Maybe you're old enought to remember when Friends started and everyone went bonkers for The Rachel. Maybe you aren't. Either way, you're old enough to know that The Rachel haircut was an iconic piece of 90s history.
See, when the show started in 1994 (I was a child and had shit hair), relatively unknown actress Jennifer Aniston (you may have heard of her in subsequent years) got a haircut that took the world by storm. If that sounds weird, just remember that they didn't have the internet back then so if you weren't getting your hair cut you were pretty much just sitting around reading Dickens by candlelight. It was the most asked-for haircut after Farrah Fawcett's iconic 70's do. It's been ranked as the fourth most influential haircut of all time. Although I'm not sure how much I want to live in a world where haircuts get ranked by how iconic they were.
Anyway. Now, Hailey Baldwin; model, teen, famous person offspring, Justin Bieber romancer and Kardashian groupie extraordinaire, has gone and got herself the 22-year-old haircut.
See? I wasn't fibbing. She's got the feathered bits round the face and everything.
Hailey is 19. This means Hailey was minus-three-years-old when Jennifer Aniston debuted this haircut. Which is fine, that's cool, and hey, she looks banging. Top work Hailey.
But, bringing the topic back round to ourselves (we're Generation Me, haven't you heard?), what does this mean for us?
Millennials bloody love a spot of nostalgia. It's why all my pencils have Mean Girls quotes on (no, really). It's why we're re-watching Gilmore Girls atm and wearing chokers. We're cash poor, time poor, and terrified of what the world's become and, as a result are essentially reverting back to a safer time when Are You Afraid of The Dark was the scariest thing we had to deal with.
But what does it mean when teens throwback to iconic things that happened *before *they were born? Like Hailey and The Rachel? Does it mean that, (whisper it), our version of throwback nostalgia is now no longer cool and has become a piece of history? Kind of like when we would ironically wear vintage 80s dresses while our mothers looked on horrified because we were too young to remember when people actually wore them and looked awful?
The answer my friends, is yeah, we probably aren't the coolest generation anymore. At this very moment, advertising agencies and trend forecasters are busying forgetting about Millenials as the 'it' generation and rethinking their strategies around how to capture the attention of Gen Z. These are the people born post 1996 and will include people who haven't even been born yet. These are people who don't remember a life before the internet, these are people that know why someone like this guy is famous. These are people who are taking over the world.
So kids, here's the plan. You can get scared, have your own mini-tantrum (*so *throwback) and get grumpy about how things were better back in your day. Or, you can get on board, ironically pull out your PJ and Duncan singles, rewatch episodes of Noels' House Party and get yourself a Cilla Black haircut to debut on Snapchat. Gen Z, here we come.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.