gen z vs. millennials: who's right about their jeans?

in news i will no doubt prove alarming to hipsters djs harry styles and kate middleton it has been reported in a scholarly medical journal that an australian woman wearing skinny jeans collapsed and had to spend four days in hospital after her two tight pants cut off the blood supply in her legs [Music] hello my beautiful loves welcome back so i might be a little late to this conversation but in my defense i'm fashionably late if you don't have a tick tock you might not know what this is about but earlier this year and technically i guess the feud started last year because i first started seeing tick tocks about this stuff last year but earlier this year there was a resurgence of a feud between millennials and gen z i'm going to say older millennials and younger gen z because i honestly don't know any 90s babies who are up in arms about this but maybe they exist i don't know i can't say that for sure if you're lost on what the difference is between millennials and gen z you're not alone um millennials i think spans the birth year to 1981-1995 gen z is like roughly any year after until 2010 and who knows where i fall under this as a 96er but i'm trying not to make the year i was born a major facet of my personality because time is a social construct [Music] i feel like the whole generational war on tick tock started with some pretty funny jokes about how millennials like latte art and buzzfeed quizzes and they say doggo and love harry potter okay so i'm editing right now and i think i need to rephrase this part because when i was editing i was like oh i'm actually making it seem like gen z started the whole generational war on tick tock when the entirety of last year i was seeing videos made by both millennials and gen z taking jabs at each other so i don't actually know who started it but i think the resurgence of the feud earlier this year and specifically the stuff about middle parts and skinny jeans were mostly instigated by gen z and that's kind of what i'm trying to say oh hey cheryl nothing much just making dinner for the hubby guess what came on the radio today i want it that way i always thought these were kind of funny just because it's kind of true but i know some millennials were getting pretty annoyed even early on and then enter 2021 and now gen z are making it tick tocks gen z gen zer gen zoomers zoomers are making tick tocks [ __ ] on skinny jeans [Music] which has opened a whole nother pandora's box a lot of these videos aren't even calling out millennials directly but a lot of millennials are feeling attacked because i guess um they feel like teenagers are trying to dictate what trends are in and because i guess a lot of them are still wearing skinny jeans they feel like this is just adding to the general warfare which is why we get videos like these hey genzie you can suck it you can't tell me what to wear cause i've been rocking this side pot since you had kermit on your underwear so cute i do want to point out that this is a small minority of angry millennials and half of them i hope are just joking as well but if not the majority of the people getting involved are also white americans have any other people of color notice that the genji millennial war is only happening between the white people like what have we said adulting or doggo who the freak says doggo and i'm a millennial but if you're confused about what the animosity is even about the situation is in the mid to late 2000s the skinny jeans were all the rage and while i have to say i don't think any of my older friends are still wearing skinny jeans there is clearly a subgroup of millennials who are clinging onto that silhouette very aggressively well here's the thing gen z millennials shouldn't be trying to dress like 14 15 16 year olds and i hope that when you are 28 29 30 you're not trying to dress like 14 16 15 16 year olds so when you see a millennial not wearing a side they're not wearing a middle part and not wearing the jeans that you want them to be maybe just shut up because they shouldn't be you should be actually worried about people you know what no you just keep your companions to yourself because you're literally six years old that's my opinion on the other side of the issue we have gen z who are wearing anything but skinny jeans and then of course there are people in the middle who are making fun of the entire situation hey do you want to come over for game night yeah definitely will it be safe to wear yeah yeah yeah yeah it's just the two of us hey i got the games oh my god i forgot to tell you my gender cousin is here oh hey [Music] now this conflict honestly baffles me because millennials were actually rocking middle parts and baggy jeans for a good portion of the 90s and you would think that millennials who are arguably one of the most nostalgic generations to exist having experienced a crazy amount of change throughout their childhoods what with the introduction of new technology like smartphones and laptops and social media and who coined the phrase only 90s kids would remember would have a stronger appreciation for the styles of their youth i was too young to really see the appeal of the middle part and baggy jeans but honestly whenever i do see kids recreating the scene look on tiktok it fills me with warmth and anytime there was an 80s themed party that i had to go to like during school or whatever my mom was always super stoked about it but actually now that i think about it i feel like a lot of people are just afraid of getting older so seeing children recreating the styles of their youth might make them feel older and they get upset about it or it could be good old generational gatekeeping as in if you're going to wear baggy jeans you have to wear it in the same exact way i wore it in the 90s which is ridiculous logic but it's the same logic exhibited by people who get mad at kids for discovering a fleetwood mac through ticktock instead of through their parents cassette tapes but anyway let's talk about the jeans i may be biased but i'm personally against skinny jeans for myself especially the ultra skinny jeans i actually don't mind the distressed black ones because my love for panic at the disco but um anything other than that like any other colorway and it's a no for me dog not only do i think they look kind of unflattering on me personally but i just remember how every day i would wear these pants like almost every day in middle school and high school and every morning at 6 a.m i would have to dedicate like a 10 minutes time slot just to shimmy into these skinny jeans like why would i want to repeat that experience and then i got really bad in the springtime because your leg skin and yes i know that sounds really gross but i don't know what else to call it your leg skin would literally suffocate and i'm from a very humid area so on top of that my legs would just be super hot and sweaty but there was nothing i could do about it because they were entrapped in these denim death contraptions so i don't know if i'll ever go back to skinny jeans personally that's my opinion and not to sound too team gen z on this because i don't think it's that serious to pick sides but trends change this is just a fact of life and the t is that skinny jeans will probably come back in the next five years or so check back on this video in five years there's this concept called the 20-year rule which basically says that fashion trends will come back roughly every 20 years and we can see that most recently with the y2k revival in the late 2010s and i guess technically it's still ongoing likewise skinny jeans were not invented in the 2000s they were just upgraded for the times before the 2000s there was a skinny jeans movement in the 70s and 80s where punks and other alternative subcultures embraced the trend and before that we saw skinny pants in the 50s and 60s see a pattern 20 year rule of course every decade has its own taste so in the 60s skinny pants followed the mod or beatnik trend they were usually high-waisted and the focus was also less on jeans and more unlike actual trousers if you look up photos of audrey hepburn or elvis presley you can see them rocking some relatively tight pants compared to previous decades in the 80s because tight jeans were first embraced by the punks they are usually distressed um embellished with safety pins or zippers i found this article from september 2006 written by leah rumak for toronto's national post and in it she writes i'm no fool i'm well aware of the largest criticism of skinny pants best summed up perhaps by the panhandler who thoughtfully screamed at me on the street the other day you look tacky and 80s this is why i think it's so funny to see comments like this on tick tock living like terry says it's funny gen z is just imitating the 70s style and acting like it's new and end y'all are 50 years late on that like if you're wearing skinny jeans today i could also say that you're 50 years late on that but anyways moving on the mid to late 2000s wasn't a direct copy of the 80s because as i said before every decade or every time period has its own interpretation of the style 2 000 skinny jeans were the skinniest they could ever be and paved the way for the diabolical jeggings emo kids embraced skinny jeans in the mostly black color way and they were usually also low rise and they would wear them with tight band t-shirts and studded belts seen kids wore them with hoodies and wore them in all kinds of different neon color ways and yes seeing kids and emo kids were different groups and no i will not be explaining that further for this video and for the masses if you didn't wear a long delia's tunic with skinny jeans and ballet flats why did so many people like skinny jeans in the first place well aside from the whole brainwashing trend factor which basically is like you know if you see so much of something you suddenly want it um hannah hong writes this in her article why i'm never letting go of skinny jeans no matter what gen z says even if skinny jeans were still too long for me nobody would be the wiser because i could scrunch them up at the ankles or fold them a couple notches earlier in the article she talks about how she's short so it was hard for her to find a pair of jeans that fit her so that's just for context the tight fit presented me with ease of movement and miraculously added two sorely needed inches of leg not long after that i discovered boots wedges i could wear them because i could see them whereas baggy jeans and boot cuts would just hide my shoes i could now wear any kind of shoe my sartorial heart desired including my favorite toe pumps and knee highs for the first time my skinny jeans made me enjoy wearing pants but not everyone at the time was a proponent of skinny jeans in november 2006 red book magazine asked for people's opinions on the new trend and there were some gen xers who didn't want to make the change kieran fuller 36 at the time from indiana said the greatest things that ever happened to jeans are stretch and boot cut why mess up a good thing hello everyone so i am back editing mina is back because there was an audio glitch and yes i'm wearing a different outfit because this is a multi-day editing project for me um but yeah so what i was supposed to say is that this video would not be complete without recognizing eddie salon and where he plays into this obviously my camera did not want eddie slimon to be recognized but alas i'm here to recognize him and if you're unfamiliar with who eddie slimon is he is the current creative director at celine but from 2000 to 2007 he was the creative director at dior own and his work at dior is largely credited for being the origin of the whole skinny tie skinny jean skinny suit movement of the 2000s but clothing aside this was a huge moment in fashion in terms of introducing a new industry standard for male models in february 2008 the new york times published an article titled the vanishing point the article mentions that in 1994 the sample size was an italian 50 an appropriate size for a six foot male but around the time slimon went on to do our own the typical sample size had gone down to 48 and then in 2008 it became 46. for people in the u.s that's going from a size l to a size s casting director james scully said once the eddie slim monetization i'm gonna start using that from now on got started all anyone wanted to cast was the scrawny kid who looks like he got sand kicked in his face um i say all this but i don't want to imply that eddie slimon was trying to push any kind of industry-wide agenda because as far as i know it didn't seem like he was yahoo style did an interview with him in 2015 and the interviewer asked him the question what do you say to people who say that you are too obsessed with a certain skinny ideal of youth eddie replies i was precisely just like any of these guys i photograph or that walk my shows jackets were always a little too big for me many in high school or in my family were attempting to make me feel i was half a man because i was lean and not an athletic build i would turn to my music heroes and this was comforting they looked the same and i wanted to do everything to be like them and not hide myself in baggy clothes to avoid negative comments david bowie keith richards mick jagger mick jones paul weller i felt connected to their allure aesthetic and style given this context it's no surprise that a lot of people were against skinny jeans at the time because they felt like skinny jeans were only meant for skinny people in 2006 sydney stoyan lamented about it in her article for the toronto national post titled unless you're rake thin forget this trend christina zigler 43 from california said to red book magazine the term skinny just sets up those of us who are not a perfect shape for disappointment but skinny jeans are not complete evil doers and they can be more size inclusive than what the name suggests i came across a refinery 29 article written recently by marie southhard ospina who talks about how skinny jeans were liberating for her as a plus-size woman she writes to zoomers skinny jeans may not be as cool as mom denim or 70s style flares but to many of us they will forever remain precious as a tool through which we embraced our figures like never before so i think it's up to the person what is considered comfortable but again personally during the pandemic i would much rather lounge around in baggy jeans over skinny jeans that's my opinion there's also this idea of the trickle-down influence in fashion there's also trickle-across and trickle-up but trickle-down basically states that uh fashion trends start up in high fashion and then they trickle down to the masses cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers i'm going to filter down through the department stores and then trickle down down into some tragic casual corner where you no doubt fished it out of some clearance bin but of course designers don't just pull things out of thin air um eddie himself talked about how he pulled influence from 70s and 80s rock stars and he wasn't the only one doing that at the time either in 2003 sarah meekle senior fashion editor of teen vogue said that they were trying to push a chic 80s punk look among the tween teen demographic 80s fashion in general was experiencing a resurgence in fashion neon colors animal prints and acid wash being a couple examples so you can argue that it was only a matter of time before 80s drain pipe pants were coming back into style in the 2000s the thing about this jeans debate that i find really funny is this kind of stuff just always happens newer generations will always make fun of older generations older generations will always be salty about it because we as a society still haven't come to terms with the idea of aging [Music] how do you do fellow kids what and we don't want to be reminded that we're getting older and no longer up to date with what's cool millennials literally did this exact same thing with gen x with jeans i actually mentioned this in my one division video but the term mom jeans was actually meant to be derogatory mom jeans fit mom just the way she likes it she'll love the nine inch zipper and casual front pleats cut generously to fit a mom's body because at the time of the terms coinage in the early 2000s the fashionable jean silhouette was low rise and slim fitting so the high-waisted loose fitting jeans of the 80s and early 90s were now considered frumpy and old and out of style a style that only moms were clinging on to even though i personally don't like skinny jeans i don't have any problem with anyone wearing skinny jeans i think it's cool when people don't follow trends it's way more sustainable not to throw out your old clothes every single season and trends are honestly just a capitalistic ploy to get people to spend more money so and in a couple of years skinny jeans will be considered vintage which is a scary thought but they're already tick tocks being made romanticizing going to high school in the early 2010s [Music] so it's just inevitable and you should rock them if you love them or hold on to them for longer because you might be able to sell them in the future at a higher price than what you got them for and if we want to move further into unfunny territory ageism is a really serious issue and it affects everyone at some point in your life gen z will be uprooted by another gen z in due time i think the next generation is called generation alpha and i think this is pretty difficult for younger people to understand because you're so young and i feel like when you're a teenager all you want to do is grow up and get older but i'm in my 20s and i'm gonna be 25 this year and i know that being in my 20s is not being old because if you think you're old in your 20s you're just gonna think you're old for your entire life because you're only going to get older but now i'm in my 20s and i definitely feel this underlying threat of aging that i didn't feel before my 20s there's a popular rhetoric among college aged adults about wanting to make something of yourself before you're in your 30s um even though time is meaningless and queen tony morrison herself rest in peace um didn't publish her first book till she was 39 but it's hard to come to terms with i understand this year is the last chance i'll ever have to date leo dicaprio that's kind of a bummer it's also worse for women and people affected by misogyny because our youth is so equated to our worth as humans like even the term mom genes is rooted in aegis misogyny give her something that says i'm not a woman anymore i'm a mom once you're a mom or reached the age of most moms then you're deemed uncool and undesirable and a lot of millennials are young moms currently making the misogynistic cultural transition of young and hip to old and frumpy so i understand the frustration towards society for not giving you a break but i don't want to cuddle millennial women about getting older too much because i also think it's just really weird to cyberbully teenagers if children are writing mean comments to you i don't know what to say um you're an adult go get a drink a lot of the time teenagers who cyber bully online are just repressed about being stuck at home without a car and i mean high school sucked let's have a little compassion but you know what it's the internet and i don't have that high of an expectation for people to behave well on the internet but i think something important is just recognizing the systems in place and understanding why we act this way towards aging and generational warfare and as for jeans wear which you want to wear it's such a personal preference um i just want my butt to look good so i wear the jeans that make my butt look good we literally have mountains of clothing in the landfill and more and more goes into it every year so please don't throw out your clothing just because you feel peer pressure too this is the end of the video thank you so much for watching let me know in the comments what you think about this situation and if you like what i do please consider supporting me on patreon i love fashion history but i also love doing videos like this on like more current topics so let me know what you want to see in the future and i'll talk to you next time bye you

Channel: Mina Le

Views: 483,078

Rating: 4.9651027 out of 5

Keywords: gen z, gen z vs millennials, millennials, tiktok, skinny jeans, denim, mom jeans, flare jeans, wide leg jeans, y2k fashion, 90s fashion, scene fashion, emo fashion, fashion history, mina le

Id: sXFWoPLIuB0

Length: 21min 58sec (1318 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021