How lip gloss became the answer to Gen Z’s problems

“What’s aspirational has changed,” says Beth McGroarty, research director at the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. Pressures to be perfectly happy, beautiful, and “healthy” are being replaced with a more realistic, relaxed, and less consumerist culture.

Just as every decade can be defined by a fashion or musical style, looking back at our 2020s from the future, what will we yearn for?

Is there anything to iterate upon if our moment is already defined by prior generations’ sensibilities?

It makes sense that norms are shifting in this direction as Gen Z’s influence spreads. Raised on social media, with access to once illicit bad-taste touchstones like Rocky Horror just a click away, they’ve largely replaced IRL subcultures with a constellation of aesthetics—cottagecore, dark academia, Y2K—to be performed, then discarded or demoted t... See more