u/Summerofthe90s

I was born August 18, 1996, so I’ll be turning 30 this year and yes I'm excited. According to Pew, I’m a millennial, and I do feel like a millennial.

And I’m glad to be in the millennial category because I would rather be the youngest millennial than an older Gen Z. No shade to Gen Z at all, but I personally relate more to the younger millennial experience overall.

That being said, there are definitely aspects of Gen Z that I relate to, especially older Gen Z. The way I usually describe it is: I have the fire of Gen Z, but the emotional damage of a millennial if that makes sense 😅

I feel like people born around 1994, 1995, and 1996 are in such a weird little crossover zone. We remember a lot of millennial things, but we were also young enough to understand and relate to some older Gen Z culture too. It feels like we’re close enough to Gen Z to understand them, but old enough to have that classic millennial burnout/trauma/humour.

Does anyone else born in 1996, or even 1995 and 1994, relate to this?

Also, do you personally feel like 1996 belongs in the millennial category? I think it does, but I’m curious what everyone else thinks.

I hate Carrie Bradshaw so much, and honestly, I hate that I hate her because there are things about her that I want to like.

Her fashion sense is iconic. She has ambition. She’s a writer. She was openly talking about sex and relationships in the 90s, which was honestly groundbreaking. There are so many reasons Carrie could have been one of my favourite characters.

But my God, she is insufferable.

One of the biggest reasons? Her behaviour around Big.

And let me be clear: I hate Big too. That man was emotionally unavailable, selfish, and constantly playing in her face. But that is a whole separate post because his ass deserves his own breakdown.

The thing with Carrie is that Big humiliated her constantly, and she just kept letting him back in. Yes, he gave her mixed messages. Yes, he would randomly pop back into her life and mess with her head. But Carrie was not some naive teenager experiencing her first toxic relationship. She was a grown woman, and yet she acted like she had absolutely no control over her own choices whenever Big was involved.

He showed her who he was multiple times. He embarrassed her. He made her feel small. He kept her at arm’s length while still wanting access to her. And every single time, she acted shocked when he continued behaving exactly like the man he had always been. The way she acted shocked every single time really pissed me off.

And then there’s Aidan.

That also deserves its own post because the way Carrie treated Aidan was awful. I am not even saying “Team Aidan” because, honestly, I’m Team Neither. Big treated Carrie terribly, but Carrie was not mature enough to be with someone like Aidan. They wanted different things, he was more of a family man and she wanted a child free bachelorette kind of life (which I support by the way) and that is fine. Not every relationship is meant to work. But the way she handled that relationship was selfish and disrespectful.

I was two when Sex and the City originally aired, so I did not watch it in real time. I watched it as an adult, and when I found out people were seriously debating “Team Big or Team Aidan,” I was like… neither? Big was a piece of shit and treated her terribly, and Aidan deserved someone who actually wanted the life he wanted instead of someone who kept dragging him into her chaos.

But Carrie’s issues were not just romantic. She was also not a great friend.

There are so many examples, but one that really bothered me was when Miranda had a panic attack and ended up in the hospital. Miranda says she cannot put Carrie down as her emergency contact because Carrie screens her calls. Then Miranda opens up about her genuine fear of ending up alone.

And Carrie’s response in the voiceover is basically something like, “I’m not sure if that’s true, but I told her she wouldn’t be alone.”

Bitch What?

That is your friend. Your close friend. Your friend who is scared, vulnerable, and literally in the hospital. Why is your internal reaction not, “Of course she won’t be alone, because I will be there for her”? Why is even that moment somehow filtered through Carrie’s self-centered little worldview?

That is what makes Carrie so frustrating. She has charm. She has style. She has interesting qualities. But she is also immature, self-absorbed, childish, and painfully bad at taking accountability.

I don't expect Carrie to be perfect. Flawed female characters are interesting. But Carrie is the kind of flawed where she constantly hurts people, makes everything about herself, and then acts like life is just happening to her instead of admitting that she is actively making terrible choices.

Carrie Bradshaw could have been iconic in every way, but instead, half the time I just wanted to shake her and tell her to grow the fuck up.

I’m rewatching Season 2 of Gossip Girl, especially around episodes 16–18, and honestly? Every time I watch the whole Ms. Carr stuff go down I get more and more angry it was so wrong.

To be clear, Blair was wrong for hazing Ms. Carr over the grade. Blair should not have done that. She crossed a line there that much is obvious.

But Ms. Carr was so fucking inappropriate from the start, and I feel like the show acts as if Blair was the main villain of that storyline when the real adult in the room was behaving unethically.

The Dan situation is the biggest issue. I do not care if Dan was 18. He was still a high school student, and Ms. Carr was still a teacher in a position of authority.

Even if he was technically an adult (barely), it was still unethical and predatory. She was a teacher in her mid-20s getting involved with a high school student. What exactly did she have in common with him? Nothing. The power imbalance is a huge red flag.

And yes, when Blair started the rumor, it was not true yet. But Ms. Carr had already crossed boundaries. She was meeting students outside of school, blurring teacher-student lines, and acting way too personally involved with these kids. That alone should have been a major red flag to the administration.

The school brought her back because they could not prove she had actually had an affair with a student at that point. Fine. But they did have proof that she was meeting students outside of school in questionable ways. Why was that not enough to seriously question her judgment?

And then the craziest part is that after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student, she actually goes and does it. She gets involved with Dan after the first firing. That makes the whole situation even worse in hindsight. Blair may have lied about the timing, but she was not wrong that Ms. Carr was unsafe and inappropriate around students. And yes Blair did what she did because she was slighted by Ms. Carr but who cares her intentions are irrelevant if the information she brought forward was concerning.

Her relationship with Serena was also weird. A teacher should not be trying to have a friendship with a 17-year-old student. If you want to mentor her, fine. If you want to support her academically, fine. But friendship? No. Especially when you are teaching at her school. That is not an equal friendship. That is an adult with power over a student.

And the audacity for Ms. Carr to use gossip girl to lash out at Serena because Serena showed the the picture to Blair and Blair used it get her fired. I'm sorry did Serena lie? No. Did Rachel Carr meet a student that wasn't even her own outside or school hours and not only that was within kissing distance with Dan? Yes.

The opera situation with Blair is another example. Yes, Blair manipulated her. Yes, Blair was wrong. But why did Ms. Carr agree to meet a student outside of school hours in the first place? If Blair’s family genuinely wanted to invite faculty, Ms. Carr should have confirmed it with another teacher, Headmistress Queller, or waited for an actual adult family member to extend the invitation. She should not have just accepted a social invitation from a student.

That is the whole problem with Ms. Carr. She consistently failed to maintain professional boundaries, then acted shocked when things got messy.

So no, I do not think Blair should have lost Yale over this. She deserved consequences for hazing a teacher, but losing Yale felt excessive when the administration should have been much more concerned about the adult teacher who kept putting herself in inappropriate situations with students.

Blair was wrong in how she handled it, but Ms. Carr was inappropriate from the start. And once she actually got with Dan, it proved that everyone should have been more concerned about her behavior all along.

But let me know your thoughts?