What is “generational dysmorphia”?
Many of you have heard of “body dysmorphia”. The definition of it reads: “Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), or body dysmorphia, is a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others.” As defined by the NHS in the United Kingdom.
Dysmorphia has come to include social media dysmorphia. Comparing ones self to others. How we view people we know through the prism of social media. That friend of yours that is going to France (again) and documenting their lavish lifestyle on Instagram. That young couple that is always going to fancy restaurants. All this why you’re failing to make it to Encino to pick up your dry cleaning. Or the best classy dinner you’ve had comes from that sketchy taco truck in Arleta.
Now, what I am referring to by “generational dysmorphia” is not a deadly health issue. Or even a valid mental health issue, but it can lead to one.
Defining “generational dysmorphia”
We’ve already touched on what dysmorphia is in a mental health sense. When I refer to the term, I’m reducing it to a more plausible terminology that people can identify. I coined the term as someone who “creates a mental image of their youth (or generation) that is flawed or fictional compared to their actual experience.” In simpler language, it’s people that compare their own experiences to invalidate the experiences of younger generations.
I came to this term while watching TikTok videos of all things. I follow this Gen-X creator and was answering to a comment that someone left on her video. The comment stated that Gen-X (from their perspective) was law-abiding, did what we were told, kind, and just played outside. Never bad kids.
Her response was the same as mine: where did you grow up?
In my childhood, my friends and I were chased off a hospital parking lot by a security guard in a golf cart. My 10th grade English class tormented our teacher so much, she left due to a mental breakdown. Only to pass away a year later. The black kids (that were bus in from LA) had a race riot during the last week of school against the Mexican gangbangers. Some kids I knew took part in “tag the fag”, which meant to beat up the kid they thought was gay.
I’m not proud of this.
This is not like some humble brag. I am not proud by any of this, but that was the childhood I grew up in. So many people use generational dysmorphia to manipulate their own childhood experiences to prevent from learning new things. Accepting some of our past behavior was not cool. Acknowledging that other parts of the community exist.
Gen X was supposed to be the nonconformist group that chose to not have power. Someone once said that we disrupt by “passive resistance”. Along that thought train was the concept of live your life. Yet, my experience with my own generation wasn’t so. Older grandparents and some boomers, who were in their thirties, would say “be what you want”. Not wanting us to make the same mistakes they did.
Even the programming of the time. We would see movies of people finding unconventional ways to do what they wanted to do. It was the older generation that was wanting to keep us down.Pump Up the Volume was a cultural touchstone for us on the brink of adulthood. Looking at our parent’s life and think “is that who I’m meant to be?” As the kids in The Breakfast Club began to wonder is that the future that awaits them. We were the glam rock, break dancing, hip hop listening generation that was going to break all the rules. It was the older generation that wanted to censor what we listened to. Because hip hop (black music) was making inroads into suburban America (aka white middle class) and that was scary.
We Gave Up Before We Started
“We did our best not to sell out, to get a life, to keep it real,” Nina Power wrote for Complex in 2022.“Yet our oscillation between cynicism and sincerity masked a sense of purposelessness. We gave up before we started.” Even many of the metal heads that I grew up with are hardcore MAGA now. When you bring up their adolescence, as well as political ideology, they brush it off to some silly kid thinking. I know how the world works. I guess that means they know that making $75,000 a year and bootlicking is the way to go.
“The flip side of Gen X’s apathy was substance abuse and suicide,” Power went on to write. “Both when we were in our 20s and now in our 40s and 50s, Gen X dominates these melancholy statistics. In 2017, the age at which most Britons took their own lives was 49, according to the Office for National Statistics. Two decades earlier, it was at age 22. We may have tried to opt out of the rat race in some perverse bid to keep our hands (and souls) clean, but some of us ended up opting out of life altogether.”
Recently, a millennial friend sent me a clip of the Tears for Fears song, Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. The purpose of the video claimed that when the song was initially released, we jammed to it and sung it with the radio in the car.
It’s My Own Remorse
I was roughly about ten or so when it was released. But in this video, it showed the lyrics. Now, at 52, it hit differently.
Welcome to your life
There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you
Acting on your best behaviour
Turn your back on Mother Nature
Everybody wants to rule the world
This section of the song hit me hard:
It’s my own design
It’s my own remorse
Help me to decide
Help me make the
Most of freedom and of pleasure
Nothing ever lasts forever
Everybody wants to rule the world
There is a lot of generational hate but for what? Older generations hate the younger generations for having things easier than themselves. Isn’t that what we fought for? Isn’t working to allow minorities, gay, and trans people have the same basic rights what was all about? One of the bigger issues is that some think they have more rights than whites. That simply isn’t true. What they truly despise is having the same rights. They are not impervious to criticism. Many hate that they can’t use derogatory words against them, even though there are no “derogatory” terms for white people.
When they use racial or other offensive terms, they claim people are making a big deal out of it. Some believe that they don’t get offended by anything. “People are just soft.” Yet, many of them became MAGA, and they get offended by everything. To me, that equates to people that say they don’t have a problem with “gay people” until they move into the neighborhood.
Woke Culture is an Excuse
Comedians claim that comedy is ruin because of “woke” culture. That isn’t true. There are so many comedians that have evolved from their younger comedy. Many comedians claim that if you can’t evolve, you aren’t a good comedian. As an aspiring write, I agree. I have read some of the things I wrote back in my twenties. I cringe not at the offensiveness of some of my details. But it was just bad. I could write so much better jokes or themes now.
When people cry “woke”, it generally means that they are unable (or unwilling) to evolve in life. It bears resemblance to that person you work with. They don’t like learning new things. New processes. New procedures. There was nothing wrong with the process before. Humans are a creature of conformity. All those Hallmark movies are bad. They run the same theme. Have the same obstacles. The plot points are overly dramatic. When you examine them, none of those would be major deals in real life.
But humans are a creature of habit. Someone tries something new, you hear “that isn’t my Hallmark movie.” Update a franchise, “you destroyed my childhood”. None of this is true. It is people’s inability to grow beyond our nostalgic presets to evolve. These are the same people that don’t know that Facebook has a dark mode on their mobile app.
Generational Dysmorphia is About Nostalgia
Much of our generational dysmorphia comes from nostalgia. I loved dating in my twenties, which was the nineties into the early two-thousands. Styles were different. The mentality was different. I was thirty pounds lighter and younger. Those people wish for those times to come back, but if it did – it wouldn’t help them. They are old. All your advantages wouldn’t be what they were and YOU’RE OLD.
Did I love my childhood? A good chunk of it. There was a lot of things I didn’t. Most people that want that old life back is because that’s where they peaked. It was better because we were kids. We didn’t know better.