There's a scene in
Sunset Boulevard in which Norma Desmond, the former silent film star, is
watching a movie in her Hollywood mansion. It's one of her own movies, of course — they’re all she ever watches — because in a world full of mirrors, only they still show her what she wants to see. "There just aren't faces like that anymore," she says; what she doesn't say, but to the audience is obvious, is that her own face isn't like that anymore, either.
Lately, Norma Desmond has become relatable. Tormented not just by the existential realities of middle age but the luminous spectre of her famous younger self, she is the very picture of the reluctantly-ageing millennial. We are the first generation to experience,
en masse, something close to that agonising fade from celebrity to obscurity — the first generation whose younger selves aren't tucked away in private photo albums but publicly immortalised on social media. For 20 years, millennials have been curating their lives for an audience, seeking affirmation from the internet like the queen in Snow White, obsessed with her own reflection.
We should have considered, perhaps, that it would end for us as it ended for her: with the mirror rolling its eyes and calling us
"cheugy".
Millennials, no matter how much we dress, act, or meme to the contrary, are not kids anymore. The youngest of us are approaching 30; the eldest turned 40 back during the Donald Trump administration. Just this week, our paper of record heard the
"Millennial Death Wail". Middle age has come for my generation.
As an elder millennial, I've witnessed this transformation sweeping through my own peer group on social media, and particularly Facebook, where all my high school friends now inhabit an eerie aesthetic limbo in which they look sort of like themselves, but also like they've been possessed by the spirits of their middle-aged parents. The days of taking intentionally hideous photos of ourselves — another trend pioneered by millennials — are surely over. The joke back then was that you had to try to be ugly; now ugly is, if not your default state, then attained with so little effort that it's not remotely funny. Even the bravest among us aren't
so brave: when one of my prettier friends posted a "no makeup, no filters" selfie last month in honour of her 45th birthday, you could see the tell-tale circle of a ring light reflected in her irises.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="More from this author" author="Kat Rosenfield"]https://staging.unherd.com/2023/01/the-beauty-of-botox/[/su_unherd_related]
The alternative, though, would be to stop posting at all, and this is the one thing we cannot do. Millennials have been hashtagging their experiences, honing their personal brands, and controlling their narrative for two decades; of course we would turn ageing into content, just like we do with everything else. Younger millennials have taken to
joyfully terrorising Gen Z with unfiltered photos of their barely aged faces, while elder millennials offer up ironic gripes about back pain and slowing metabolisms and the famous change of life that some portmanteau-loving posters have taken to calling the
millenopause. (Others, it should be noted, have not taken to this and indeed would rather remove their own eyeballs with a spoon.)
Underlying this urge to hashtag is perhaps a sense that the best defence is a self-deprecating offence. Lena Dunham, a chronicler of millennials’ failures to grow up, once said: “Any mean thing someone's going to think of to say about me I've already said to me, about me, probably in the last half-hour." For a generation that once learned to style itself as a bunch of avocado-toast-snarfing, underachieving, financially illiterate libertines in order to keep Boomer critics at bay, it makes sense to rebrand ourselves as old and irrelevant before Gen Z decides to do it for us.
But ironically highlighting our impending middle-aged decrepitude doesn't just protect millennials from the slings and arrows of the next generation's mean teens; it also helps us pretend to ourselves that we're not terrified by the inevitability, and vulnerability, of advancing age. To go through menopause is to confront the truth that our bodies are machines that run on their own, finite timeline: once you've stopped menstruating, it's just a matter of time before you also stop breathing. To go through
millenopause, on the other hand, is to hold your mortality at a cute, narrative remove. Menopause is existential dread; millenopause is a viral hashtag and a video of you taking your HRT out of a pastel-coloured subscription box.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Nick Harris"]https://staging.unherd.com/2024/01/the-male-baldness-industrial-complex/[/su_unherd_related]
For a generation that has clung for longer than most to the sense of being youthful and misunderstood, this makes sense as a coping mechanism. Millennials have famously already either effectively staved off — or failed to achieve — so many of the trappings of adulthood. We don't have a single furrow on our pre-emptively-Botoxed brows; we don't have a single dollar set aside for retirement. Our living situations, bank accounts, and faces alike generally look like they belong to someone closer to 25 than 40, which only fuels the conviction, even now, that we never did get around to growing up. As
The Times's recent take on the millenopause had it: "We’re not in charge here. We’re so infantilised that I feel as if I’ve skipped straight from newly graduated to middle-aged."
Of course, that infantilisation isn't just about creating a trendy new word — or a whole new marketing category — to describe the distressing reality that our generation of sexy babies is starting to sprout grey hairs and crow's feet. It's about the internal sense of having passed the halfway mark of our lives with little to show for it, which is in turn a product of our bizarre and fraught symbiosis with the generations above us.
If millennials haven't aged into power, it's at least in part because our Boomer parents are refusing to age gracefully out of it, instead maintaining a stranglehold on everything from their executive level jobs to their real estate holdings to the freaking White House. As long as the gerontocracy keeps hogging the spotlight, there's little to do while waiting in the wings except turn on our front-facing cameras and crack ironic jokes about how much our backs hurt.
Eventually, perhaps we'll even distance ourselves into a complete rejection of middle age, the way we "adulted" our way out of ever becoming actual adults — at least until the ominous creaking and crackling of our decaying bodies will grow too loud to ignore.
[su_unherd_related fttitle="Suggested reading" author="Daniel Kalder"]https://staging.unherd.com/2020/10/older-leaders-are-not-always-wiser/[/su_unherd_related]
And yet, we're luckier than poor Norma Desmond, whose glamorous seclusion is really just a way of shielding herself from the world's indifference. Joe Willis, Norma’s assistant and sometimes paramour, sort of understands this — "The plain fact was she was afraid of that world outside, afraid it would remind her that time had passed" — and eventually tries to force enlightenment on her: "You're a woman of 50, now grow up! There's nothing tragic about being 50, not unless you try to be 25!”
But what he doesn't understand is that when the whole world knew you at 25, being 50 is not just tragic but impossible. Norma lives in the past because there's no place for her in the present. Gone are the silent films she starred in, and gone, too, is the luminous young woman she was, and still wants to be — a woman who can exist in this new, changed world only as a memory.
Some millennial women seem to share Norma's mindset: these are the ones who've stopped posting pictures of themselves entirely, instead typing updates from behind profile photos that haven't changed since 2018. I sometimes imagine us hunched at our keyboards or over our phones like a bunch of Dorian Grays in reverse: we are the ageing paintings hidden away from public view, while our youthful avatars cavort together in cyberspace.
But time is passing for millennials, as it has for everyone else. Cute portmanteaux aside, we are not the first generation to experience menopause, nor to reckon with the sweating, achy, existential dread of entering the middle section of life. But for the generation that invented the concept of the personal brand — and with it, the possibility of infinite rebrands — we don't have to waste away like Norma, waiting for some Hollywood gatekeeper to invite us back into the spotlight. We can always turn the camera on ourselves; we can always tell a new story about who we are and what we're doing. And we are always, thanks to fillers and filters and Facetune, ready for our closeup.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWell, that’s a tragically ironic (or ironically tragic) column to post on my birthday. Forty-one years young, folks. Young at heart.
Happy Birthday, RWH!
Thanks!
A very happy birthday to you!
Thank you!
Happy Birthday!
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Happy Birthday ‘old’ man. I hope you have a very Hippie Day!
Thank you very much!
What kind of “tragic” do you have?
Oh for the love of God.
Whining about the Boomers not moving on and out of power.
Jesus, GenX is approaching it’s senior years and STILL waiting for the damn Boomers to get the heck out of our way.
Oh…and BTW….I know more than a few women in their 50’s that are sexy as hell. Freaking complaining about your 30’s and 40’s. God almighty.
50s? Pah! (Or should that be GrandPah?)
Just wait till you get to your 60s and start finding 60 year olds fanciable!
I recently developed a cheeky crush on a man in his early 60s. I’m in my early 40s. Never had such an age-gap crush before but WTH…I’m calling it my “Catherine Zeta Jones moment”.
Ya know, I think that is a trend to watch.
I am seeing more and more couples with big age gaps. My daughter is 23, her recent dates have been with guys in their early 30’s. I’ve got no issue with it simply because I never saw her in my head with the guys her own age.I’m 58 and my fiance is 47. She pinged me on Match. Got another friend, she is 52 and her boyfriend is 64.
I’ve read that most women prefer an man that is 5 to 10 yrs older than they are. Dunno if the research supports that broadly, but it would not surprise me. I think back to HS and all the girls that we knew always wanted to date older guys. Freshman girls wanted to date Juniors. Sophomore girls wanted to date seniors. Junior and senior girls wanted to date college guys. College girls always seemed to be following the same pattern or ever dating guys out of college. Ya get out of college and they are 21/22 and they seem to date guys that were anywhere from 25 to 28. Most new couples I see later are like a 28 yr old woman with a 35 yr old guy.
Sure, there are plenty that are the same age or a year or two apart but I wonder how much of that is social expectation and opportunity.
Now, in my 40’s and 50’s. At 51 my girlfriend was 37. At 54 the lady I dated was 42. As I said, my fiance is 9 yrs younger. In each of those circumstances the lady was the initiator or the relationship.
Funny, but it does seem that the older you get the age gaps get bigger.
I think it’s because the older you get, the less significant are the differences in your life situation so an age gap feels less important. The difference between a 20 year old and a 40 year old is huge (and with all kinds of power-imbalance implications baked in), whereas the difference between 40/60 isn’t so big anymore. 50/70 even less.
I enjoyed this article published on The Cut about age-gap relationships recently: https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-couples.html
I think you make a good point.
There does seem to be some age we reach where we are worldly enough to stand up as an equal with just about anyone.
I’m sure that varies by person, but if I had to put a number on it as a general principle I would say 31 or 32. I mean at that point life has kinda seasoned you and you have either found your confidence and strength or you likely never will.
The attraction is probably because they don’t have to put up with him for as long as they would with a man their own age.
Also, with his libido decreasing she’s not going to be pestered as much.
…an acute insight there William. It’s one my wife and I always joke about, because it has a grain of truth. And that truth, especially for her, can often add a melancholy note to our time together. (She is 30 years my junior, but we have lasted 20 years so far.)
Actually women in their 40s to 60s want men 50 or under.
Huh, guess I am the lucky outlier.
Not sure I agree exactly, but ok.
In the end though, it does appear to work the other way far more often. Big difference between what we want and what we can have.
Just based on 58 yrs of living, I very very rarely see a woman in her 50’s or 60’s with a man under 50. On the other hand, I see the reverse regularly.
As a guy, I can honestly say that very rarely among my friend set have I ever heard a guy say he was interested in a woman substantially older. It happens, but very rarely. And, when it has been mentioned, it is most often in reference to a fling, not a relationship.
I hate to say it doc, but there does appear to be a ceiling at which the MILF fantasy ends. If I had to put a number on it, and clearly that varies by woman, I would say 45. There are always exceptions, but in general, that would seem to be the point where younger men stop considering older women.
And this is from a guy that from 18 to 28 or so, never dated a woman his own age but dated women in their 30’s and occasionally in their 40’s.
Kind of interesting thought after I read that last bit. I have basically, since HS, pretty much dated only women in their 30’s and 40’s. Never had the patience for dealing with women in their early 20’s and I had no intention of getting married before I was 30 plus. In my 20’s these women were fun and interesting, less hung up about sex and they never expected me to marry them. I was just fun. Which worked for both of us. In my 30’s I got married to a woman my own age. At 50 I was a divorced single dad with two kids at home. The first woman I dated was 37, the next 42 or so, the one after that was 39 and the last one that I have been with for 4 yrs was 44 when we met.So, I guess I will be with my first woman 50 or older when I am 60.
Another interesting observation when I think back on it. Those women in their 30’s and 40’s I dated in my 20’s all eventually broke it off to go date, and in some cases marry, men who were10-20 yrs older than I was.
There is no broad sweep statement like this…women want a fit, attractive man, be it 39 or 61. I kiteboard with men double my age and just as fit as me in my late 30s. Chronological age doesn’t matter, its perceived age.
The inheritance comes quicker.
It’s simple evolution: The fertile young women evolved to be attracted to an older man who can provide and protect. All men evolved to be attracted to the fertile women (not pre-puberty girls or post-menopausal).
That evolutionary adaptation is still playing out today.
What’s the issue? If we hadn’t evolved these traits the human race would have died out.
I think there is a lot of truth in what you say.
Seems to me that there are two distinct sides to how we meet and pick partners, one side is sort of executive functioning logic and the other is “attraction” and there is nothing planned or thought out about attraction, it just is but without it nothing else happens.
Seems to me that “attraction” is similar but different in men and women but it is fundamentally driven by the lizard portion of our brains. The lizard portion of our brains is all instinct. It shows itself as feelings I think but is really all about survival. In the sense of being attracted to someone that survival is about safety in couple-hood but also procreation of the species, protecting and providing for offspring.
This attraction, in my opinion, determines which relationship doors we will be willing to open.
Only after that does the executive brain functioning kick in but it can only kick in with the people we are initially attracted to and open doors for.
When I was twenty I worried about what people thought about me. When I was forty, I didn’t care what people thought about me. When I reached sixty, I realised people hadn’t been thinking about me at all.
The FU Fifties are a gift to the soul.
Oh, that’s just perfect!
When I was young I liked them older; now I’m older I like them young.
I can never remember which generation label I’m supposed to be part of, let alone all of the others. It all sounds far too prescriptive for me. One thing is for certain, though, each new generation acts as if nobody before them has ever experienced such things.
Funny story…
I first knew I was getting older when I found a two star general attractive. LOL
But I remembered being a young private years ago and thinking that Captains looked old. Heck, they were probably 27 or so.
She was smoking hot. I was a civilian by then and was on base consulting to one of the agencies. I flirted with her shamelessly in front of her staff. You should have seen the look on the face of one of the Full Bird Col. that was with her. LMAO
I was wondering about that Boomer comment in the article, too. I’m a Gen Xer with Millennial daughters. (Boomer generation ended in 1964.)
Gen X here: absolutely. It’s insane!!!!
I actually like getting older. I’ve found that as I approach 50 I am becoming more child-like in that I have a renewed interest in the hobbies that I dropped when I started going out and clubbing back in the1990s. I’ve also noticed that the world young people inhabit is not the same as older people. I enjoyed my youth immensely, but I’m also happy to put it behind me. I revisit it sometimes, but to totally go back to the way I was in my twenties and thirties would be like going back to my old nursery school and trying to force myself to fit into a child’s chair. It would be uncomfortable and cramped. One of the hallmarks of youth is thinking that you know all the answers and that older people have no clue. It’s only when you look back you realize how clueless and vain you were, but that’s ok. That’s just part of being young.
I quite like getting older too, I turned 60 this week. There is so much less pressure to be and do certain things, and I could still be only 2/3 of the way through my life, I would say embrace what each age brings.
I think this is very true. I think we pretend (or are deluded) into thinking we’re in charge of ourselves when we actually aren’t. The sex thing takes us over, we reproduce, and then return to who we were when we 12 as we approach 50 and nature is done with us.
When I was 12 I liked cycling in the countryside and looking at nature and reading books. Now I’m 52 I’m back to doing exactly the same thing.
Bingo. I’m a tail-end Boomer and have no desire to try to recapture my youth, as fun as it was. And now that I’ve enjoyed a rewarding career and more so a wonderful marriage and being a dad, I can’t imagine trying to rewind the clock.
And I still enjoy showing my teen daughter that the old dog can still learn some new tricks!
I like being older too, I’m 65. Sadly I don’t hanker after men over 70 but then again I don’t want to. But I was at one of my job’s works Christmas party and I surprised myself when I suddenly said to a couple of younger colleagues, ‘do you know, I’m really happy. I don’t think I’ve been happier.’.
I thought the secret was finding work you enjoy and control – thank you zero hours contracts. But last week I read that women over 60 in decent relationships, with families, religious faith and activities they enjoy are the happiest people on earth.
Welcome to my world!
Existential dread will continue to haunt the Millennial generation until it make its peace with God. We are creatures, not Creator; we would all do well to remember that.
Until reaching this conclusion, everyone will keep living in sin and wondering why they’re so miserable, alienated, with nothing but sardonic derision to comfort them.
The penny will drop, sooner or later.
How many 5 minute sessions on a meditation app do you need to reach inner peace with your mortality?
That peace cannot be reached through our own efforts – to think so is the same arrogance mentioned above: creatures thinking themselves Creator.
Only Christ can make you whole and give you eternal life in Him.
I’m neither miserable or alienated. I’ll grant the occasional sardonically derisive remark and as for “living in sin” – you bet i have!
The penny is still in circulation but no longer has enough value (is that sardonic?). I wish you well with your blissful delusion, since that’s really all it is.
The wages of sin are death. I simply don’t believe you when you say that doesn’t bother you.
How many clapped-out platitudes can you come up with? We all die, stop deluding yourself you’re going anywhere special afterwards. I’ ll be perfectly content when my time comes, since i’ll have lived without fear or favour. Can you say that, quivering in the shadow of your imaginary god?
What you call “clapped-out platitudes”, others call the word of God. Ignore it now if you wish. My point is simple: you won’t be able to ignore it forever.
And no, I won’t be able to say I’ve lived without fear or favour, because that would be a life without any sense of duty or responsibility. In any case, I’ve had my share of hedonism and sardonic derision, and I’ve seen its complete inability to nourish the soul. Just doesn’t work in the long run, I don’t think.
Finally – yes, I fear God. We all should. Have you forgotten who made you? The awesome power of one who brought the entire universe into being with a mere Word? He is mighty. He is holy. He is to be feared as one fears the most majestic thing of all. It’s a holy fear.
GOD DOES NOT EXIST… The concept of God also explains absolutely nothing, philosophically speaking. It just means “the primal force whose own existence we do not (and must not!) explain.
Pedants’ Corner: The wages of sin is death
Do you believe you are more enlightened and happier than a Muslim? Or a Hindu? Or a Buddhist?
You all beat me to it. Gen X forgotten about again. What’s really happened now is that we have been merged together with the real Boomers in the minds, certainly of Gen Z, and the effect is to make Boomers seem to go on and on. I have never seen Sunset Boulevard but my reaction too is what “only 50”? Crikey, I’d be thrilled to be 50 again at this point.
You need to watch Sunset Boulevard. It’s a masterpiece.
Boomers, GenX, GenZ..
More identity politics splitting us up into ever-smaller, policed groups.
Policed, yes. But also resented. And that will not end well if it continues.
Pity the millennials. We were miserable during the best years of our lives. Now we’re entering middle age where we will actually have a reason to be depressed.
To any Gen Z readers: wear sun cream, eat and sleep well and look after your joints. All this will happen to you too.
About the sun cream. I’m old to remember when people would slather themselves in sun intensifiers, not blocks. From baby oil to shortening, the search for a tan knew no bounds. Being of Greek heritage, I didn’t need that help but it has been something to watch society move from embracing the sun to fearing it.
what a bunch of c@@@s
That’s a very rude remark. Actually it isn’t so easy to stand apart and be completely different from others in your cohort.
Good Lord.
Being obsessed with your age or generation and how ‘cool’ or hard-done-by it makes you is terminally pathetic. I’m a younger Millennial and sick to death of all this age obsession.
Why should I feel inferior (or superior) to someone born 5/10/15 years after me? Why would I give a solitary flying object about the trouser shape, skin texture, or opinions of someone who could be my younger sibling or niece (unless they actually are)?
We used to live in communities where you weren’t ‘a Gen-Zer’ or ‘a millennial’ but just ‘Grumpy Hedgehog’. Hopefully better known for being kind to people or for spinning tall tales in the pub than for the precise number of lines on your forehead. I’d prefer to go back to that, thanks.
I turned 40 25 years ago. By that time I had been married for 17 years, had two children, my second book was published and I’d just accepted a contract with a major syndicate.
The point is, before social media, young people met in person, started careers, worked our way up in the job market, grew families, bought starter homes, and, if we were concerned about our health and appearance, went to the gym where we didn’t take any pictures of ourselves working out.
Perhaps if millennials hadn’t fallen for the shallow self-absorption of life online, they wouldn’t have to complain about boomers’ achievements.
Interesting that your comment starts with a self-important boast and the rest of the argument is framed through that self-image.
Use social media much, boomer?
Dude! (Or Dudette!). Don’t be a jerk.
If millennials haven’t aged into power, it’s at least in part because our Boomer parents are refusing to age gracefully out of it, instead maintaining a stranglehold on everything — What an interesting illustration of Millennial conceit, as if this bunch called Gen-X – you remember them, the ones between the boomers and the m’s – does not exist.
Has there ever been a more insufferable generation than the Millennials, though I should not ask that out loud, as Gen-Z might take it as a challenge. Menopause happens. It’s not a new phenomenon, on matter how much this cohort wants to rebrand it as something that’s never happened before. Come on, man; I work with some folks in this age group and they’re not all neurotic, self-obsessed people.
I wonder what kind of beauty concept this is. Beauty is with us all the way; it changes, but it is there. Personally I am tired of the sleek, unproblematic beauty of youth forced upon everyone else.
What to say? Welcome to reality, maybe.
Cue millennial posts that re-invent middle age as though it never existed previous to Instagram & tik tok. Trust them to take over the conversation on mid-life, while those of us in Gen X are still arriving there. Silly. The Boomer-Millennial war seems futile. We all gotta live here together somehow. We all have things to contribute, if we’d lay off the social media sniping, and just do it.
This is hilarious, it’s Karen Morgan on every generation ever.
https://youtu.be/Edxr25t8trc?si=qhbilTe_ng6jjZgu
Father time is undefeated. Cannot take credit for that, but it’s my favorite summary for this topic. As a boomer I can tell you with confidence we, too, wish the politicians of our generation would let go.
I find the pre and post internet divide evident here astonishing – I am a gen xer (52) and have never posted any kind of selfie online – it would just never occur to me as something that was in any way appropriate. I find it weird and disturbing that people curate an online persona in this way.
Yeah, young people these days get away with behavior that would have gotten me beaten up at school.
Lordy, Lordy. What a bunch of self centered morons! What a waste. This crew will have lived an entire, precious, privileged lifetime in two dimensions: themselves in their mirrors. Turn around idiots; there’s a very much more interesting world out there — maybe even more interesting than you are? Quick, before it’s too late.
And, you can always get over yourselves and do something constructive. 40 is hardly old. I am 65 and getting ready to do my second Ph.D.
OK, OK. Maybe a Ph.D. isn’t particularly constructive. But, it is doing something. So, bite me.
Boomers are showing the way. I have done 18 years older and 15 years younger. Now I’ve settled for the same age. All good.
Fantastic, I now know about ring lights. No wonder I’ve been an ugly b****r for the past 15 years.
I’m still wondering what a bee-star-star-star-star-arr is. Some stupid British ess-star-star-tee?
Something like that, just uglier.
Well, at 70 I’ve finally realised that none of this worrying about age and looks and relationships really matters much at all! As Eddie Hitler said in Bottom “Look, you get born, you keep your head down and then you die – if you’re lucky.” Same as it ever was, for every generation…