Mythical Millennial #5: Your body is a wonderland
Body rolls. We all have them. Touch them. Make them jiggle. I’m doing it right as I type this and bloody Nora is it making me levels of self-awareness I’ve never reached before.
It’s a relatively good time to be on the Internet. The #AerieReal campaign has been championing the no-Photoshop revolution (despite their April Fool’s Aerie Men hiccup), the Refinery29 Take Back the Beach series is, as the kids say, giving me life, not to mention plus size model Ashley Graham’s feature in DNCE’s ‘Toothbrush’ music video. It’s great, it’s liberating even. Tess Holiday is on a rooftop shouting ‘eff your beauty standards’ and I’m doing all that I can to stop myself from screaming alongside her. There’s just one thing.
It’s really hard not to be cynical about this. ‘Petite’ and ‘Plus’ are still categories women have to shamefully shop in (you still feel it when you’re online), and Instagram sponsored posts aboutwaist trainers and Fit Tea flood my feed daily. I’m unsure that we’ll ever reach a point in our society where we’re not forced to idealise a specific body type, especially when it’s oh-so-good for business. (I mean, we all remember when Flo Rida sang about dem apple bottom jeans.)
Until all paid Instagrammers go all Essena O’Neill on us by quitting social media, young people (both men and women, because Brock O’Hurn exists) are going to be continually bombarded with things on the Internet that make them feel crap about their bodies. Heck, I haven’t even touched on how non-binary folk must feel. Until the social media apocalypse happens though, I’m going to embrace my rolls and wear as many crop tops as I like.
Last week we were flooded by reports saying ‘millennials have less sex than baby boomers’ after this academic study came out. Cue sheer, unadulterated Internet meltdown. (Seriously, there are more than 460,000 hits on the subject.)
Out of the carnage rose a pretty fabulous op-ed piece by Daisy Buchanan:
‘Millennials don’t have sex? Of course we don’t’. Highlights include:
“I think the greatest tragedy is that the sex we manage to have rarely goes beyond a screen.”
Time for a new sexual revolution? I think so.
I’m so glad Craig David is making a comeback. This recommendation is courtesy of the fabbo @aileyun. Bonus: Check out his truly well-curated monthly mixes here.
GOT IT GOOD by KAYTRANADA featuring Craig David
I could not stop laughing reading Amanda Rosenberg’s piece ‘I Replaced The Word ‘Millennials’ With ‘43-Year-Old White Men’ And Now These Headlines Are *Italian Chef Kissing Fingers Gesture*’.
To give you an idea, one of the re-jigged headlines now reads: “Martha Stewart Still Confused About What 43-Year-Old White Men Are Exactly’.
We’re all confused, Martha. We’re all confused.
You don’t ask, you don’t get, so here’s me askin’. If you’ve enjoyed Mythical Millennial so far, do ask your pals to subscribe using this link!
See you in two weeks, peeps,
B x
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Originally published on Mythical Millennial.
