brittle, indoctrinated, uncritical — only because they have been primed in a culture war. We see what we expect to see and perhaps this accounts for the gloomy and myopic view of youth many of us have. But what of the other view?
I saw a lot of another type of youth these past few months. We may have come to the end of summer now, but in my own household of teenage girls, it was decidedly a “hot girl summer”. Sleepovers. Tans. Evening bike rides. Candy salads. Nail polish. Crushes. Pop music. Pool days. Sneaking back in past curfew. I often felt that I could just as easily be watching an Eighties teen rom-com as standing in my own kitchen surrounded by young and happy high school girls. They are still frequently on their phones, using them to communicate, share funny photos, and choose their favourite new songs. But they leave their phones on their beach towels as they run to play in the water. And their phones often buzz away completely ignored, so engrossed are they in the conversations with their friends in the room. The same can’t always be said for me and my friends. We may get fewer messages, but we attend to them immediately. As for the boys who come around, they are similar to the girls: funny, daring, audacious and confident.
None of the summer’s visitors has fit the caricature of the brittle teen. The time of the “alt-girl” — the goth or “emo” who fits the picture of fragility and ethical sensitivity many of us have of teenagers — has passed. The “basic bitch” is back. She is like teen-classic. She is into hair and boys and frappuccinos. She is funny. The basic loves her body, and she isn’t shy about showing it. She is the one whose youthful vitality oozes through her pores and shines through a casual flip of her hair. The media has worked to make her uncool, though. Uncool, because pretty and strong. But “cool” moves quickly. And cool always — always — operates in rebellion to hegemonic culture. That the “alt-girl” is still portrayed as cool by the media is precisely the reason why she is now uncool. That “alt-girls” are portrayed as the ethical heroines of movies and TV is the very thing that is making them lame. This is a kind of moral pandering to teens that their animal vitality resists. Millennials — anyone over 20, for that matter — who are the promoters of ethics, are the new squares. Keep up, Boomer!
From my observations, I have come to realise a few things. Firstly, physical vanity increases sociability, which helps to form a strong individual, and in this way is preferable to moral vanity, which is often uglier and harder to cure. As Dorothy Parker pointed out, “beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.” The second is that introspection in youth is probably unhealthy. Hot girl summer, then, is a good thing.
A group of sexy, beautiful girls in the world creates its own safe space. They form a kind of closed community and look out for each other. It is called “girl code”, and the rules are pretty simple: don’t go after your friends’ crushes or exes, be honest, even if it’s hard, and always have your friends’ backs. This last one is crucial, and it is what contributes to beautiful women being safe in the world. Well-socialised males help in this regard, too. But typically, of course, the socialisation of males occurs in response to what women demand from them. Girls come and go in groups. These groups do more than keep young women protected; it makes them powerful. One feels their approach as a kind of force of nature. They talk and laugh and draw all our eyes, but they are indifferent to us. This is the source of their power: it is not simply their beauty or their confidence that makes them unapproachable. It is that they really seem to exist on another plane.
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SubscribeWhat this paean to teenage hotness misses out is that not all girls (or boys for that matter) are equally hot. And teen romance is a very different experience depending on where one is on the prettier/’plainer’ girl (or cocky confident/anxious shy boy) scale. Nature is very unfair in its distribution of physical comeliness.This is a theme that always gets very little attention in journalism about romantic and sexual pair bonding – the huge difference between the fortunes of what one might term the More and the Less Desired of each sex. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
It also looks very different from the outside. Teenage girls are especially rivalrous and can be pretty nasty to each other. This is adult glorification of youth more than the actual experience of the young.
Winning is fun. Still and all you get to decide on the game you are playing.
I think for pretty well everybody youth is a dreadful,appalling horrific experience,and the utterly weird thing is that later you find out that the “hot” boys and girls,felt exactly the same as you (but they did at least,lol,get invited to parties!). But having said that it is better that all that angst and discomfort and social ineptness is kept a secret private thing to be dealt with and suffered by each individual. We now live in a society where a century of creepy mind explorers,the psychologists and psychiatrists have mapped our minds and pathologised everything and even invent fake labels like “resolute defiant disorder” instead of obey the bloody teacher or you’ll get a clip round the head. THEY now think they understand us so well they get lucrative jobs in the ‘nudge’ units. It’s like those vile ads on tv before I got rid of mine where private things like menstrual periods etc get shown on daytime tv when vile coarse boys could be watching. That’s not right.
It evens out in middle age – the revenge of the plain over the pretty. Those angular brunettes, awkward in their teens, become elegant while the oval faces, bee stung lips of the 18 year old beauty queens etc have dissolved into a generic middle-aged banality. “Oui elle est jolie mais elle va s’empâter plus tard ” the brutal assessment of a French grandmother.
From personal experience, I think you are right. What matters is what you make of yourself after high school, male or female.
Not one of the favored “elite” in the teen years, I had left them all in the dust financially by the 20th reunion. I will take 40 years of success over 4 in H.S.
Puritans will hate you. Progressive will try to silence you.
But you’re right.
Marilyn, thank you very much! Just let them live, you are right
What a healthy, wholesome read. TY!
Hedonism coupled with vanity about covers it.
Sounds fab to me. My way of life choice.
Yes – there might actually be more to these girls, but the author is ignoring it to make her point. Also there may be downsides she is ignoring. And of course there is a kind of adult nostalgia for youth, even animality, at work – because adult life is complex, and youth can look like a lost Eden.
Not my youth. It was an Eden I was only too glad to hack my way out of. Lots of people spend their teens and twenties I’ll all the time,not any specific condition but “growing pains” and just not feeling coordinated somehow. And on Tv (circa 1970) it was all USA tv shows with cool USA teens partying on the beach. And you can’t do that at Weston super mare. We don’t have the driftwood,or the dry air. But those teens weren’t SO carefree,a lot of them were soon to be thrown to Moloch ie sent to Nam just like our current lot want to do to this generation of kids. We mustnt let em. If there is a ‘ruthless enemy” as I heard the American.Snake Oil salesman say in the night it’s not Vlad Putin,it’s the CIA + the USA political administration. Whoever is the nominal head.
You are right Jane in that the vast political machine(dark state) attempts to control our lives. Fortunately, I believe there are psychological, emotional and physical means to combat this to some extent.
This youthful energy and spirit is what many of us see when ‘out and about’. It clashes with the constant drone of misery which the msm portrays as typical of today’s teenage years, but which remains entirely untypical.
Of course, young people will find navigating the path towards adulthood strewn with challenges, both major and minor; it simply goes with the territory. The attempt to pathologise the experience is more about damaged adults than teens.
I agree – but perhaps the attempt to idealise it too.
My working life has been with teenagers and they are, overwhelmingly, a delight and inspiration.
This article, likewise, is a delight.
Amazing article! Though while every word rings true, nothing here changes the fact that on average, it’s currently a uniquely difficult time to be a young person. Some parents with troubled kids may be able to nudge them into the hot girl / jolly lad social universe, but it’s not so easy for others. (Even in cases where the kid is blessed with stunning good looks – several of my Gen X friends are in that boat.) That said, maybe the tide is turning. After over a decade of declining mental health trends, CDC’s Youth Risk Behaviour survey results published last month finally showed an upturn across a range of metrics.
Just read this article before leaving for work and it has really lifted my mood – thank you!
I agree with every word.
I LOVED reading this. Yes,when I see a giggling,screamy bunch of real hard Mean Girls at the bus stop,in the shop,in the park my heart rejoices. I sound Sarky. I’m not. As the clas dork in my late 1960s school class,saved from the awful fate of being Greta Thunberg by no one else caring about the environmental issues I was reading about,yes in 1970 vast acres of Brazilian rainforest were being cleared for farming. That Amazon forest must be unimaginably vast.,I had my carefree “teenage” years later in life,lol. And yes,there are still good natured,boisterous lads about. And these people have good hearts and if their brains get protected from being messed with by good parenting,and smart neighbours etc they are the future of humanity.
I’d like to think that there are more possibilities open to girls (and boys) than “basic b***h” or sad sack woke warrior. The world is a rich place, and that richness is not exhausted by the activities you describe. They are young, so let’s see how they turn out. But the last thing we need is more basic, superficial adults. The world is full of them.
It is not thinking that is bad, it is the poor quality of that thinking. Ideally we want young people who are not “basic” who know how to enjoy life, but are also capable of intelligent thought, conversation and action.
If by “action” you mean political activism, I must disagree. From what I see online everyday it’s a terrible way to waste one’s youth.
I came for the photo and stayed for the read.
Are you a relative?
Nice positive article.
Yes, all very nice and upbeat. But this article entirely excludes those youngsters that are not considered “hot”. Being born into a lower score on the beauty scale can be truly awful. And the people described in this article are truly resented by those who aren’t “hot”. Its an identity war as cruel as any other.
Of course you are right, but the fact that there are ugly people should not prevent the beautiful enjoying their own beauty. They shouldn’t be mean, but they shouldn’t feel guilty either. And the same goes for intelligence and every other positive value. This negativity is where reasonable politics and morality turn into woke. Pretty privilege and the rest.
See “What this paean to teenage hotness misses…..” comment below.
No they’re not. And never give a sucker an even break is a good rule. It doesn’t help suckers and it robs from honest people as we’re now finding out. Nietsche was right. Weak people can slyly overpower and destroy strong people under the guise of “compassion”.
I make a big distinction between inequality caused by social systems and natural inequality. The purpose of the former is to reserve privilege for the already privileged (and their children) regardless of natural talent. Countering this is a good thing – it gives the naturally talented a chance to thrive.
Bitterness about natural differences is pointless and resentful, and leads to woke nonsense like body positivity (pretending everyone is beautiful), pretty privilege etc.
The picture above shows four 12 to 14 year old girls. I thought we had laws against these kind of images.
I wasn’t really sure how old the girls in the article were meant to be. They sound about 12-13, but some of the allusions to *** suggest they are older.
The picture is sexualised, but it isn’t obscene. I’m guessing it’s a pretty standard stock photo. Not really sure what other photo would fit the article.
Unless the photo has changed since you posted, it is a promo shot for a film called Spring Breakers, which is about girls heading out for a good time, and so well suited to the article (can’t remember if I’ve seen it, but I’ve a feeling it doesn’t end well).
They’re much older than 12-14.
These are 17 year olds.
As Dennis Roberts says, unless the picture has changed, it comes from a promotional photo for a film. The picture shows the 4 women who starred in the 2013 film Spring Breakers and was taken when they ranged in age from 20 to 26.
One of the women had been married to the writer and director of the film for 6 years before it was made. Two of the women, Selena Gomez (now estimated to have a net worth of $1.3 billion, much of it from her cosmetic company Rare Beauty) and Vanessa Hudgens, were pretty well known then and are very well known now.
As in this article Marilyn Simon described her teenage, high-school girls talking about a “man-hoe” and a “f**kboy”, I get the idea that they are of an age where they are sexually active, but I may be wrong.
I thought they were 18+ at first glance, but who knows. Also, they are wearing clothes, so I don’t know what laws we would be dealing with here, unless the photo was illegally obtained or something.
I’m sorry but you cannot have a line like this – Keep up, Boomer! – and also have one like this – The “basic b***h” is back.
Back from where, the Boomer era? Because the girl who cared about her looks, boys, and her hair was the norm back then. If history is repeating itself, good. Maybe we can move away from mass fragility and the need to pathologize normal life challenges.
“Because the girl who cared about her looks, boys, and her hair was the norm back then.”
There has never been a time when that wasn’t the norm.
Found the boomer
Nature is all about fitting your niche.
I’m so glad Ms. Simon wrote this essay. I was beginning to lose faith in the entire human race. That this small subset is alive and kicking brings me real hope.
I wrote in a comment to another Simon piece recently about one of the powers of young women, something like this;
‘ Young women sort of “manifest” our culture, our society, in conversation with each other. The little changes that eventually add up to differences like that between us and the Afghans (for instance) are all imagined by noisy young women who aren’t even trying, while the rest of us are standing around scratching our heads.’
They’ve done so well up until now. It would be a crying shame to lose such a magnificent and useful Force.
Interesting theory of history
It always pains me when I hear these sorts of comments. If you, or anyone else here for that matter, is losing faith in the human race, it’s time to get off the computer, turn off the phone, and go outside. People are by and large carrying on, enjoying the summer, and doing the sorts of things we have always done.
I’m one of those people who talks a lot to other people. Almost half of them eventually mention that they take anti-anxiety meds.
‘Nough said.
Nice work if you can get it…
You are an incredibly good writer Marilyn, and I really enjoy seeing a post with your name on it 🙂