Did you live a truly modern life in 2019?
Shane Watson looks back at the key changes she has chronicled during the past 12 months and asks: are you keeping up?
How modern were you in 2019? Did your life reflect the times or were you a bit out of step and trailing behind? So hard to know sometimes if we’re in sync with the important aspects of modern life, so, here’s some of what counted in 2019, to refresh your memory:
BEING ECO SHAMED
This was the year of Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and Flygskam
– Swedish for flight shame, as in the guilt experienced when travelling by plane because of the carbon footprint. Flygskam was the only eco-related shame that had its own word, so far as we know, but shame and shaming was definitely the tone of the new eco awareness.
Last year, you could still sort of dip in and dip out; recycle most of the time, then hop on a jet ski and tuck into the single-use plastics. This year, you had to ask where is it from, and where is that going?
You had to have a water bottle and a keep cup and then you had to ask, should I take the train? Do I need a car? That new dress, is it necessary or shall I borrow one pre-worn by Lady Theresa Manners? Have I got too many children? Almost a quarter of daters said that eco awareness was their non-negotiable deal breaker for a prospective partner. So, things have moved on.
MEMORISING THE ‘GOT TO LIKE’ LIST (GTLL)
This year you had to like certain things, partly because we’ve started to take all sorts of things like (mainly) TV very seriously, but also because of the slide into zero tolerance for other people’s taste and opinions.
In previous years you could easily have got away with thinking Killing Eve was a bit overrated, but this year you had to make damn sure you were fully on board with the GTLL and no exceptions.
We are talking unconditional adoration for Fleabag, and all things Phoebe Waller-bridge; Margaret Atwood; Sally Rooney; The Favourite (OMG Olivia Colman, we love her); Emily Maitlis. Possibly there were some men on the GTLL, we forget.
WE EMBRACED THE NEW CASUAL
A photograph of the Queen emerged, hands thrust in the pockets of her dress and, although it wasn’t a new picture, it cemented the idea that casual is now the acceptable norm. We’re talking about going shoeless indoors. We’re talking about exercisewear anywhere, and eating anywhere (even a boiled egg on a train), and getting a wax anywhere (say the forecourt of Clapham Junction station) and feeling no compulsion to trim your beard, let alone shave. It’s all one way from here.
WE GOT FLIP FLOPISM
You started the year a Remainer and ended it a Leaver, or started it a Tory and ended it a Lib Dem; you started out a royalist and ended up feeling betrayed; you became convinced by the vegan cause and then discovered veganism could destroy the planet faster than meat eating…
There were a lot of examples of strong positions taken, then abandoned, then taken up again. Naturally, this was combined with last year’s very modern habit of “virtue signalling”, or having the endorsed opinion of the day and making a point of letting everyone know as often as possible. We are hoping that in 2020 it will become normal to be able to say: “Can I stop you there? I know exactly what you’re going to say. Shall we just assume you’ve flagged your membership of The Virtuous People and move on?”
WE GOT SLOANEY
Fashion didn’t call it that – Seventies bourgeois chic and Eighties glamour are more appealing as labels – but suddenly designers were referencing the young Princess Anne and the post-snowdon Princess Margaret and honeymoon-era Princess Diana, but also her Serpentine Gallery party period. Sheer tights were a thing again and Carrie Symonds only ever appeared in a demure, highnecked midi dress and fat hairband that would not have looked out of place on a Montessori nursery schoolteacher circa 1980.
AND WE (ALMOST) ALL GOT MISS PIGGY EYELASHES
This has to have been, please God, the year of peak Piggy eyelashes. Now everyone under the age of 80 – postmistresses, paramedics, personal trainers – has lash perms, or lash lifts, if not the full lash extensions. It’s taken off like Ugg boots but why, we have no idea. When you look at someone and think “Ooh, yikes… that reminds me a bit of the laughing cow”, that’s an eyelash perm.
WE GAVE UP DRINK
Last year was all about flexitarianism (being a bit veggie) and reducetarianism (cutting back on meat and dairy) and 2019 has been about Not Drinking. Not necessarily not drinking at all – although there was plenty of that – but drinking “mindfully”. You don’t have to be an alcoholic to give up drink any more, you just have to be sober curious and… modern. Not drinking midweek became a thing. Not drinking two days a week (the liver recovery rule) or drinking, but only on special occasions, or not drinking for a month, just as a reboot, all became as normal as avoiding gluten.
As of 2019, drinking gallons all the time, and at lunch, suddenly looked rather old school. Certainly to the millennials who are all dating over almond milk lattes.
WE ALL WOKE UP TO GENERATION DIFFERENT
Was it after the Tom Bradby interviews with Harry and Meghan in South Africa? Not sure, but this year the penny dropped that those thirtysomethings really are different. When they go to a job interview they want to know what you can offer them. When they get tired they rest. We’d vaguely imagined they’d get a bit less Me and a bit more Us, but seemingly not. It’s not worse, it’s just different.
CAN’T CHOOSE, WON’T CHOOSE
First you have so much choice you find it hard to choose (that was previous years), then you just choose not to choose. Earlier in the year the Booker Prize was shared between two winners; now four artists have been awarded the Turner Prize. This stuff is catching. You may have found yourself with two Christmas trees this year and that jacket in both colours…
WE BECAME PRO MODERNISING THE MONARCHY
Which is to say slimming it down, cutting loose the most obvious liggers and embarrassments, and moving forwards with a kind of capsule collection based on reliability, functionality, value for money and all-round merit. Even if you weren’t a moderniser at the start of the year, by November you were roaring at the TV: “Charles get to Sandringham and sort it out. Save yourselves and cut the rope! Cut the rope!” We became totally ruthless TBH. Have Princess Beatrice’s wedding in a register office! For example.
DOG PRENUPS AND DOG CUSTODY
The new divorce game was, apparently, who can play dirtiest with the dogs. After some wrangling, Ant Mcpartlin was awarded joint custody of his chocolate Labrador with his former partner, and henceforth the dog prenup is not a laughing matter. Meanwhile, we were supposed to be moving towards the better, brighter divorce where stepmothers are called Bonus Mums.
WE GOT AMAZING TV FATIGUE
Not with all of it, but let’s face it, the things we were obliged to watch and even the things we should probably have been watching started to back up and then a slightly weird thing happened and we went right off the prospect of watching the good stuff. Strictly was OK, but anything really well reviewed and epic with an eye-watering budget and a knock-out cast … couldn’t face it.
So we never actually got around to watching (trigger warning) David Attenborough’s Seven Worlds, One Planet… His Dark Materials… The War of the Worlds (I know, unbelievable!) but they just come at you thick and fast. Next thing you know the only thing you are watching is Gold Digger, and that was really for the interiors. (Did you check out that wallpaper in Julia Day’s house in Devon? Not just in the hall but also in the bedrooms and the dining room. Nice.)
AGE FLAUNTING
As in (because it’s the opposite of what we have come to expect) not attempting to disguise your age one little bit. This year we saw some robust let-it-all-hang-out behaviour… namely from Kathleen Turner, 62 (“I don’t look like I did 30 years ago, get over it”) and, more recently, Julia Ormond, 54, who played the 60-year-old Julia in Gold Digger, and blew everyone away not least because she looked so real.
She’s clearly had no work, put on some weight since her 20s (she might even be the national average size 16, as opposed to the actress average 8 or below), she wore little or no make-up and let her hair do its own thing.
In other words she looked like a normal (albeit beautiful) fiftysomething woman who isn’t a TV presenter, LA lawyer or similar. We’re not expecting miracles any day soon (2019 was the year when three out of four women had permed baby-cow eyelashes or three sets of extensions). But it felt new.