You're no one until somebody loves you someone has given your Generation a tag. There was Generation X, the Lost Generation, the Generation Game. And now, thank god, I have a label which justifies certain aspects of my personality.
Generation Y (and they all seem to be women, according to this article in Observer Women) is identified by a belief that the best life is to be had by putting yourself first. Further more, we've been told that we can achieve anything we want, and as a result have monstrous egos, that stand little hope of ever being penetrated by anything as mundane as reality. The article goes on to say that this means, to all intents and purposes, that feminism is dead. We have nothing to fight for, because we believe that everything is possible.
I can only speak for myself, coming from my background (white, middle class, Southern England etc) but as I read the article I found myself really identifying with a lot of what it said.
To give you a bit of background, I had a few issues when the subject of writing for the lovely-looking Dollymix came up. Yes, I'd love to be involved. No, I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I'm under no illusions that I've had a hard life, and in fact, I've had every opportunity and advantage handed to me on a kind of slightly battered silver platter. And yes, this has resulted in an unshakeable belief that I can do anything.
So, whilst I don't think that feminism is dead, I do think that there's a certain section of the female population that just can't grasp the concept in relation to their own lives. I can see the relevance in India, where the burden of a dowry on the family has made infanticide far too common place, and in British institutions such as the Forces, where I'm sure women have to perform over and above their male counterparts to be taken seriously. But I regard my own life as untouched by gender inequality - or at least I believe that I can overcome whatever is put in my way.
Like many of the women in the article, I've got a plan. It's broken down into 5 years, 10 years, 20 years and 30 years (the last bit involves a villa in Italy drinking red wine and eating bread, chorizo and olive oil). And there's nothing in me that thinks that I won't be able to achieve it.
But what if life doesn't go my way? As Forrest Gump said, shit happens. Shit can be job related, health related, or shit could be a man (shit does frequently come with a penis). But whilst I have the life skills to deal with situations with confidence and optimistic, I'm not sure I was in the class about dealing with things when they go seriously pear shaped. My teenage years were spent in the 90s, where the economic crash had been and gone, and things were, dare I say it, ok.
Are we *whisper* worse off than our mothers? Am I part of a generation that is setting themselves up perfectly for an almighty fall? Check back in 4 years, when I may or may not have moved in with the man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, and check my proximity to The Edge.
