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Although Amelia Dimoldenberg has had many guests on for Chicken Shop Date this year, among the most memorable still remains Alex Consani. Not just because she has the blasé “audacity” to say she’s from California so she doesn’t know geography (a.k.a. California is the only geography worth knowing in the U.S., or at all), but because, despite the overall “premise” of Chicken Shop Date (tongue-in-cheek or not) being about Dimoldenberg’s bid to find “true love”—or at least a “steady” someone—Consani disinterestedly declares, “Being in a relationship is fun, but, like, so much work.”
This statement might seem “innocuous”/intended to be “cute” enough, but it’s telling of something larger. Particularly amongst those in Consani’s generation (Z, in case you couldn’t guess). And that is, of course, that the pervasive sense of entitlement/a “me first” philosophy/narcissism in general has reached such a zenith that most people of “dating age” really don’t see the point. And besides that, why bother when everything is on demand at the touch of a button (or swipe of a screen)—dick and pussy included? Hence, Consani has effectively announced what has been quite evident for the past several years, which is that Gen Z, and even many beyond that generational boundary, are rejecting the notion of what a “conventional” relationship used to mean. And yes, to a certain extent, what Consani is saying isn’t exactly groundbreaking or “revolutionary.” In fact, Whoopi Goldberg already said it all with her 2016 quote, “I’m much happier on my own. I can spend as much time with somebody as I want to spend, but I’m not looking to be with somebody forever or live with someone. I don’t want somebody in my house.”
It was that final line in the quote that launched a thousand memes, with many of them including the text, “Whoopi Goldberg on Marriage: ‘I don’t want somebody in my house.’” Goldberg herself is a baby boomer, and her feelings about “needing” a man (or rather, not needing one) have also become increasingly common within a generation that represents one of the heights of what was once considered “traditional values.” But for an increasing majority of women, particularly those who are within a certain income tax bracket, the “point” of a relationship has only diminished in value over time.
Here, too, it can be argued that Candace Bushnell was the first modern “revolutionary” to put a spotlight on this reality in her “Sex and the City” column, writing, “For the first time in Manhattan history, many women in their thirties to early forties have as much money and power as men—or at least enough to feel like they don’t need a man, except for sex.” And no, that comment is certainly not specific to Manhattan. What’s more, it seems that, increasingly, men are scarcely “required” even for sex, what with the many advancements in the world of self-pleasure and fertility. Moreover, men most definitely have their pick of ways and means to get what they want out of a woman (ersatz or otherwise) without ever having to “date” her (see also: the rise of sex robots).
At another point in one of Bushnell’s columns, she quotes one of her friends saying, “Love means having to align yourself with another person, and what if that person turns out to be a liability?” To be sure, the number one way that a person can be a “liability” to someone else is financially. Think: romance scams. Then, of course, there’s a different kind of investment that occurs when one attempts being in a “traditional” relationship: an emotional one.
And when, often inevitably, that sense of emotional attachment/investment goes bust, it can leave the person who got more burned in the relationship kicking themselves for putting so much time and effort into nurturing something that didn’t “pan out.” Something that couldn’t last. Indeed, more and more, it appears as though younger generations are having the spell of “forever” broken not only by cold, hard reality, but the virtual absence of the same steady diet of rom-coms that were once fed to previous generations, including millennials. Without such propaganda to “promote the lie” anymore, it has become even more of a challenge to convince people that “true love” or “eternal love” is actually “a thing” and not a “capitalist conspiracy” (one that Beyoncé and Jay-Z are still working hard to sell).
To boot, someone like Consani is the epitome of what happens when a person grows up entirely on and with the internet. The concept of “real life” or ever being “turned off,” performance-wise, is, thus anathema. A concept that makes it even more difficult to fathom a person’s ability to ever get to know someone in a truly “real” (read: offline) context. In addition to this, there are some who posit that, despite Gen Z being the “loneliest” generation (again, blame the internet) and the one most likely to be single, it isn’t all doom and gloom with regard to the changing face of what a relationship means. As a “generational expert” commented to Newsweek, “[In the future], we’ll [probably] see more communal living, chosen families and alternative relationship structures that align with Gen Z’s values of autonomy and mutual respect. If older generations want to blame Gen Z for killing relationships, maybe they should ask themselves why young people don’t see relationships as a safe or beneficial investment anymore.”
Ah, that ugly term again: investment. A word that connotes just how much relationships have come to be seen more as work and less as something rewarding and romantic by sheer virtue of not having to be alone all the time. However, gone are the days when being alone was seen as an undeniable stigma (as further evidenced by the recent series finale of And Just Like That…). In truth, you’re probably more likely to be looked upon as a freakshow in the current climate for being in a committed, monogamous relationship than you would be for “flying solo.” The “work” of the former far outweighing the “fun” of it, as far as Consani’s kind is concerned.
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Genna Rivieccio
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