The B-52s and Broken Hearts

Born Too Late to Dream, Too Early to Settle

At the stroke of a sweltering summer midnight, I was rotting away on my couch, rewatching Weekend at Bernie’s. Still battling with restlessness, my mind began to wander. Using my phone’s flashlight, I unearthed my Back to the Future tarot card deck. I returned to my living room. I sat on the ground, shuffled the cards, and began to read them.

Once the words blurred together, I put everything back in its respective places and headed to bed. As two fans surrounded me, I found myself tossing and turning—too tired to play on my phone but too awake to sleep. My mind returned to its favorite thing: overthinking.

In the midst of failing to fantasize about an artificial reality, I observed that this world had a deficient amount of social networks. The woman beside me in this illusion seemed strangely untouched by the Internet.

Though she was faceless and nameless, she carried an aura—spiritually aged. It was as if she only spent her time in jazz clubs. Too flawless to bother with such frivolous things. Something I knew had become, unfortunately, rare.

As I bizarrely had the sensation of swaying, as though on a moving boat, I closed my eyes tighter until stars appeared. Beneath them, the woman stayed with me—silent and gazing upon the ocean before us.

I couldn’t help but wonder: what was this sudden craving? Why was I seeking out an imaginary woman who probably used the laughing emoji unironically? Why did a conversation with a woman more out of touch with internet slang sound so appealing?

Was she a person I hoped to discover? Or simply a figment of my exhaustion with my generation’s obsession with celebrity gossip, and misused and overused TikTok humor? Could anyone live that cleanly without a digital footprint?

Could I find a relationship with a woman who only used her phone to take pictures of random things on her morning walks? And if so, can she not be a 65-year-old woman?

The next morning, the question still tugged at me. While brewing my coffee, I contemplated the main reason why my generation desires the eras before us: no social media.

A slower reality where glances meant more than a single follower. Where people only used the internet to escape the world outside their front door—not the other way around.

Was that the symbolic message behind my fanciful woman? Was this new, blossoming type of woman of mine a way to seek love, or an escape? An escape from the endless cycle of abuse from the other million lonely strangers who resided in my phone.

But am I just romanticizing a time I never lived through? Was life really more meaningful back then, or am I letting boredom and pain distort my perception? When I imagine those across-the-room glances, do they actually carry more weight now—or am I just craving something untouched by the noise?

Were they truly that poetic and rare, or do they only seem that way because they weren’t competing with dopamine-drenched brains like most of my generation? Is being alone with our thoughts and doing something actually productive so terrible? Is it the era we want, or do we just not want that doom hanging over us?

In my last relationship, my partner was always neck-deep in the internet. A new phrase, an artist or band, an aesthetic, or something that would confuse me greatly. I often felt my age around them—even if it was only a nine-month difference. As I would observe them in a slightly disturbed manner, I’d ruminate on how a person with such a beautiful brain could have so much algorithm poisoning.

What is it about social media’s draining and depressing impact on us? In the same breath of ranting about how much we despise it, we admit the truth: “The only reason why I keep all of it is to keep in contact with friends!” But whatever happened to a simple text or phone call?

Is it beautiful that we can connect with strangers all around with the same interests, or, deep down, terrifying? Is it communication or creating curated versions of ourselves? Are we actually filled with joy when we scroll through other people’s lives? Does it give us community or push the dagger of loneliness deeper into our hearts?

If we had access to a time machine like Marty McFly did, would we actually go back? Or would our selective memory of only the beauty and simplicity that drew us in to begin with fade away? Would we hesitate? Would we actually want to escape this overwhelming reality to another one?

For women, unlike myself, who share that longing for the past, it’s either because men’s appearance was vastly superior to today’s. Often, I’d see girls salivating over the floppy hair with frosted tips, wondering whatever happened to them. In a way, I saw myself in those women. Even though I lacked the attraction to men, it’s how I viewed vintage fashion.

We all know that nostalgia has a beautifully humorous way of making us forget about the bigger picture. Every time a young woman pines after ’90s boys with soft eyes and floppy hair, she somehow forgets that her dreamboat was probably wearing sagging jeans most of the time. If his Bugs Bunny boxers weren’t out on full display, his personality was just as sour as his obnoxious body spray.

On the other side of the coin was I, flipping through each page of my fashion book, drooling over the beautiful women in their even more breathtaking dresses. As my fellow female peers ached to remove men’s desire for the buzz cut fade haircut, I desperately wanted to remove fast fashion and poor manufacturing.

Being so stunned by the colorful and breathtaking gowns from the 1800s, the memories of how women like myself were treated would slip away. They faded into the background as my fingertips danced around the dresses’ tight waistlines on the pages. Even if I jumped forty pages ahead in the book and two hundred years into the future, how I’d be treated by society wouldn’t change.

If it wasn’t because of my disabilities, it would’ve been because of my gender. If it wasn’t because of my gender, it would’ve been because of my weight. If it wasn’t because of my weight, it would’ve been because of my lesbianism. No matter how much our world shifts and transforms, some things will never change.

Can we admire those aesthetics without accidentally slipping into the propaganda of their time? Are we trying to dress over our self-inflicted wounds we still carry? Are we grieving the past or rebelling against how fast everything moves now?

What does it say about us when we run after hairstyles or thrift clothes while ignoring the painfully outdated values stitched into their seams? Is it possible to separate style from history? Or are we happily, knowingly putting on costumes that once disguised oppression?

On the darker side of the internet—now bleeding into mainstream media—are women who also yearn for the past, not for the floppy hair or the fashion, but for a life without feminism. In one of their bolder moments, they post TikTok videos of themselves in flowy, floral-patterned dresses, kneading dough, accompanied by an alarming caption: “God designed two genders for different purposes. This is the only box I believe you have to fit into when becoming a traditional wife.”

As these women regularly post their beliefs on social media—unaware they’re benefiting from feminism—they begin to hold hands with men who share their values. Unlike their male peers, who mostly just reject over-optimization or modern music, these men actively pursue the white picket fence fantasy.

Similar to the rest of us, they neglect the historical truth. When they see a well-stitched fitted bodice and a knee-length skirt in pink polka dots like we do, they don’t just see a dress, but an emblem of a simpler time—a time where things mainly benefited them, where their enchanting, fictional wife was most likely doped up on Valium.

Whose lives are we realistically seeking after? Are we remembering the powerful women who paved the way? Are we forgetting—or ignoring—the battered wives who dreamt of a reality where she was able to escape?

Can the promise of order of the past outweigh the cost of freedom and self-expression? Why do these people still cling to their beliefs despite history’s warnings?

I consider why we want those slower and simpler days to return is because they weren’t like this. Do we desire the early 2000s, 90s, and 80s in the same fashion we do with altering our aesthetics and personalities on social media? Even if we go back in time, would it be all that different?

Do we just want control and to find something real? In our desperation for silence, do we only want permission to slow down? To get rid of the nasty need to scroll for hours on end? To stop the unconscious obsession to seek out topics that will anger us? To breathe without broadcasting?

When we aren’t constantly pining or performing under pressure, we are seduced by the sedative of nostalgia. We are undoubtedly numbed to the infused bigotry. It tempts us to deny the privilege to even question it aloud.

Possibly, if we ever get lucky enough, we will find someone who sees it through as well. Somebody who can start and end a conversation without tabloid talk and digital dialect. Not because they’re unaffected by social media, but because they’ve learned how to live alongside it without being completely submerged.

Maybe that’s what we’re looking for—not a time machine, but a person who keeps us grounded. Somebody who will willingly dig us out of our shallow grave we regrettably put ourselves into—somebody who reminds us that we’re still human.