#generational things

Like obviously Gen Z kids have been portraying millennials-as-kids for awhile now. And I'm nearly 40, so certainly I've seen plenty of media with adults who are younger than me...but for the most part they've also been millennials.

This is the first show I can think of where I am really feeling the fact that a chunk of the generation after me are fully adults now. Like, I'm no longer the youngest adult generation. It's an odd feeling.

Especially because covid did weird shit with the passage of time...plus Trump having two terms is so dystopic. Not to mention shit in my personal life. The past decade feels very squished to me...and Heated Rivalry takes place right when that squishiness began (10-15 years ago). And Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams were literal children during the time when HR takes place; I was a full grown adult going through a bit of a crisis and changing careers.

I'm sure gen X folks and boomers went through something similar right around the same age. Like this isn't unique. But it is a weird feeling.

Like when I first watched The Golden Girls, watching Blanche and Rose and Dorothy felt like learning about the lives of grandmas, two generations removed from me, but now they feel like moms, just one generation up from mine.

And while a lot of Grace and Frankie fandom talks about the "gay grandmas," which is TRUE, and even though they're older than my mom, thinking of them as mothers is more emotionally resonant to me (from my generational standpoint) than thinking of them as grandmothers. Like if someone asked me to describe their families I'd think first about who they are as parents.

I should also say here that Rose and Blanche and Dorothy and Sophia and Grace and Frankie are, first and foremost, HUMAN WOMEN with value as people with their own lives and not just in relation to the generations their characters have birthed.

Oh, and a related weirdness: it's also weird to rewatch shows that used to feature cool older adults who were, like, ultra-mature college grads figuring out life, and now I'm considerably older than those characters I used to look up to.