"NO, YOU DON'T HAVE TO"

On reluctantly learning boundaries from Gen Z

You might have seen this last week: Jenna Ortega (21) and Winona Ryder (52) pose on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival, doing mandatory, exhausting promo for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. A paparazzo (a real one, in Italy!) shouts for Winona to remove her sunglasses. As Winona begins to oblige, Jenna turns to her with what I will poorly describe as a “benevolent smirk,” shakes her head and says, No, you don’t have to. Winona then self-corrects like a Windsor-Mountbatten child being gently chastised during a balcony photo op. Now, if someone had told you only that this interaction had taken place between two actresses of disparate ages, you’d assume that the elder was instructing the younger. You’d think that the Gen X-er, bereft of estrogen and fucks to give, would be dispensing wisdom to the overeager ingenue whipping off her sunglasses for Paolo. But Gen Z, paradoxically, is teaching us. Teaching me.

I’m going to be real here; I found this shit profoundly irritating at first. (Not the sunglasses moment, but the Zoomer-led cultural shift leading up to it.) I had the same indignant stance as the old people who oppose student loan forgiveness: “I had to pay off my loans, so it’s not fair if others don’t!” I was like, where do these kids get off? Don’t they know that discomfort and self-devaluation are part of life? Resentment curdled in my gut. I couldn’t see any benefit to myself, because I’d already sold myself out a thousand times over and had no dignity left to preserve. Thankfully, my selfish mindset has changed. I had to examine why it upset me to see younger people setting boundaries that I’d never felt entitled to set. I realized it was my wounded Gen X inner child reacting, under the layers of emotional, religious, medical, physical and sexual violation that were normalized in the 70s and 80s.

I wonder what Winona was thinking as she hesitated, then dropped her hand, the sunglasses still on her face. I want to believe that it was a healing moment for her, an artist who was routinely harassed as a young woman and was socialized to believe that laughter was the appropriate response. I thought that, too. I even adopted problematic behaviors as some kind of demented psychic shield; I could be worse than them. I could do anything but say no.

Jenna Ortega was not the only young superstar drawing hard lines this month. Chappell Roan posted an emotional and unapologetic statement about her refusal to be available to fans when she’s not onstage. Her statement was provocative because it didn’t just indict hysterical stans and stalkers; Roan called out “normal” fans for requesting photos or calling her name on the street. (As someone who has screamed “COREY FELDMAN” out the window of a car, this gave me pause.) Roan’s statement provoked a lot of dialogue about what celebrities owe us in exchange for our consumption of their art. I assumed there’d be a vociferous backlash from her fan base, but to my surprise, Roan’s Gen Z fans were overwhelmingly supportive. The graceful way many of these kids reacted to being called out was inspiring to me. I’ll try it myself next time.

When I worked in a peep show in the land before time, we girls would lounge behind a display window to advertise our services. Frequently, men who entered the sex shop would ask us to stand up and turn around so they could get a 360 of the merchandise before choosing a girl for a “show.” Most of us complied; I mean we were already working in a jack shack; what difference did it make? But there was one girl who not only refused every time, but was personally offended by anyone else in her airspace who did the rise-and-turn. “It’s degrading,” she insisted. I found this vaguely humorous at the time, but I don’t anymore. You can draw the line anywhere you want. Even if they paid you five million dollars for the movie, you can keep your sunglasses on.