WHO WANTS TO BE THE VOICE OF A GENERATION ANYWAY?

Dolly Alderton on the strange responsibility of female fame.

“I THINK I MAY BE THE VOICE OF MY GENERATION,” Hannah Horvath tells her parents over dinner in Girls. “Or at least a voice of a generation.” It was the perfect beginning to a series that explored the entitlement, delusions and neuroses of twentysomething women living in New York. It was also the beginning of us placing all of our hopes, politics, anxieties and futures in a young female writer in the public eye as if she were a vessel for our collective identity. And while many did not think of writer Lena Dunham as their ambassador, an agenda was fixed in the public consciousness: this young woman is The Voice of a Generation.

The sweeping epithet may have famously been attached to Dunham, but it’s wriggled its way into discussions about a number of young female auteurs. There’s Taylor Swift with her “girl squad” feminism; Master Of None actress and writer Lena Waithe; model and activist Adwoa Aboah; The Hunger

Games’ Amandla Stenberg. Pretty much any millennial woman who talks about her experiences in an honest or unapologetic way is held up by the media as a mouthpiece for her generation.

There are so many more female voices being heard these days – on Youtube, podcasts, even on Oscars night, when Frances Mcdormand asked all the women nominees to stand up and make themselves visible. It seems to me that women are starting to fight their way into previously male-owned spaces where they once had to shout to be heard. Maybe that’s why women who are now having their views heard have been given the momentous description of being a “voice of a generation” – while our male counterparts doing the same thing are simply “telling their stories”. Earlier this year, my first book, a memoir called Everything

I Know About Love, was published. While far from being dubbed the “voice of a generation”, when I was pitching it to publishers I lost count of the number of times it was suggested I could be “the British Lena Dunham” or “the next Phoebe Waller-bridge”. At first, I felt flattered, if not slightly bad on behalf of those far more successful writers to be lumped in the same category as me without their permission or even knowledge of my existence. But then, it began to annoy me. I realised what it meant was: we can’t be bothered to understand your voice, so we’re going to assume you’re the same as this tried-and-tested formula. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, was the eventual subtext I read.

Behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings tells me our need for this label is rooted in tribalism. “We consciously, or simply by defaulting to those with the biggest reach or loudest voice, appoint a leader,” she says. “They represent this tribe in order to create a groundswell of opinion that both reinforces our thoughts as well as influences those who may not feel as passionately about it.” Selfishly, I must admit that being grouped together with supposed generational tribe leaders terrifies me.

When I receive messages from young women who have read my book to tell me my story is their story, that I have managed to articulate something they have experienced, I am filled with an undeniable sense of happiness; I have connected with someone and made them feel less alone. But that moment of happiness comes with an aftertaste of dread. As nice as the sentiment is, in reality, I am not them and they are not me. If and when I inevitably get something wrong, or the standard of my writing dips or changes, or I divert from the path they’ve decided most neatly represents “us”, I know the world we live in is one in which I could be proverbially, pitilessly, publicly hanged.

I’ve edited Instagram posts on seemingly trivial topics and deleted tweets out of fear of a negative response or causing offence. Recently, I jokingly tweeted that I’d booked a viewing of a flat I couldn’t really afford and someone emailed to say this was deeply offensive to real estate agents. I momentarily considered quitting social media altogether.

Often, it feels like we herald women for their authenticity – be it comedic, emotional or political – then create a prison of censorship in which they have to keep every single follower, reader or listener happy.

A woman who knows the highs and lows of carrying the voice of a generation mantle all too well is writer Emily Gould, who rose to fame in her early twenties as an “oversharing” blogger and editor of celebrity gossip website Gawker. It helped her land her a six-figure book deal for a memoir, but ended in debt and a temporary family rift. Now, Gould is happy living a less high-profile life writing novels and teaching, but the experience cast a long shadow. “For a long time after my first book was published – to a harsh, sexist, critical reception – it was impossible for me to write in the first person,” she tells me. “I think this happens a lot, and some writers aren’t lucky enough to, as I did, find their way out of it. They get stuck in that cycle of endlessly responding.”

Social media now makes the public response immediate and incessant, and our standards can be unrealistically high, says Hemmings. “We want [these voices] to remain consistent, deeply committed and fearless in their expression,” she says. “They need to be thick-skinned, always compelling and constantly, convincingly responsive to change. This kind of scrutiny and pressure means the role can be very short-lived.”

Another writer who understands this pressure is Afua Hirsch. Her bestselling book Brit(ish) explores what it means to be British, drawing on historical research and her experience as a woman of Ghanaian and English heritage. But Hirsch tells me that being given this platform as a mixed-race woman can be constrictive rather than freeing. “I relate to what I have heard described as ‘the authenticity paradox’,” she says. “As a writer of colour, there is a sense you are one of the few who have been given a mainstream platform, and therefore you do feel a duty to represent the others. At the same time, it feels so regressive for writers of colour to be put in a box where they are accepted only if they write a certain ‘ethnic-minority narrative’ – for example, ‘upping the sari count’ in a story, as one Asian writer was told to do.” One way Hirsch tries to navigate this is by ensuring her work increases opportunities for other writers of colour. “When there is a multiplicity of voices, none of us will carry the burden of representing all of us anymore.”

Now, more than ever, it feels as if there is great power in women’s voices rising up in succession – people are forced to listen. One of the current greatest voices (of many generations) is Caitlin Moran, who once described feminism as a beautiful patchwork quilt, for which everyone does their little bit: ”Someone can do something about FGM (female genital mutilation), someone can do something about makeup, someone else is going to do something about motherhood, and you patch it all together. It’s a communal effort.” I think the same can be said of storytelling; exploring the human experience of a certain age, be it through memoir, fiction or on-screen. I’m not a voice of a generation and I never will be. I’m just very lucky to be embroidering my little square of the quilt. E