Girls Raised In The 90s & Early 2000s Were Taught 11 Things We Now Know Were Seriously Wrong
melissamn | Shutterstock As common as it is to compare generations, everyone's life is impacted by issues that are out of their control. For millennials, that manifested in the divide between the lives they were promised and the lives they actually had. And for little girls especially, the things they were taught when they were young affected them in negative ways.
It's easy to look back and romanticize a 90s or early-2000s childhood, but there were so many things millennial girls came to understand that were actually wrong. These misguided life lessons shaped how millennial girls saw themselves, which means that, as women, they're trying to redefine their self-worth.
Things millennial girls raised in the 90s and early 2000s learned that were seriously wrong
1. If you go to college, you'll automatically get a great job
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Growing up, millennial girls were held to high expectations. They learned to equate their productivity with their value as people, which meant they pushed themselves academically, often to the point of extreme stress and anxiety. Though their parents and teachers told them going to college would set them up for immediate success, they eventually found out that wasn't true.
The Great Recession was a defining moment for millennials, and influenced their whole financial future. According to millennial researcher Jason Dorsey, "The Great Recession led to a very tough job market, wage stagnation for those that had jobs, student-loan debt that was increasingly hard to pay, and rising costs of living around the country," all of which hit millennials especially hard.
Dorsey described the Great Recession as an "extremely formidable and difficult event" that defined older millennials' life trajectory. In many ways, millennials are still playing catch-up. They're still trying to find a sense of stability in an increasingly volatile world.
2. You'll own a home by the time you turn 30
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Millennials' entry into adulthood was marked by the economic downturn and the housing crisis, which put them behind older generations in terms of major life milestones. As young girls, they were told they would own a home by a certain time in life, but this all turned out to be false.
In fact, the number of millennial homeowners is significantly lower than the number of boomer and Gen X homeowners at the same stage of life. Around half of millennials own homes, compared to 56% of baby boomers in 1990 and 58% of Gen X in 2006.
"Now, a new house is a luxury product. It's not an entry-level starter home product, that doesn't exist anymore. Only high-income households now can afford to buy new homes and existing homes are barely attainable for somebody making the median income," residential real estate expert Domonic Purviance explained.
3. You can 'have it all'
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Millennial girls were raised by boomer moms who taught them they could have it all. Their moms broke the glass ceiling and still made it home in time for dinner. They took care of their kids while working full-time. They juggled all these responsibilities, while still making time for themselves.
Millennial girls internalized the message that they could do everything, as long as they worked hard enough. Unfortunately, as Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter explained, women can't actually have it all, despite being told that they can.
"We say 'women can have it all,' and we don't acknowledge differences between men and women," she said. "So we don't talk about differential pressures in terms of having kids, much less different feelings about work and children... Without men present, then a very different conversation goes on."
Women, more so than men, are expected to balance their professional and personal lives in a way that's impossible. The truth is, no one can do it all. As much as they were told to lean in, millennial women are still unlearning this lesson.
4. Being a mom is the only way to have a meaningful life
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Despite times changing over the years, millennial girls learned to aspire to motherhood, much like their moms and grandmothers before them. Rejecting that idea meant there was something wrong with you, as opposed to something wrong with the mindset itself.
Millennial women faced extreme pressure to be moms, because they were taught to believe that motherhood legitimized their womanhood. Yet as Slaughter revealed, when it comes to having kids, "I don't think there's one path. I think every woman faces different choices... if that's what you want to do, then you are going to have to make some tradeoffs, either then or later."
5. Guys won't like you if you're too needy
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Of all the seriously wrong, harmful lessons millennial girls were taught, the idea that being too needy would push guys away tops the list. They were told to be the cool girl, the girl with no needs, so that they'd be likable. In doing so, they compromised an essential part of what makes them human.
It's a completely human desire to need people. But because girls are taught to shrink themselves and boys are taught to be self-reliant, expressing the need for support comes off as too much. Having needs doesn't make people clingy or insecure, it just makes them people.
6. Tanning beds are totally safe
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Millennials were brought up in an era of extremely rigid beauty standards, which were amplified and reflected back to them by the intense celebrity culture of the time. Girls were taught to believe that tanning beds were a safe alternative to the sun, yet according to the American Academy of Dermatology, tanning beds aren't any safer than being exposed to natural sunlight.
Indoor tanning can increase the risk of developing two common types of skin cancer. Using tanning beds before the age of 20 can increase the chance of developing melanoma by 47%, and that risk increases with each use. In their quest to look like the perfect girl, millennials compromised their future health for a long list of beauty rules that turned out to be completely wrong.
7. High-fat foods are always bad for you
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Young millennial girls came of age at the height of diet culture, so they were often taught that eating fat was unhealthy. That turned out to be so wrong. Even the classic food pyramid they based their eating habits off of was wrong. In truth, not all fats are created equal, and some intake of high fat foods is good for your health.
In the past, people believed that eating high-fat foods led to imminent heart disease, but now, research has shown that not all fats are unhealthy. Incorporating full fat whole foods into your diet, like eggs and yogurt, dark chocolate and nuts, provides some serious health benefits.
8. Size 0 is the ideal body type
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Millennial girls weren't only taught that eating high-fat foods made them fat, they were also taught that being fat was a really bad thing. In the 90s and early 2000s, there was no such thing as body positivity or body neutrality. There was only the rule that being a size 0 was the ideal body type.
According to nutritionists Dana Monsees and Cristina Hoyt, "We've grown up in the 80s and 90s, with almond moms, through the fads of low-rise jeans, wellness culture, and now, the age of Ozempic and influencers, and it's really hard to feel at home in your body, when we've always been told that it was a problem to be fixed," they concluded.
As hard as it was to grow up in that era, millennial women are unlearning and relearning how to relate to their bodies. They reject the idea that having a bigger body means they're not beautiful. Undoing years of devastating social programming isn't easy, but it's the path to self-acceptance.
9. You should be ashamed of your body
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Within the idea that there was a perfect body type was the lesson that girls should be ashamed of the bodies they had. Girls raised in the 90s and early 2000s faced serious stigma about the fact that they had bodies at all. They were taught that having body hair was disgusting and that they should dress a certain way at school so boys don't look at them.
Millennial girls were taught to contort themselves to fit into unbearably tiny boxes. If they had a body that defied the beauty standards of the era, they were considered defective. They were taught to commodify themselves, because being the object of a man's desire was the most important thing.
10. You have to push yourself to the limit to succeed
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Because girls in the 90s and 2000s were taught to prioritize academic success over everything else, they became women who made professional success their top priority, even when it was harmful to their well-being. Every millennial woman who leaned all the way into hustle culture is now realizing that those sacrifices weren't actually worth it.
According to burnout recovery coach Bethany Sadler-Jasmin, "Millennials are burnt out, disengaged, stressed, and treading water daily, all for the sake of the dollar and someone else's dreams of increased profit... This isn't how humans are supposed to live, and we know this because we are all showing the symptoms of our bodies rejecting it."
11. Once you get married, everything else falls into place
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Perhaps the most mind-boggling thing young girls were taught just a few decades ago is that marriage was the endgame. Millennial girls were taught that becoming a wife would inevitably make them happy and fulfilled, and the rest of their lives would magically fall into place.
As much as they may have wanted to believe that marriage solved everything, that mentality turned out to be false and completely outdated. These women learned that marriage is a balancing act, and that maybe it's not something they want in the first place.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a writer based in Boston, Massachusetts who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
