One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In

Kate KennedyNonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Impact of Media and Technology on Relationships

Kennedy’s reflection on growing up in the nineties and aughts highlights the unique experience millennials have had with technology and how it has affected their interpersonal relationships. Using cultural references, personal anecdotes, and social allusions throughout her essays, Kennedy conveys the ways in which technology can simultaneously foster, inhibit, and complicate interpersonal dynamics. With this examination, Kennedy remarks on how this relationship is unique to millennials and what this means for her generation.

Kennedy establishes how media and technology impacted how she saw herself in the context of others in her introduction. By “tak[ing] cues from popular media and popular kids in school,” Kate sought out “ways to get people to like [her]” (5). She learned to curate her tastes according to pop culture trends in an attempt to “acquir[e] social capital” and become “socially acceptable” to her friends and peers (5). She references popular band names, romantic comedies, online trends, and television shows that she latched onto in an attempt to gain popularity. Kennedy particularly considers how technological advancements and fads influenced her social sphere in essays like “You’ve Got Male,” “God Must’ve Spent a Little Less Time on Me,” and “Are We Going Out? Or Out-Out?” In “You’ve Got Male,” she argues that she “learned some of life’s greatest lessons” about romance, dating, and friendship from “AOL Instant Messenger” (61). Within this online forum, Kennedy believed that “assembling keyboard characters” was helping her practice “wordsmithing in remote interactions” (63). However, she employs a retrospective lens when she remarks on how sad she feels that she thought the people she communicated with online were interested in her when “they were obviously using [her] for emotional support and platonic company” (63). The references to and descriptions of AIM contextualize Kennedy’s explorations within the millennial zeitgeist.

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Kennedy furthers this discussion in her surrounding essays by referencing other cultural and media trends key to the millennial era. In “God Must’ve spent a Little Less Time on Me” and “Kate Expectations,” she examines the ways in which Christian music and Disney Channel stars affected her understanding of virginity, sex, romance, and intimacy (86). In the former essay, she admits that she was “influenced by celebs wearing purity rings in popular culture” and the popular girls who also followed these trends (86). In the latter essay, she holds that these same faddish representations of romance and sex complicated her expectations for her own intimate relationships. Via this amalgam of cultural allusions and personal anecdotes, Kennedy holds media and technology responsible for influencing the ways in which young people understand themselves in the context of a group or collective. For Kennedy, media and technology often taught her to see herself in a negative light and therefore complicated her ability to authentically relate to others.

Self-Discovery and Personal Growth in the Modern World

Kennedy’s essays highlight experiences from Kennedy’s own childhood and coming of age to explore the ways in which the modern world impacts a young person’s self-discovery and personal growth journeys. In the introduction, Kennedy self-identifies as an observer, and therefore someone “who feels more defined by [her] role as a devoted audience member rather than a performer” (3). This descriptor establishes Kennedy as one of many individuals from the millennial era whose sense of self was dictated by the entertainment she consumed and therefore “by the world around [her]” (4). Using a forthright and confessional authorial tone, she asserts that her “desire to fit in was fueled by [her] zeitgeisty interests” and was also “a symptom of [her] sensitivity” (6).

As a young impressionable girl growing up in the millennial era and eager to be accepted, Kennedy learned that it was safest to tamp down her own interests and identity and adopt the mindset of the group. In “Limited To,” she describes her desire to wear the same clothes that others were wearing to gain acceptance. In “You’ve Got Male,” she explores how she tailored her identity online to make friends and please others. In “God Must’ve Spent a Little Less Time on Me,” she joined youth groups and adopted a strict Christian mindset in order to mirror the notions promoted by the True Love Waits movement. In “Popular-Girl Handwriting,” she describes how she used her doodling habits to prove that she was talented and useful to others.

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Kennedy’s incorporation of vulnerable childhood and adolescent experiences throughout this discussion reifies the complexities of growing up in the millennial era. In the “Pumpkin Spice Girl,” Kennedy argues that while Gen Z kids are more interested in individuality, millennials were taught “to base your entire personality, taste, and intellect off isolated entertainment preferences” and off of the group (287). Kennedy owns that she spent years hiding her true tastes to fit in. This habit complicated her self-discovery journey in that she always felt too afraid to claim who she truly was. In Part 3, “Today,” Kennedy exemplifies her growth as an adult by reflecting on her childhood experiences and describing the lessons she has since learned and is continuing to learn. She remarks that it is “fascinating that for all the ways I’ve evolved, I still find myself nervous at times to represent my interest in things that are cliché, popular, or quintessentially millennial” (300). Her confessional, vulnerable tone implies that personal growth and self-discovery do not stop in adolescence. Rather, Kennedy’s final four essays convey the ongoing nature of personal development, as the culture continues to change and influence how the individual sees herself.

The Influence of Media and Culture on Women’s Identities

Kennedy assumes a feminist stance throughout the collection and therefore examines how media and culture affect young women’s understandings of themselves. Throughout the collection, she holds that in the millennial era, the “name of the game was to be the same as other women” (301). She spends her 12 essays interrogating this trend and dissecting its implications for her as an individual, and for her contemporaries.

Kennedy establishes this particular feminist lens in the opening essay “Limited To” by using the Teen Talk Barbie as a relevant point of entry. Throughout the essay, Kennedy’s descriptions of this doll become entangled with her descriptions of popular brand names like Limited Too and American Girl. In conclusion, Kennedy asks herself: “was I empowered by the girl’s world I found within the walls of Limited Too? Or did those walls uphold yet another ceiling for what they wanted us to believe we were Limited To” (36)? Kennedy is therefore interrogating the ways in which pop culture and media representations of women and advertising to women dictates how women see and understand themselves and people like them. She recontextualizes this question throughout the subsequent essays, as she examines niche facets of the culture in order to understand her overarching claim.

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Throughout her 12 essays, Kennedy argues that millennial representations of women limited who women believed they could be and therefore complicated their outlook on their futures and on other women. She particularly analyzes these notions within the context of popularity and clothing, drinking and partying, sex and romance, and marriage and motherhood. In “The Parent Trap,” Kennedy’s explorations of reproduction create overarching statements that apply to her other tangential feminist arguments. In this essay, she holds that for their “whole lives, young women are spoken to about marriage and baggies like it’s an inevitable, guaranteed thing” and teach girls that their girlish pastimes are “just efforts to make you eligible to be a bride once you go out-out into the world, leading up to a main event—the way we think of our futures identities in the context of being a mom and having kids” (251). These assertions echo back to the assertions about romance and sex in Kennedy’s preceding essays and underscore Kennedy’s belief that women are trained by the culture to see themselves through one narrow lens. Kennedy seeks to overturn this notion and argues in defense of widening the scope of young women’s worlds. She interrogates specific media and cultural trends to expose the dangerous nature of sexualizing young women, disparaging women’s tastes, and limiting their interests and opportunities.