dear
reader,
Confession: I turn 23 next month and I’m freaking out about how little I’ve accomplished. Which is ridiculous. I’ve checked all the boxes on what my childhood self wanted me to achieve: I finished high school, got into my dream university, graduated with honors, moved to a city, and started working towards an MA in exactly what I want to do. Not to mention the bucketlist items I once thought impossible to check off... telling Taylor Swift how much she means to me, road-tripping through California with my best friend, mastering a headstand, etc. Even typing this makes me feel ungrateful wishing I’ve done more. But I know I’m not alone. The creative industries praise youth to an extreme amount. Don’t get me wrong, youth culture has always
produced the most innovative content — from the Swinging Sixties (I am reading Mary Quant’s autobiography and I highly recommend it!) to the Mods and Punks to the angsty teens I idolized as a kid in the 2000s — and it is about time that fashion companies take the contributions of younger generations seriously and work to gain their audience and brand loyalty. But as soon as fashion figures out that it can profit off something, it buys into it in bulk. And youth certainly sells. Skincare brands sell products to reverse effects of aging. Makeup lines sell products to hide them. Fashion campaigns often show garments on young models, alienating older consumers by implying that if you’re over a certain age, their products aren’t for you. It makes sense, therefore, that working in this world that capitalizes off youth can
skew one’s perception of their own age and success. On a company level, this obsession with youth is bound to seep its way into the work environment and culture. On the eco-system level, it impacts the overall belief-system of the creative industries. We constantly crave newness, and it can leave us feeling old and washed up ourselves. Instead of inspiring me, headlines screaming “youngest CEO yet” or “college dropout photographer shoots for Vogue” or “this unicorn’s founder isn’t even 25 yet” stick in my mind and quicken the pace of my internal clock. It is the subject of my post-drinking hangxiety and what prevents me from sleeping before midnight. I am impressed by everyone who has achieved a career’s worth of success so young, but why do I feel like if I don’t make a name for myself now, my time will run out? To me,
turning 23 just feels like losing one more year of time to make Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. This issue of Twenty Zine: Confessions of a Twenty-Something, focuses on society’s obsession with youth and how this leads to early burnout, overworking, imposter syndrome, and all the loneliness and fear that comes with it. It highlights creative industry leaders who changed careers or saw success after age 29, celebrates the big and small shit we’ve all gone through, and features the inner-thoughts of many intriguing and compelling twenty-somethings. Thank you to all who shared your stories and to everyone who picked up this zine. Whoever you are, wherever you are, however old you are, I hope these pages make you slow down a little and feel proud of all you’ve done so far.
love,
sophie
The fashion industry’s focus on y o u t h makes us feel old and washed up at 23.
mid-twenties crisis the new midIsthe
life or quarter-life crisis? 80% of 25-33 year olds felt pressure to “succeed” before hitting 30, with 61% measuring success by their career, and 48% citing the main source of pressure as comparison to “more successful” friends. (Censuswide).
confessions of some twenty-somethings Age: 22 Confession: Trying to make it on Forbes 30 Under 30 while still having a social life is proving to be harder than I thought.
Age: 29 Confession: I spent my entire 20s dating around in New York and I have nothing to show for it.
Age: 23 Confession: I’m 23 and I quit my first and only full time job.
Age: 23 Confession: I feel lonely.
Age: 26 Confession: I don’t know what my dream career would even be. Everyone else seems to know what they’re meant to do, but I still have no idea.
Age: 22 Confession: I always thought I’d get married at age 24. That’s in two years and I have never been in a relationship. I’m fine with that, but if I’m not getting married, then shouldn’t I have a job I’m obsessed with? In a time when we can “have it all” I feel like I have none of it.
Age: 29 Confession: I lied about my age... I just turned 31.
Send your confessions in through the QR code on the back of this issue.
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5 Host Oprah Winfrey was fired as a news anchor before starting her show at age 32.
1 Punk designer Vivienne Westwood quit her job as a teacher and launched her brand at 30. 2 Musician Sheryl Crow was 31 when her first album came out. 3 Musician Bill Withers was in the US Navy and worked in a factory before releasing his debut album at age 32. 4 Fashion designer Rick Owens dropped out of design school and created knockoffs before starting his own brand at 32.
6 Musician Debbie Harry gained success with Blondie’s third album when she was 33. 7 Actress Kerry Washington got her break at age 35. 8 Entrepreneur Amancio Ortega sold bathrobes before starting Zara at age 36. 9 Fashion designer Christian Dior started working in fashion at 37 after being in the military. 10 Actor Ken Jeong was a physician until starting acting at 38.
11 Bridal designer Vera Wang was a figure skater until entering the fashion industry at age 40.
14 Painter Bob Ross was in the US Air Force before becoming a painting teacher at 41. 15, 16 Entrepreneurs Donald Fisher and Doris Fisher founded The Gap at age 41. 17 Actress Laverne Cox got her breakout role when she was 41.
12 Author Toni Morrison wrote her first novel at age 40. 13 Graphic designer David Carson gained success at 41, after teaching high school. We grow up with benchmarks and deadlines. I always knew I would start high school at age 14 and university at 18. I thought I’d be married at age 25, because that’s when my parents got married, and that I’d have my first child at 29, because that’s when my mom had my older sister. These last two I’ve reevaluated as I’ve gotten closer to 25 and 29, but I still put a time frame on the milestones I want to hit.
21 Actress Viola Davis got her careerchanging role when she was 43. 22 Typography designer Herb Lubalin left a job to start his own studio at age 46. 18 Fashion designer Giorgio Armani pivoted to fashion from a career in medicine at age 41. 19 Actor Octavia Spencer got her starring role at age 41. 20 Actor Samuel L. Jackson got his awardwinning role at age 43.
23 Pop artist Corita Kent did not see success with her work until age 50.
Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list plays into the deadline system we are used to. Emerging out of university to discover that there won’t always be a clear path set out for me, I cling to all the structure I can get. I create 50 year plans and my own benchmarks of success. Exterior lists that encourage me to hit goals at specific ages are enticing after years of schooling and reward systems of grades and levels. It is a real world version of a class list and it feels inexplicably important.
24 Chef, author, and TV host Julia Child attended cooking school after working as a copywriter and WWII spy, writing her first cookbook at age 50.
28 Author Laura Ingalls Wilder published the first of her “Little House” series at age 65.
25 Actress Betty White became a household name at age 51. 26 Digital designer Muriel Cooper first used a computer and started his career at 52. 27 Arianna Huffington founded The Huffington Post at 55, after working as a political commentator and writer.
29 Painter Grandma Moses began her career at age 78. 30 Author Harry Bernstein achieved fame after years of privacy, at age 96.
Only recently did I begin to question why making this list was so important to me. Will my life really be that different if I don’t make it? Or if I do, then what? Will there always be another list? Will this kind of life make me happy? I researched people who changed careers or found success later in life as a reminder that there really isn’t a deadline. I still want to do something big, to make a difference in the world, but I am becoming okay with the fact that it might happen after I turn 30.
29
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conver
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twenty-so n o i h s a f
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y e e l e n a Arriving 20 minutes early is late for Yeelena, who, at 23, is experiencing for the first time a life without the strict schedule of a collegiate athlete. Yeelena was born in Versailles, France but grew up in San Diego for her whole life. After graduating university, she moved to London, where she is getting her Masters in fashion communication. She tells me she’s interested in going into fashion public relations or event planning — anything that fulfills her fast-paced life and love for travel and music. Finding a fast-paced life outside of a traditional structure: Right now, in the middle of March, Yeelena is in a great place mentally, or as she calls it, a “hill.” “Winter was definitely a deep, deep valley of grayness,” she admits. Living alone and being an independent person, feeling loneliness this past winter was hard to grapple with: “I was learning the differences
between loneliness and just being in isolation,” she tells me. “I can be alone and be fine, but loneliness is when I have nobody around me… and nothing to do.” On break from graduate school for the holidays, without her previous athletic activities to keep her busy, she had to “adjust to this new life with downtime.” Downtime feels like the opposite of what Yeelena is most comfortable in: constant motion. When she is still, time moves slower and the valleys get darker. “I started gymnastics when I was two. I did that up until I was 12. And then, I was a cheerleader. So it was always school, practice, home… that was my life for literally 21 years.” Even during Covid lockdowns, when she started to experience the stress of downtime and remaining static for the first time, she pulled herself out because she knew life would return to the way it once was: “I still had a purpose. I was still working out because I knew I was gonna go back to school and compete.
So I was able to shift my downtime a little bit. But now that I’m completely out of collegiate sports and I can do whatever I want, it’s really weird. There’s this thing in athlete life where it’s your post athlete life crisis. It’s like, what am I like? I was having it in December. I was just like, what am I doing? I was really struggling to find my purpose. And I honestly don’t think I’ve found it even now.” When I asked her how she would know if she found her purpose, she told me: “[A purpose would be] something I’m always excited about. It’s something that I can do that’s contributing towards something bigger than me. Something that consumes my time. And I feel like I have multiple purposes. You’re supposed to have 1000 lives in one life. Because I get bored so fast, I feel like I’m gonna have one job, think ‘cool this is fun,’ then go to another one, then go to another one. That’s how I am with everything.” This
drive
for
constant
movement is what drove Yeelena to the fashion industry: “It’s fast paced. It reminds me of competing and being on travel trips. We were up at 5am, got to the airport at 7am. We’re in a new state, go to practice, eat dinner, sleep. You know? I love that. A fashion show day is like a meet day. All the hard work is now being presented in front of everyone and you just have to pray and hope that everything you did was right.” Rejecting pressures:
age-focused
Yeelena might be a planner and a scheduler, but she’s absolutely done with putting pressure on herself to hit goals by certain ages: “Because of sports, I’ve dealt with so much pressure, that I just want it all off. I don’t want any pressure on myself anymore. I just want to let myself flow through life.” Instead of creating time sensitive goals that could lead to disappointment, she focuses on the confidence she has that she will achieve what she wants, no matter when it
happens. “I know I’m going to do it,” she explains, “so I don’t even put the pressure on myself. I know I’m going to work at a high fashion house. I know I’m going to work in France. It’s just a feeling I have and I don’t really put an age limit on it.” This confidence comes from hard work and years of struggling with insecurities about her intelligence. “I’m not a school person, I was an average student all my life. But as I’ve gotten older, I realized that I might not be able to bust out an essay, but I’ve learned how to navigate life. I can travel on my own… I’m independent. I’ve learned that intelligence isn’t just rooted in academics.” This realization is a key reason why Yeelena loves getting older. She looks forward to the wisdom she gains with each year — looking back on her old journals, reflecting, and feeling proud that she’s in a healthier place now than she once was. “I didn’t learn how to deal with my emotions until I was like 20 or 21, when I
started going to therapy. I come from a household where we don’t talk about our feelings, you bottle them up, so when I was little, I was always angry and lashing out at people. And then when I started therapy and started learning how to work through things… looking back, I’m like, how was I even a surviving human being? I was just bottling up emotion. And I still do, I’m not gonna lie, but now I write them down or get them out some way, somehow, not let them live inside me and poison me.” Yeelena’s escape It comes as no surprise that to someone who craves a busy life, Yeelena’s safe haven is at a rave. “It’s weird to describe,” she tells me as my questions pour in. Perhaps it is the perfect balance to the being-alone-withoutbeing-lonely debacle. “You’re in an environment where you’re in a group of people, but you’re still alone. You’re coexisting with people, but you don’t necessarily have to interact with them. That’s
my favorite. As an introvert, I don’t want to talk to everyone, but I don’t mind being around people.” Or, as she tells me, it could be because it is the one place where she doesn’t ever feel judged: “I’m someone who struggles with fitting in with people and groups and always kind of feels like an outsider. I grew up as the only Black girl doing fucking rodeo. I was 10, so I didn’t really understand the feelings I was feeling, but I knew in the back of my head, like… that’s very isolating, and it’s weird. But when I’m at a rave, nobody cares what you look like, nobody cares what you’re doing, as long as you’re being respectful. It’s one of the few places ever where I can go and feel completely at ease, considering the chaotic environment. It’s so relaxing to me. Raves aren’t relaxing at all, but,
mentally, the thoughts that are going through my head… like, ‘I’m having so much fun, I feel so free, and this music sounds so freakin good.’ It’s just constant positive thoughts, after a week of maybe so many negative thoughts, you know?” While Yeelena’s in her own world, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t people watch. To her, raves are places where age feels irrelevant. Depending on the music, she could be surrounded solely by twenty-somethings or by fifty-somethings in speedos who don’t stop dancing the entirety of the five day festival. Maybe being in these environments is also what gives Yeelena such a healthy perspective on age — knowing that no matter what you’re going through, no matter your age, there is always a space to let it all go and breathe.
m a r l e e Sitting down with 22-yearold Marlee, we started talking about her life studying fashion design in graduate school. Originally from New York, she has been living in London for about seven months. Working towards the life you want without a project brief or rubric: Marlee always knew what she wanted to be and where she wanted to go. As a child, her dreams seemed pretty concrete. Now that she’s well on her way — working towards her career outside of her hometown — she’s realized that both personally and professionally, there are a lot more nuances to postgraduation life: “The more I know about my life, or the more I experience in my life, the more I realize I don’t know. It was a lot easier to picture what I thought my life would be like when I was younger and I wasn’t actually having to figure these things out. Now that I am figuring these things out, it
all feels more confusing.” Trying to figure out what she wants out of partner, where she wants to live, the person she wants to be, and the kind of people she wants to surround herself with all felt simpler in theory. In reality, the uncertainty of whether or not you’re on the path to figure your life out is daunting, and Marlee admits she doesn’t have the answers she once thought she had: “I always wanted to leave the small town I grew up in — that was always a big dream of mine: to go explore the world. But I didn’t really think about how much that would change me. It is in a wonderful way, but change and growth is hard — to be in this place, to make this conscious, conscious choice to keep changing and growing, without any guaranteed reward…” The reward? “Knowing that I’m working towards a fulfilling life.” Professionally, Marlee feels similarly: “My dream has remained the same since I was nine years old. And that’s kind of a really
cool thing. I hit these points in my life that I’ve always dreamed about: moving to London, going to art school after graduation. But I think that’s the extent that you do of dreaming.” The rest she’s figuring out as
she goes. While she grew up thinking she knew what it would mean to work as a fashion designer, at age 22 she has already “challenged every single thing that [she] thought
that would mean.” Growing up, the fashion industry seemed self-explanatory in the pages of magazines and on TV. “It is now my life,” Marlee tells me, “and I’m realizing that there’s not really a formula.” She is now defining what it means to be a fashion designer for herself, rather than having it planned out for her. The idea of a perfect formula or plan or cookiecutter life doesn’t exist. We believe it does because we’re used to following daily, weekly, and yearly schedules. Marlee talks to me about this change: “[After graduating], we’re not all on the same path. In college and in high school, everybody around you was on the same schedule. Everyone was off for the summer, started school in August. Then you hit 21, 22, 23, and everyone’s doing different things. Some people have started full time jobs, some people are traveling the world, some people are going to graduate school, some people are trying to figure out what they want to do and living at home. And to be in this space where
all of that is valid is really confusing, it’s new.” Having fun and creating the career you want: While Marlee tells me that the fashion industry projects a glorification on youth culture, she personally has never felt younger: “I’m working with people who have decades and decades of experience who are still learning. When I say I’m entering this space at 22, it feels comforting, because, if this is where I am at 22, where will I be in five years?” Her excitement is contagious and I’m eager to see what her future holds. I did wonder, however, if this thinking was as beneficial as she believed it to be. I questioned the value that she was still placing on her age and why feeling young gave her comfort. To this, Marlee told me about her “inherent fear that [she’s] not going to be able to do it all.” If she is “doing this much at 22, that must mean that when [she is] no longer in [her] twenties, [she’ll] have done enough.” What does enough look like? She doesn’t know.
“You grow up hearing that women are at their prime in their 20s and that 30 is old or washed up, whatever that means. People use the phrase ‘washed up’ all the fucking time.’ I think that’s where a lot of pressure comes from — like wanting to hit 30 knowing I enjoyed my twenties… Talking about this now, I’m realizing that going into your 20s feels like entering a last ride of freedom for women. And I think I’ve been acting like that — that I don’t have my whole life to figure myself out, that [at age 30] I will have to give myself up to a family so I better get this all done now, that this is all going to be taken from me or I’ll have to sacrifice it.” If this is the last time that women, particularly if they want children, can focus wholeheartedly on a career and have careless fun (or, as Marlee puts it, “be young and hot”), how do we balance accomplishing both in a single decade without overextending ourselves and burning out? “It is a lot of pressure. It’s kind of imposed on you your whole life. You
see that women can’t do it all, that you have to sacrifice something. You see a strong woman on TV who has issues with family because she puts her work first, or a woman that is a mom and isn’t fulfilled with her life. You never see a woman like you see a man — that has a fulfilling career and a loving family. If you do, she’s lucky. She’s really fortunate. And like, I want children and I want a marriage like my parents have, I want that type of partnership. But I want this career. And I want this life that I’m building for myself, because it’s so freeing and exciting. And I don’t want to give that up at the end of my 20s like everyone basically tells us we have to. That scares the crap out of me.” What would make the end of her twenties feel less scary? If the world let us be confused. “We’re all trying to act like we know what we’re doing, but we don’t, and that’s okay. We’re not supposed to know. Normalize that, please, for like the sake of humanity. We’ll get there eventually.”
Read more confessions of a twenty-something and submit your own here.