I caught a stray in the Generation Wars
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A thing went viral on the internet recently, as things are wont to do. It was a TikTok of a young woman, presumably in her early twenties, who had just discovered the history of Lilith Fair. Lilith Fair was an all-woman music festival launched by Sarah McLaughlin. It ran from 1997-1999 and grossed over 52 million, giving 10 million to charities for women. I was 10 years old when it ended, and, if I’m being honest, I thought it was a medieval convention at the time. I eventually learned that it was not.
People my age and a bit older — so, Millennials and Gen Xers — were up in arms about this TikTok. “Next thing, they’re going to discover DVDs,” someone said. They took issue with the audacity of this woman to say she “discovered” something that was a major cultural phenomenon at the time.
The Generation Wars have existed for as long as we have had young people, older people, and oldest people. So, forever. And on the same day that Lilith Fair video went viral, I was an accidental casualty in one of the war’s small battles.
I was sitting on the F train, sweating profusely. If you’ve ever been on the subway in the summer in New York, you know the specific kind of hot I’m talking about — that flush of internal heat that only really hits once you’ve left the fresher air above and descended to the platform. Getting into the train’s air conditioning doesn’t really help. But everyone else is sweating, too, and you’re all in it together, and there’s some sort of silent camaraderie that hovers around all the people shoved into those tin cans.
On this particular day, two of those people were young women standing in front of me. They couldn’t have been over 19 years old (at 34, I sort of can’t tell how old anyone is anymore, but I’d put these two at around 17). Something about these girls struck me as odd, but I couldn’t place it. A few stops in, I suddenly realized what was bugging me.
These girls were dressed exactly the way I dressed in high school and college.
One of them wore a denim mini skirt with raw edges and a halter top that was loose and flow-y at the bottom. It looked like a Going Out Top I used to wear. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have a photo of me wearing almost that girl’s exact outfit when I was a sophomore in college. Let me see if I can find it.
Yup. Here it is.
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