Issue #4: Accidentally young-coding my wardrobe by not giving a shit

Socks and sandals are comfy.

I needed caffeine. I was mid-writing and running on fumes. The coffee shop around the corner was calling my name, so I threw a light puffer jacket over my sweatpants and slipped my socked feet into some slides (it was October in Toronto and nothing climatically made sense) and ran out the door.

I’m waiting in line and the guy in front of me - who I’m guessing is five years older than me max - looks at my outfit up and down and says, “I love how you Gen Z’s are wearing socks with sandals now”.

“You gen Z’s”. Ahhhhh, buddy.

He said it honestly and without any kind of snark.

He was into it. I think he genuinely appreciated the permission structure to stop giving a fuck about appearances. But I was so caught off guard by his assumption about my generation.

Like so many millennials, I have been blessed with ‘young face’. I didn’t realize it was a generational thing until recently, but it has been a real thing all my life.

People have always assumed I’m 5-10 years younger than I actually am, which has actually been a real pain in the ass for most of my working life as a woman trying to be Taken Seriously in the business world.

I always chalked it up to Sicilian DNA and life long vegetarianism, but according to social media, it’s a broader phenomenon with my age group.

Regardless of the source of my young face, getting mistaken for being younger than I am has been a hallmark of my life.

However, this was a bit absurd. Gen Z starts in the late 90’s, which puts me almost 20 years older than the oldest Gen Z, and under no circumstance could I be reasonably confused for a 25 year old. I might not look old, but I’m well seasoned for sure.

“Gen Z ”.

*chuckles in peri*

But the reality is, he wasn’t looking at my face at all when he made the comment, he was looking at my “outfit” (and I use that term loosely). To him it was young-coded, and young people are Gen Z, therefore I must be Gen Z, despite my forehead wrinkles betraying otherwise.

In the grand scheme of things, it was a pretty nothing moment.

But it made me think about how the lines between generations are imaginary in so many ways. How much of it is based around the concept of youth and the opportunity to brand new things as different.

And how as you age, you either get absorbed into the previous generation (I’ve also been mistaken for Gen X many times) or seconded into the next generation.

I used to think Gen X was the mind-their-business generation that liked to keep a low profile, but maybe that’s not it at all.

Maybe they just started turning 40 at the same time I turned 25 and lost their airtime to millennials. And now that the millennials are turning 40, anything cool we do will get branded as Gen Z and anything cranky or lame will lump into Gen X.

I can see I’m guilty of doing this to Gen X aged people at work - when they piss me off I curse them as Boomers.

It’s a good reminder that so many of the components of identity based around the idea of generations are made up.

Generations are connected to each other by the moment in time that we’re in the world and the stages of life during which we experience certain things, because that has formative and shaping impacts in our lives.

But at the end of the day, we’re all just individuals traveling through life. Trying to figure out what the hell we’re doing while throwing slides over our socks and going for a coffee run.

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Role Model of the Week

A weekly instalment where I highlight people I’m looking up to this week who are using the power they have to do cool, impactful, disruptive stuff to shift the status quo.

Honestly, this week, I’m looking up to anyone who is waking up determined to keep going. Anyone that is recognizing that all we have is ourselves and each other, holding their loved ones close and recommitting to their communities.

I’ll leave you with this quote from James Baldwin that’s been going around my feeds and is made for the times.

“Love has never been a popular movement. And no one’s ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you’ve got to remember is what you’re looking at is also you. Everyone you’re looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide, in yourself, not to be.”

Meeting The Man: James Baldwin in Paris