The pressures of being a twent-een year old girl
Twent-een year old [noun] — A early to mid twenty-year-old who feels like they are still in their late teenage years.
I think — no, I know — I speak for a lot of us when I say I simply do not feel like I’m approaching my mid-twenties.
Granted, I am twenty three, but I can see that big two-five a little too closely for my liking. What is it that makes the thought of twenty five so scary?
To me, it still very often feels like I’m in my late teen era. It’s like I’ve been nineteen for the past five years.
I know many of us feel the same.
And I don’t mean in terms of maturity or emotional intelligence. It’s more just a ✨feeling✨. There has to be some science behind it, because it’s something I know a lot of my friends and other girls share.
A twent-een pandemic
I’m not sure if it’s still socially acceptable to blame things on lockdown, but that’s my thesis, anyway.
If you’re the same age as me, you’ll have been nineteen or twenty at that time, and we lost a lot of our early twenties to weeks of colouring books, baking banana bread, becoming obsessed with yoga YouTubers, and doomscrolling on TikTok. It’s almost like it stunted our teen-to-twenties transition.
Hence, twent-een. (Clever, right?)
There are a lot of pressures that come with being a girl in your twenties at the best of times, but this little tidbit makes it feel even more overwhelming.
It can be comforting to know other people feel what you feel, so I’m going to share with you some of the pressures that I feel the most (and which I’m all too sure you can relate to) and how I’m switching my thinking to try make them feel less so.
Let’s figure out how we’re going to snap ourselves out of this twent-een mindset (or we can just all have a menty b together)…
Having an aesthetic
Anyone else exhausted from the silly amount of ‘aesthetics’ that come and go? 🙋♀️
Now, I’ll be the first to hold my hands up and say that I absolutely have bought into some of these, we’re not here to judge, this is a safe space. But my god, isn’t it tiring?
Coquette girl, clean girl, vanilla girl, downtown, cottagecore, old money, Y2K, artsy, bookish. And that’s not even the half of it.
Of course, everyone has their own style. But it becomes problematic when we’re expected to hop between whatever’s trending, otherwise we’ll be “out of touch”, or — and god forbid — different.
It’s just not realistic, and, let’s be honest, it’s expensive buying into all of these. Why can’t we just like what we like without needing to call it a thing? We shouldn’t have to change our entire personality just because Hailey Bieber’s made soft girl ‘in’, or completely switch up because more people are going for messy girl this year.
Can we all just agree to do whatever we want? Be your true, authentic self (or whatever it is the crystal girls say).
Being ‘healthy’
Sticking with the theme of social media trends, let’s talk about health and wellness for a sec. And I appreciate this can be a sensitive topic for a lot of us girls, so feel free to skip ahead, we’ll see you at the next section.
But when did it become so normal to share so many of our healthy habits online?
I can almost guarantee at least once on your FYP today, you’ll see some sort of video on “What I eat in a day”, “My daily up-at-the-crack-of-dawn gym routine”. And don’t even get me started on the whole mouth tape thing.
There’s definitely some good and helpful content out there on improving your health though, especially around mental health and mindfulness, but it’s not normal to be exposed to so much of other people’s lives and habits, and it can be. So. Damaging.
Our health is not a trend. One girl’s healthy is not your healthy, and you should always speak to a professional if you are struggling. Let’s try our absolute best to make 2025 the year we try to be a little more aware of the consequences of this content.
And, also, half of what you see of people’s lives online is exaggerated, or fake, or the best bits, so I’d take these perfected and polished morning routines with the 🤏🏻tiniest🤏🏻 pinch of salt.
Maintaining hobbies
Have we all just claimed 2025 as the year we’re going all in on finding new hobbies?
Personally, there are a lot of things I enjoy doing (running, yoga, reading, and more recently, cross stitch), but I’m just not very good at making time for them, which I think a lot of us are guilty of.
It’s scarily easy to spend hours doomscrolling at the end of the day because it feels comfortable, or because it’s been a stressful day at work. Making space for you time feels like a chore — but why is that?
If you’re anything like me, you have no problem making time for other people or showing up when other people ask you to, so why is it we don’t put that same effort into ourselves?
, Health Content Editor at Bupa UK, writes in her article titled How do creative hobbies benefit your health?,
“Creative outlets not only help to reduce feelings of stress and loneliness but can improve your mood and even affect how your brain works.”
and I think that alone should encourage us all to spend more time investing into ourselves (hence me here writing this article today).
It’s easy to stick to a routine of familiarity and not getting out of our comfort zone to try new things, particularly when life isn’t easy-breezy. But let’s all make a start on creating more time for self-investment and self-fulfilment through our hobbies, because nothing bad can come from it.
Career vs job
Corporate girlies out there, how you holding up?
Since school, it’s been indoctrinated (wow, big word) into us that having a good, solid career is the only route forward. If you’re not slogging away, working up the corporate ladder, you’ve failed. End of. Goodbye.
However, I think a lot of us — particularly in corporate or professional jobs — have come to the realisation that this is simply not the case.
There’s no such thing as a ‘good job’.
A good job is one that allows you to sustain and prioritise your own wellbeing and personal life, no matter what the job title or description is.
If you’re content with your job as a barista at a little cafe in your home town, if that’s what brings you the most joy, then there’s nowt wrong with that. Zilch. You do you, and that’s really all there is to it.
Kids & starting a family
Ah, yes. The ‘K’ word. Yikes.
Being a woman in your early to mid-twenties, there seems to be some sort of expectation that you should know what it is you want in terms of kids, family, a house, etc etc.
But times have changed, Karen from down the road, and — shocker — not everyone does know. And we shouldn’t be made to feel awkward or ashamed for that.
Personally, I have no strong opinions on whether I want children. It’s one of those things that I’m not prioritising or giving much space to in my life right now, and that’s going to be the case for a while.
The BBC even found evidence that more and more at all, so I know I’m not alone in this.
I believe there’s so much life to do before kids, just like there’s elements of life you’ll only experience through having children. But the pressure to have a yes or no answer is an unfair one that I’m sure we can all agree on.
There’s no guilt that should come with wanting to be selfish and keep your life to yourself as long as you want to.
Let’s claim 2025 as our year
As a collective of twent-een year old girls, I’m saying we should all claim 2025 as the year we release the pressures of these expectations, and just start having a little more fun. It’s that cliche of “Everyone’s on their own path”, but it really is true, though.
When you zoom out, there are no deadlines, there are no benchmarks, there are no goals to hit in life other than the ones we set for ourselves.
From one twent-teen year old girl to another, you’re doing a bloody good job. And we’ll figure it out.
💌
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