Are You Mourning 90's As Well?

I think it was Iliza Shlesinger who coined the term “elder millennial”, and I am absolutely one of them. Born slap bang in the middle of the category in 1985 and I tick pretty much every box.

Two year old Emmaline modelling Nan's boots and hat

I grew up in the 90s and early noughties with a love of all things tech, but without social media. Social media for my generation was MSN Messenger, where some of my best banter was learnt typing in those tiny little boxes, and later on, TillLate.com. Although I was usually in bed by the time they pulled the camera out, so I never actually made it onto the feed.

I bought my music in one of three places. Our Price, HMV, or when funds were low, MZTD (also known as Music Zone). Albums were expensive weren't they, but that almost made them better. You saved for them, waited for them, and when you finally got one home, it felt like an event rather than just something you put on as background noise.

Mornings were Big Breakfast, afternoons were Neighbours and Home and Away, Saturday mornings meant SMTV:Live, and Saturday nights were often Noel Edmonds’ House Party and Gladiators. Food was very much meat and two veg in the evening, but always a mini pizza or microchips after school. And you really couldn’t beat a microwave or boil-in-the-bag chicken curry when Mum was feeling lazy.

Weekends often meant staying at a friend’s house and going to Blockbuster or Global Video to rent a film, even though it wasn’t always the one you wanted because it had sold out. But that somehow made it better when you did get lucky because gratitude back then felt genuine.

The Trafford Centre opened when I was ten. I remember my dad having to do some work there before it officially opened and I sneaked in with him for a nosey. It felt enormous and exciting at the time. Who remembers the Rainforest Café or the little market downstairs? Now I know the place like the back of my hand and it somehow feels smaller. It’s also somewhere I mostly avoid if I can. Funny how things change.

I saw a post recently about millennials going through a kind of mourning phase for their past lives. Not in a pre-kids sense, although I know some people are doing that too, but for the world we lived in before social media and constant connectivity. A time when life wasn’t quite so easy and boredom was an actual thing we learnt to live with. No phones remember!

Helen, if you see this, thanks for the best Summer of '98

And it really made me think. Is this my version of “back in my day”? Because I do miss it. I miss being disconnected and it being completely fine. I miss waiting, planning, and not knowing what everyone else was doing at every given moment. I miss the inconvenience of having to wait until the weekend to buy an album, or hoping something might still be in stock when you eventually got to the shop.

Now we live in a world where everything is instant. Food, information, entertainment, validation. We’re constantly connected to the world, and yet somehow more disconnected from each other than ever. We scroll the same way, wear the same clothes, follow the same trends, and from a beauty standpoint, increasingly look the same too.

We’re turning into robots. Not with bolts and wires, but with identical habits, identical mannerisms, and identical faces staring down at identical screens.

We’ve progressed so much as a society, but most of that progress has been about efficiency. Faster, easier and more convenient. And I think in doing so, we’ve stripped away a lot of what made life feel human. Conversations, sitting waiting and even just being bored, which I now think played a bigger role in our wellbeing than we realised.

I’m not anti technology. I’m a millennial, after all. I love Google Maps, I’m very aware of my smartphone addiction, and I enjoy the ease of modern life. Do I miss being the designated A–Z map reader and arguing with my parents because I couldn’t find the page it continued onto before we missed the turn? I mean, probably not.

What I do notice now is how rarely people look up, ahead, or at each other. That constant stimulation keeps our nervous systems switched on, rarely giving them a chance to settle. And when the nervous system is under pressure, the skin usually shows some kind of stress.

I feel like this is something I see every single day in my clinic.

Chronic stress, constant stimulation, poor sleep, rushed food choices and never really switching off all feed into that inflammation, cortisol spikes, and barrier problems. Skin starts to look dull, grey, is sensitive, or just not quite itself. People tell me they’re doing everything 'right' with their skincare, but nothing is working and more often than not, it’s because the body never gets a chance to reset. We're just always 'on'.

Good skin health isn’t about chasing constant skin perfection. It’s about supporting the body you’re in, in the life you’re actually living. Sometimes that means putting the phone down or even letting your skin be imperfect. And sometimes it means being okay with the fact that your skin might not be at its best during busy, stressful times in our lives.

This is exactly why my approach to skin has never been about quick fixes or trends. I always speak about understanding what’s happening underneath, stress levels, sleep, lifestyle and how all of that shows up on our faces.

If you’re feeling like your skin isn’t responding the way it used to, or you’re doing all the 'right things' but still feel stuck, you can book an online skin consultation with me or even a free skin check-in. We just have an honest conversation about your skin and how we can tailor your plan to suit the life you're currently living. Plus, if you relate to what I said at the beginning of this post, it's time you start using a good, anti-ageing eye cream. The Calecim Eye Contour Lifting Cream and the Nimue Anti-Ageing Eye Cream are always my favourites.

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And yes, I’ll keep my next-day deliveries and my gratitude practice thanks, but I’ll also allow myself the occasional pang for a world that felt slower, more human, and a little less robotic, while doing my best to live well in the one we grew up wishing for.

Thank you so much for reading,

Emmaline x