Life stages and identities are more elastic than ever before. We’re less able to fit into the boxes of old; people are having fewer children, doing it later in life or not at all, living longer and ageing better, changing careers and embracing the myriad of interests and eccentricities that capture their imagination.
All of this means the demographics we’re used to talking about kind of don’t cut it anymore.
In fact, research has established the lengthening of developmental life stages, with 18 - 29 year olds not even considered having reached adulthood. Young people today increasingly identify within fluid categories and reject dated stereotypes.
Interestingly, it seems that social media is the catalyst for this change. With viral TikTok trends encouraging ‘girlies in their 30s’ to share what 30 actually looks like and online communities celebrating people above 70 years old dressing like 20 year olds, it’s no surprise that the lines are finally blurring.
Discussing this further today is Annie House, Senior Strategist at creative content agency OK COOL:
These girlies in their 30s
Source - TikTok
TikTok has called it; “this generation of 30-year-olds, I am excited!”. This TikTok sound has done the rounds celebrating the girlies in their 30s, and how much they do not look like what the movies taught us.
Instead of videos of women settling down and having kids, we’re seeing refreshingly relatable content of women prioritising girl time, self-care, and choosing to not conform to fashion norms.
Take @sarahhauareyou for example, who shared a video of her and a friend watching Pride and Prejudice, snuggling pregnancy pillows, drinking wine and tucking into a cheese board. One user commented “the way I have a pregnancy pillow and never plan on getting pregnant.”
Having lived through the Glossier induced skin care revolution of the 2010s, is it any surprise that 30-year-olds are rejecting the notion of growing up too quickly?
Source - TikTok
Take 31-year old model Em Ratajkowski for instance. Since divorcing her husband of four years in September 2022, she has taken to TikTok to document her life as a single mother in her thirties, showing the world yes you can be a mother, in your thirties, and still post memes about boys.
Old is young again
It’s a trap to think cultural inspiration only comes from the youngest generations among us. It’s easy to separate out demographics and say they have nothing to do with one another.
Source - Instagram
Just take a look at @gramparents, with over 250K followers, this Instagram account is one of the most interesting, crowd sourced, sartorial deep dives around. Founded by New York-based creative Kyle Kivijärv, the profile catalogues the best dressed senior citizens through user submissions.
Even parenthood looks different today. We’re increasingly moving away from parenthood as a destination, but rather something being absorbed into our lives. Women who have children aren’t suddenly shoved into the ‘mum’ category with their identities locked away forever.
To think these people would be spoken to as a singular monolith is reductive of their thoughts, experiences, interests and expectations.
Subculture reigns supreme
Traditional demographics feel like a way to speak to the broadest cross section of people in a homogenous way, assuming anyone who falls into that bucket thinks and feels the same.
The rapid domination of a platform like TikTok happened because it understood one fundamental thing: people wanted to have their strange and human eccentricities seen and appreciated.
And who would have thought speaking with purpose to those hyper interested would cut through? Florals for Spring? Groundbreaking.
