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Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

Each generation thinks it’s the best. But I would argue that those of us who came of age prior to the smart-phone era are unequivocally special.

Not just because we know what life felt like before we became so reliant on technology. Not just because we understand what is lost when the sound of a person’s voice is replaced with a few words punched into a cell phone. We are truly unique because we are the last group of human beings to have experienced a collective pop culture.

Think about that for a minute. Gen Xers—as well as some older millennials—are the last people to grow up consuming pretty much the same mass media and entertainment as their peers. We watched the same TV shows because there were only three networks. We listened to the same music on the same radio stations. We shopped at the same chain stores, and we even played the same games because there were only so many that Toys ‘R’ Us could stock.

Don’t get me wrong, our pop culture wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t inclusive or diverse, and many of us certainly felt on the peripheral of it. If you wanted to find something “alternative,” you had to go digging through the bins at Tower Records or locate a thrift shop. And like other generations, we consumed a lot of crap.

But it was our crap. We experienced it together, and it’s part of our collective memory. Almost every Gen Xer I know can tick off at least three Molly Ringwald films (and recite a couple lines from each), name the shopping mall where they hung out as a teen, recall the sound of Casey Kasem’s “Top 40” voice, and remember where they were when we all found out who shot J.R.

I remember going to my cousin’s house one day in the early ’80s and finding him curled up on the couch, watching Xanadu on a VCR machine—the first I had encountered. “Wow!” I remember thinking. Does this mean we no longer had to go to the theater, where I had seen Grease four times? Could I get my dad to spring for one of those so that I, too, could view my favorite films at home, lounging on the shag carpet, munching on Doritos?

Never could I have imagined, back then, what the world would be like—what our choices would be like—four decades later.

Fast forward to 2023, when each of our personal devices serves not only as a personalized movie theater, but also a customized television, telephone, library, radio, shopping mall, arcade, camera and video recorder, message center, concierge, matchmaker, business center, conference room, recording studio, design center and much more.

These devices also provide access to a seemingly infinite amount of content. Content that keeps coming at us, nonstop, from a multitude of sources: social media, streaming platforms, apps, blogs and websites. With so many choices literally at our fingertips, we must act as our own media curators, deciding what, when and how often to consume.

When I was a kid, my family often sat down to watch television or a movie together. Now, each person in my family has their own viewing agenda. My husband has his zombie and action flicks, I prefer dramas and romcoms, my teens have their…well, I’m not 100 percent sure what they’re watching (especially the one in college). It’s a rare evening when we all gather on the couch to stream something together. When we do, it often takes 20 minutes to scroll through all the options on our smart TV and decide on something mutually acceptable.

SNL recently did a clever skit about this content oversaturation. In the bit, game show contestants answered Hollywood-themed trivia questions. They had no trouble recalling films and actors from the 1950s, but when quizzed on current movies and celebs, they were stumped. With so many viewing choices, who could possibly name the star of a niche film that wasn’t featured on the Netflix homepage?

Last weekend, my husband and I were lucky to attend the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. One of the show’s highlights was a celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary. Tracing the evolution of the genre, dozens of artists—from pioneers like Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah and Public Enemy, to rising stars such as Lil Baby and GloRilla—took the stage. It was a high-octane, cross-generational mélange I won’t soon forget.

As we skipped out of the arena, high on great music, I started to think: So what if the “kids” these days don’t share a common pop culture. Who cares if, when they’re middle-aged, they can’t reminisce with their peers about anything other than silly memes from the aughts? Maybe the alternative to a generation-specific pop culture is not a world of lonely consumption, but one where it doesn’t matter how old you are and what content you grew up with. Maybe it’s more important to find and connect with people who share your tastes and interests than it is to bond over stuff you experienced only because you were around during that time period.

Too much content can be overwhelming and isolating, but it can also be liberating. In a conversation we had last year, fashion designer Sigrid Olsen said she was pleased to be living at a time when our limitless access to content means we can inspire—and be inspired by—people of all ages. When she introduced her women’s clothing line several decades ago, department stores required that she label it (remember back in the day, when there was a “junior” section, a “missy” section, etc.?). Today, anyone who stumbles upon her brand, on Instagram or elsewhere, and identifies with it can make it their own. This is something the Grammy organizers expressed with their multigenerational mashup. And something we exercise every day when we choose what to watch, listen to, read or wear.

No matter how old we are or when we came of age.

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Protect Your Baby Blues (or Browns, or Greens...)

At some point after age 40, each of us will experience presbyopia, or difficulty focusing on nearby objects. We may also have trouble with night vision, suffer from dry eye, or deal with other age- and hormone-related conditions. On the most recent episode of the More Beautiful Podcast, I chat with optometrist Dr. Surveen Singh about what’s going on with our eyes during midlife, why we may be experiencing some of these common issues and what we can do about them. Dr. Singh breaks down the latest treatments, medicines and surgeries at our disposal, and talks about the best protective measures we can take to keep our eyes healthy well into old age. We also discuss computer use and how it’s affecting not only our eyes, but our kids’, whether or not blue-light glasses actually work, which eye symptoms should be viewed as an emergency, the beauty product that may unintentionally protect our vision, and the nasty habit some of us picked up in the ’90s that (hopefully) we’ve broken.

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