I’ve never really paid much attention to Maya Hawke before now. She’s the 21-year-old daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, and she is a striking young woman who manages to look so much like both of her parents, right? Maya covers the latest digital issue of Nylon to promote a variety of projects, including Stranger Things (the production of which shut down with the pandemic) and her first album. I actually enjoyed this interview more than I should have – I’m sure some people will say that she comes across like a tone-deaf brat, but I think she just sounds like a typical 21-year-old who is kind of funny, massively self-aware and just punch-drunk at having to quarantine with her mom and siblings (Ethan lives a short distance away too). You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
Losing her sense of independence in the lockdown: “I feel like the last three years of my life have been a dream and I’m just a kid again with my family. I moved out and got my whole life together and became a person. And this disease is like, ‘Ha ha ha, just kidding! You’re a kid, and you live with your parents.’” She spends most of her days taking FaceTime meetings with agents and managers, reading an occasional script, helping her younger siblings with their online schoolwork, and “a significant amount of crying. It’s constant anxiety and constant nothingness.
She’s really punch-drunk in lockdown: “I’m in mourning for my life. That’s a joke. I’m fine. I’m very fortunate. But totally depressed and confused. I’m going through the five stages of grief with it. I was angry about it. I was in denial. And then I was bargaining: I’m going to fix it! And now I’m in resignation or whatever. I’m just sort of like, this is my new forever.”
On her privilege: “Oh, god, I’m well aware that every part I get is somehow influenced by the history of who I am as a person and where I come from. I’m a not-that-famous, not-that-successful young actress, but if I get cast in something, it will get PR. From a producer’s point of view, that’s a huge advantage. Which gives me a massive leg up. It was a massive leg up in getting an agent and a manager. All these sorts of extra things that people don’t think about when they think of people getting roles. My upbringing plays a part in all those interactions, all those moments, all that reasoning. I will get the opportunities I get. I will try as hard as I can to be brilliant in them. And if I suck enough, I’ll stop getting chances.”
Back in the 1990s, there were movie stars: “It just used to be more glamorous. It’s not so glamorous anymore. There’s almost no such thing as a movie star anymore. There can be an appearance of one for a second. Now there’s a bajillion actors with a following. It’s a lot more everyman.”
She hates Generation X, her parents’ generation: “I was talking to my friend the other day about this and we’re just so annoyed at our parents’ generation. They had it so easy. They were all just high and driving around in cool, gas-guzzling cars. Destroying our environment and voting for the wrong people, and having no wars and no plagues and no pandemics. We’re in our 20s, we’re supposed to be having fun, and doing drugs, and partying. But instead… We’re going to SoulCycle and trying to outlive our planet. We have a horrible president, and it’s just really irritating. They really f–ked us.”
I’d like to point out a few things! One, I do NOT associate with Gen X. I’m Xennial and yes, that’s a thing. My cultural/political reference points are not the same as most Gen Xers. And while I don’t agree with her that Gen X f–ked up everything, I do think Gen X and Xennials do have to take some ownership of how selfish we were. How blithely we went along, thinking that the world was always going to be like it was in 1996. Not so. But no, the Boomers were the ones who f–ked everything up, let’s be real. Anyway, I enjoyed Maya’s quarantine melodrama/melancholia more than I should have. She’s a funny little thing.
Cover & photos courtesy of Nylon’s IG.
Right. No AIDS epidemic. No wars in Bosnia or the first Persian Gulf War. Easy Peasy.
Ya what is she talking about? I’m a millennial and I knew that.
I’m guessing she is one of the Tide pod consuming group
My thoughts exactly. I’m a millennial but even I know her statements aren’t accurate. She’s out of touch.
I think she’s mostly joking. I’m Gen X and I do think we maybe had less in general to worry about. The Trump era is just next level frightening in so many ways.
Well, we’re still here for it though! I don’t know about you but I’m still kicking! I’m 51 and suffering, yet again, through another “historic” event. So no I don’t think we had it better, not by a long shot.
Pretty sure she’s just ignorant, not joking.
Yeah. If you want to criticize someone do the job and learn stuff. It is so ignorant of her to accuse someone of being lazy while being actually lazy to look further than the mirror or your smart phone. Now she whines her parents did drugs and now she can’t do drugs because of that. Real bright. Also “she manages to look so much like both of her parents”. I read that as if looks you get in the genetic lottery an achievement.
@Darla: I’m the same age as you; remember when we all expected we were going to perish in a nuclear war? The USSR and the US were making all sorts of idle threats, Sting even wrote the song “Russians” about it. And we’re just old enough to remember the energy crisis of the late 70s, as well as just entering our teen years to be told sex could kill you. When people say things as Maya has said, it makes me think they forget that we’ve already lived through all this other stuff, numerous these fruitless wars, the fall of the Iron Curtain and its uncertainty, the AIDS epidemic, and now we too are living through this. Oh, and it’s our generation that pushed for cleaner vehicles and developed that technology, so really I think she needs to just take a damn seat.
Totally. This all day! No Reagan, no Bushes, no cold war, no “we could all die any day.”
Cutesey needs to sit back on that plastic covered sofa (how ironic!) and shut her pie hole. And maybe pick up a few back issues of Spy magazine if she wants a more realistic perspective.
Sure, Gen X were “slackers” – because the boomer sucked the creamy center out of the economy and left us holding an empty bag.
Babygirl, hush now.
What the hell is she talking about? We grew up terrified of nuclear war with the USSR, actual war with Iraq, peers of mine doing multiple tours in Afghanistan. I don’t think people remember how terrifying AIDS was – it was a legitimate death sentence.
I think she’s confusing the actual time period with her dad’s movies.
One of the biggest movies when I was a kid was War Games. The arms race was a terrifying time to live through.
From my urban abode there was the crack epidemic, the war on drugs, and a whole lot heroin addicts to add variety—not to mention used and dirty needles in the streets. Let’s not forgot about Ebola ravaging parts of Africa. Then you also had civil wars in Africa (Rwandan Genocide: Tutsi v Hutus) and in parts of Eastern Europe (Bosnia) too. Reagan and deregulation on the home front. Sledgehammers in terms of funding for things like mental health and PBS.
Yeah. Gen X, Nothing much happened during our era. We are cool tho. As latchkey kids, we brought ourselves home from schools, called our moms to let her know we’d made it, and stayed in the house by ourselves even when we were scared. None of that sissy nanny shit for us, baby monitors or FaceTime. Nope. We were the real Gs. Sesame Street made us look at the world critically (one of these things is not like the other) but Mr. Rogers kept us on chill (won’t you be my neighbor). That’s why it looks all easy-peasy on the surface.
Exactly. This Gen Xer was in the military during the Persian Gulf War. No war? I wish. Take a seat, Maya, and get back to me when your privilege isn’t showing.
Germany here. The cold war was…horrifying. We were right there in the middle, we would have been the first to go in WWIII when all those stationed weapons would have been unleashed.
East and West Germany, deaths at the Wall in Berlin, the cruelty of STASI actions and broken families and so on.
Chernobyl (the sand in playgrounds had to be replaced because of contamination and so on. Nothing compared to Ukraine, but that’s what I remember and it frightened me), Kosovo. Gulf War I, Rwanda, AIDS, all of that I remember vividly and I’m *1982. Nobody had it easy.
And let’s all understand that even the absolutely oldest Gen X’ers couldn’t vote for Reagan the first time around, only 1 year of them could the 2nd time, and it was still only a quarter of the generation being able to vote in ‘88.
Not to mention, the boomers are a much larger generation, by numbers.
Gen X’ers brought you Clinton.
This made me giggle. It was all just Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, big hair and muscle cars!
I feel like every generation thinks they are the enlightened ones.
Exactly. I just sort of glossed over that part of her comments because she’s just wrong, but I also just think that’s often how people think. Everyone thinks the previous generation had it “so easy.” I honestly think part of that is due to how we teach history. I was in high school (maybe? maybe late middle school) before I really started to learn about the Vietnam war, the Iran hostage crisis, etc. My knowledge of the 60s and 70s before that was all hippies, some big marches that looked fun, and disco. I think that more recent history gets glossed over a lot in school maybe because there’s not perspective yet? IDK.
That was my first thought; they came of age during the time of AIDS and its horrors.
I spent a good portion of my 80’s childhood thinking I’d die in a nuclear war. And hoping the bomb would hit my city first because surviving seemed too horrible. I also have a hard time believing Iraq or Afghanistan played any part in her childhood consciousness. It certainly didn’t for my same age kids. We are no where near as affluent as her family and my kids still don’t have any friends or acquaintance that are fighting overseas. Those wars seem so distant and vague without a draft. It doesn’t seem to define a generation like Vietnam did. Plus it was x’s and Xennials that went to fight right after 9/11.
Yes, me too. You have to remember The Day After to know what it was like growing up in the 80’s.
The Day After…oh god. We watched that as a class, in 6th grade, at school. I just thought we would die in a nuclear war, no real question about that, but you never knew when, which day the world might turn into a toxic wasteland. The radiation burns, hair falling out, dying of starvation after the food or water in your bunker ran out, if you managed to hide from the initial explosion…that WAS our future, I thought.
Then – more Gen X issues – I was assaulted and raped by a stranger on a trip to London in 1990, that’s how I list my virginity. I was so scared I might be pregnant, or had caught HIV. I was afraid to tell my parents what happened…I’d snuck out from the B&B where we were staying, to listen to some bands playing around Leicester Square. Was too shamed/embarrassed to tell my parents what happened, so I hid it…my parents were born in the 50’s. We didn’t even talk about sex. Rape?! Didn’t happen to people like us, or something. I hid the bruises on my neck under a turtleneck in August (which they didn’t question)…I have a MUCH more honest relationship with my own child. Best childhood ever?
Xenial is what I consider myself from my memories and my overall perspective,she should really not be telling us how not hard things were-Simpler,yes because of the lack of internet and social media. Did this girl never hear about AIDS,Gulf War,Bosnia and Herzegovina?
Yes to what you’ve listed – and the arms race, the Cold War, mutually assured destruction, etc etc. Silly bratty comment – but I’d bet she was told to say it to get more publicity since her dad was in the king if all genX movies, Reality Bites, and that would get her more press. Oh look, it worked. On a shallow nasty pre-coffee level she looks like Lena Dunham’s thinner sister in the first picture.
And the threat of nuclear war hanging over our heads which was a very real fear at the time. The 1980s were full of films that were terrifying to this teenager – try Threads, or When the Wind Blows.
Also, my Gen X brother-in-law fought in the first gulf war at the age of 18. How is that having it easy?
I think she forgets that all generations are suffering in this pandemic. My Uncle (one of the silent generation, was alive during WWII but too young to fight) just died of Covid 19. My auntie (also silent gen) and their daughters (boomers) were unable to say goodbye to him. At the other end of the scale there are new born babies dying of this disease.
She needs to take a seat and pull her head out of her arse – I don’t mind which order she does it in…
Yes she seems to think life is over after your twenties, so Gen Xers can’t possibly be suffering. Her generation can’t get high and party like we did, boo hoo. Meanwhile Gen Xers are literally trying to keep the world together by trying to keep their children and elderly parents safe, losing their jobs and loved ones, unable to pay rent and mortgages, trying to keep businesses running (or failing), or working for organizations that are actually trying to save us all. But we got to party in our 20s, so there’s that.
I know! She’s clueless. You know it happened in our 20s? 9/11, and all that followed. And if I’m not mistaken, we’re still here and dealing with THIS pandemic.
I’ll give her credit for recognizing her privilege for getting film roles, but the Gen X comments are really stupid.
Also, she’s one of the few people her age who can afford her own place, going back to her parents house was a choice.
yeah, thank you. a big oart of the world had terrible terrible wars happen in those years. Bosnia, Ruanda…to just name a few. her parents may had gas-guzzling free livin’ good old youth, but my sister just finished high-school as the war in our country was starting. I rememeber listening to Dire straits Brothers in Arms in the basement while the bombs fell and her crying becaue her 18yeard old now husband was sent to the front lines. I’m sure Maya wouldn’t want to live through that.
Yeah, those Reagan-nomics were real good to us minorities, too. And if she was joking, it was a dumb joke that excluded a lot of people.
Exactly. What a clueless whiner. I never heard of Maya before and I hope I never do again.
Agreed. I can do without her 21-year old privileged wisdom.
and we also weren’t affected at all by 9/11, or the multiple recessions either . . .
Right. I think she’s basing it off of what she knows of her parents’ existence during that time. Cool, young, rich, out of touch movie stars. Much like her own inherited existence now. *sigh*
The war in Bosnia was hardly hard on Americans, who she’s referencing here. My parents are Gen X, and they had it way harder than I did, because there was a war here ( I’m from Croatia). Bit they also didn’t have to deal with a lot of the existential worries I have to worry about.
Let’s not forget about Chernobyl!
Exactly. F8ck this dumb rich self absored twat.
No Rwanda, no chernobyl, no two-minutes-to-midnight nuclear war.
Still, love her mum and so by default love her (c.f. privilage)
My uncle died of AIDS in 1988. I may be Gen X, ( and proud), but I don’t remember things always being so great during the Gen X decades.
AIDS was huge for our generation, but the war in Bosnia had zero impact on Americans. The gulf war lasted, what, 30 days? She’s not wrong. Gen-X was the *first* and currently only American generation to grow up without a war. My Gen-X significant other and I (also very proudly Gen-X) have always felt that the reason movies and music were so amazing in the 80s and so blah in the 90s were that the 80s entertainers had grown up in difficult times, but the 90s were peaceful, prosperous, and pretty blah. So we invented the entire Internet instead (not the technology but all the sites). No thanks necessary. Gen-X was happy to do it.
ETA: We both grew up poor in semi-abusive homes, do definitely not privileged, but we loved
the pop-culture of the 80s and feel grateful it was there for us when we needed it to survive childhood and adolescence.
And how about the near constant threat of nuclear war from the Soviet Union? My sister and I would go into a panic whenever a “Special Report” broke in to the normal day-time television programming in the early to mid 80’s. We have all had our challenges and guess what? I am still here to partake in the Covid-19 pandemic too, so it’s not like I get to take a pass on that “fun” either. I do feel bad for the younger generations who are stuck at home right now because they are missing out on some rites of passage, but she comes across as a spoiled and entitled little turd.
does she not know that GenXers also fought during the Iraq War after 9/11?
how ignorant is this person? She doesn’t represent her generation well and is super cringy.
And that Cold War was a hoot! Daily anxiety about nuclear annihilation at any moment, especially after The Day After blew up my school on national TV was like skipping through daisies!
Nah. Spoiled privileged brat and not in the least funny.
I was writing the same! Not only a privileged spoiled brat but also very ignorant without any knowledge of history. And not really a good or interesting actress, just good connections. So tired of these kids of famous people…
I think she comes across really well. Apart from Domhnall Gleeson I don’t remember any second generstion actor/model/singer admiting how much their parents fame helped them.
My daughter is her age and doesn’t sound like that, thank goodness.
Good grief, youngster! My children are all in the “Snowflake” generation, of which she is a member, and they are all more self aware than she is! Cold War, AIDS, Operation Desert Storm (I guess she thinks that didn’t happen?), and the climate crisis. No, Gen Xers are not all SUV-driving ostriches, dear. The people running the labs and think tanks and trying to get out of this mess that previous generations created are…guess what? Gen Xers! Go back to preschool, Ms. Hawke. Ok, stepping off my soap box now.
Yeah. No civil rights activists getting hanged by neo-colonial governments. No astronomical student loan debt (for those who even had access) that is now *not* being included in the pandemic forbearance. No Nelson Mandela in prison, freedom fighters being tortured and disappeared, no reporters disappearing or people running for their lives across borders. None of that and so much more. Yeah, life was a gd breeze in the 90s worldwide. Ugh. I truly can’t stand ignorant entitled children.
I’m a Xennial too (born in 82.) I don’t identify with a lot of GenX stuff and a lot of Millenial stuff doesn’t apply to me, but I guess technically I’m still a millennial, until the Xennial term really catches on, lol.
I liked these quotes. Its interesting how self-aware she is about getting roles. I thought she was great in Stranger Things. But of course being the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman is going to help her in her career. It’s nice that she acknowledges that. I hate when children of celebs are like “no my success is totally based on talent!” no, its not.
Not to mention more than one recession and no bailouts…
Oh, there were bailouts. To ginormous, poorly run corporations with bloated salaries at the top and mistreatment of workers down the line.
This is like saying that the ’50s were some sort of golden age. It’s just not true.
Yup, and the US bailed out the collapsing Mexican peso in the mid-1990s….because many Wall Street had taken large positions in it. Sound familiar?
She should watch her dad’s film “Reality Bites.” Loads of bright young folks who were unemployed and underemployed because of the recession.
Well x-ers definitely weren’t old enough to vote for Regan and that’s when things went to shit for the middle class and the environment.
Gen Xer here and i did vote for Reagan. i was young and dumb and learned a harsh lesson about voting republican. I have voted democrat ever since .
Her comments are stupid. They are saying that the current economic crisis is worse than 1987. i graduated college in 1987 and had to move back home because there were no jobs! We have lived through Reagan, fear of nukes, AIDs epidemic, my brother was in the Airforce during Dessert Storm. I witnessed Bush stealing an election from Gore (stupid Florida and hanging chads). I grew up with friends who had babies WITHOUT FMLA protections. And don’t get me started on the sexual harassment our generation has endured…
This privileged, clueless brat needs to read a history book and STFU!!
If you voted for Reagan, even the 2nd time, you aren’t really Gen-X. If you were 18 in 1984, you were too young too be Boomer too old to be Gen-X. I have an aunt your age (never a republican) and it’s a weird in-between generation, but you weren’t a kid with a rubic cube watching ET, so no, not really Gen-X.
Gen X starts in 1965, so yes i am. I’m not a weird in-between generation and who are you to tell me what i am!
You’re right. Not my place to say. But since you weren’t necking to 80s ballads in your teens or chatting with randoms on IRC in college, you sound kinda like my parents (except they didn’t vote for Reagan).
The in between generation is called Generation Jones. Too young to be a boomer, too old to be Gen X. I’m 1965, so I’m the first wave of GenXers, too.
Xennials are acutely aware of how bad shit is and can be. I graduated high school the year of 9/11 and graduated college into the Great Recession. Not exactly a cakewalk. Every generation has its struggles. Gen X is a forgotten generation in most narratives and their struggles and needs are usually not discussed.
As a Gen Xer myself, I find this hilarious. Gen Xers rag on the younger generations all the time, I think it’s fair to get some back! I do find her quarantine frustrations understandable, after just getting out of my parents house in my early 20s I would have been horrified to be forced back AND to be quarantined with them!
But how was she “forced” back? She was living on her own and she certainly has the means to continue doing so.
Enough with the labels already.
I don’t think she realises just how bog-standard normal and basic she’s being, indulging one of the worst and most common of human knee-jerk “find a scapegoat” reactions. She’ll be mortified when she figures the out in a decade or so. As I was myself…
I chuckled. Her emotions are so similar to my 19-year-old’s. He’s been so up and down since having to leave his beloved campus and the real independence that was emerging has been just brought to a screeching halt. It’s like so many young adults have had their wings clipped. My 21 y.o. son is on a much more even keep about it all.
I thought she was great in Stranger Things.
My college spawn are surprisingly OK with the quarantine and lockdown. We keep waiting for the meltdown.
She seems unclear on what exactly a Baby Boomer is… (she’s also incredibly US/UK-centric–loads of people around the world have dealt with wars in recent generations, and talk to West Africans about ebola, or Gen-X gay men about AIDS).
As for blame, the generational othering we engage in is counterproductive and inaccurate. Certain people from the Greatest, Silent, Boomer, Gen-X, and even Milliennial generations have played a role in creating this neocon hell we’re in (or starting wars, or ignoring the urgency of C19 at the policy or individual level). I know (or read about in the news) heartless, greedy, corporate types in their 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, and even 20s–and then there are all the indifferent bystanders. This Gen-Xer is exhausted.
AIDS didn’t only affect gay men. It was a looming spectre over us all. For a long time the government ignored it. Reagan took years to say the word. Princess Diana made an earth shattering difference by simply showing up and touching people affected. Even back then it affected babies and children and women.
“GRID” was what they called it when they thought it only affected gay men. That was back in the early ’80s.
She’s full of it.
I’mma shut up now before this gets my goat any further!
But what a horrific time it was for gay men. I remember, it was about 1990 I guess, my first office job. We had some team of experts in for something or other, and what I remember most strongly is one of them getting a phone call that go put through to my desk. He was gay, I mean, I knew that, though I don’t think we outright discussed it. Anyway, he was standing near me, and I held out my phone to him, and said “it’s for you”. And he stared at me for a second or two, and then fumbled something like “oh, oh, you want me to take it on your phone, oh okay, thanks” and he took the phone from me. I gave him one of my wtf looks, but it was later that night I realized what it was.
People in my office would not share phones with him. We never said a word about it but became friends after that. I handed him the phone without even thinking about it. That was likely Princess Diana, because yes, she really did a lot for awareness and understanding how you could and could NOT contract HIV. Her main impact? It was on Gen X. Boomers were already too set in their ways.
AIDS a was a huge deal in the 80s and 90s and it’s pretty ignorant of her to not know just how bad things were. So many people died, especially gay men. Maybe her parents should have a chat with her about it.
My mother’s cousin passed away in 1990 from it and even then he was not encouraged to go to a hospital because he might not be treated well. His family doctor basically told him to stay at home and die. And the level of prejudice was insane. His parents never admitted that he had it and pretended it was leukaemia. And a bomb threat was called during his funeral mass (which we only heard about later).
So while coronavirus is scary and has plague like tendencies, they are still not dealing with massive homophobia and hate that happened during the AIDS epidemic. This lasted over a decade. Not just a few months. The difference here is that everyone can get and die from coronavirus and it can’t just be called the gay disease. (Even if that was inaccurate)
But “baby boomer” is a US and UK-specific term based on the baby boom caused America soldiers returning from war so of course she’s speaking in a US and U.K. centered way. The term won’t apply to other countries because they will have their own events and their own definition of generations.
Came here to say the same thing. By and large, Xers had, and continue to have, very limited demographic power.
In fact, most of us have had to create our own jobs; Xers were the earliest gig workers. At least where I live (Canada) many of us have multiple grad degrees but can’t buy homes, and we can barely afford tiny cars. It was my Baby Boom parents’ generation that drove up the cost of real estate, bought the giant SUVs, and still can’t stop buying every plastic kitchen gadget that was ever produced in China.
I am an Xer, and somewhat of an apologist to that end, but I’m also a university researcher and non-fiction book author, so I know of what I speak. And yeah, I finally bought my first place, a tiny condo, at age 44.
Congratulations!
Nylon did her dirty with that first shot
Omg. I can’t read stupidity without my head exploding. Twisting history to suit narratives has always been immature, ignorant and exhausting. You’d think youth could be more creative as time goes on, nope. SSDD. Read a history book and then frak off.
Right?!? The little thing we call the freaking COLD WAR where there was still a need to routinely test the community’s air raid sirens in case of nuclear attack —both in town and on television (don’t we all remember the quarterly ‘this is only a test of the emergency broadcast system ’ placard with the scary siren sound on tv). The gas rationing in the late 70s? The financial crash in the 80s? The AIDS epidemic— with no treatment—where suddenly people were dying just by having sex, which completely reshaped intimacy and dating in the 80s and 90s? The horror of the terrorist attacks in the early 2000s. The Bush 2 admin was basically as terrifying as the Trump one—-Cheney literally running the country, pouring blood in the sand for oil, falsifying why it was happening while he dismantled two country’s infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan and set up torture prisons in Guantanamo. The horrific financial crash in 2007, the worst since the Great Depression?
Wish the interviewer had schooled her to this just to get some wisdom in her. Probably couldn’t believe what had just blurted out of her mouth.
Pick a decade. Any decade, and there are lives lived amidst tragedy, fear, growth, change and hope. And then broaden horizons through centuries past to learn the same things. In fact, throughout human history, the only thing that changes is technology and the toys and tools with which we get to surround ourselves. We continue to underscore our collective capacity for treachery, ignorance, love and ingenuity. Kids are still kids. Teens still rebel. Young adults continue to think they know everything, and every generation thinks they invented the same things. How many times will we be introduced to a new crop of hipsters lol? And how long does it take to realize this fundamental truth?
The terror of the Iran Hostage Crisis too. That is a vivid memory from my childhood.
This! Ugh. Cannot stand the combo of ignorance and entitlement with youth.
I LOVE how self-aware she is. Reminds me of all the daughters and sons of other famous people who go “everything I got I earned the hard way, my last name worked against me” – shush. Maya is a lot more grounded, and that bit she says about how if she’s not good she’ll stop getting chances… Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke did a great job raising her.
I remember when I was deep and knew everything
well, maybe she should follow up on some history before she rants about gen X having it easy. some countries were in bloody wars that did ruin the future of many. i guess it just shows some people always look at things through their own pink sunglasses. and yeah, these gen labels are getting annoying for me at least. I’m 84 so I’m a cross between the two, and it’s annoying reading about we this, them that…
I feel like she’s just basing this off of movies. We weren’t all doing blow with James Spader characters or smoking pot with your pops in Reality Bites, Maya.
Lololol! This is my favorite comment so far. No, we were not doing lines of anything with the gorgeous, linen suit-clad James Spader in the 80s. He played such a beautiful a##### in Pretty in Pink. Love that you mentioned it.
lmao, I was actually thinking the same. She thinks life was like Boogie Nights. Even in Reality Bites, they addressed AIDS.
I can’t even..what did I just read?
I think she has a point without realizing it. I’m a xennial I guess (didn’t know there was a term for it) and spent half of my teen years in the 90s. Things were “easier” in one respect and that is we were allowed to just tune out the world. It was so easy. There was TV and magazines and that was it. My parents religiously watched the nightly news (in Germany it’s 15 min of Tagesschau) and we did as well but compare 15 minutes and one or two newspapers a day to what is happening now. And what it has done to the discourse in most Western countries. It’s bananas. The crazy news-watching, for us, started with 9/11, and only went crazier with social media etc. Our brains just aren’t made for this. Older people make fun of the anxiety young people seem to be suffering from more and more but honestly, how are you not anxious growing up on 24-hour-news???
So no, previous generations didn’t generally have it easier. But we were allowed to grow up with a sense of optimism and calm (depending on where you grew up in the world of course). You can call it denying reality or ignoring problems but I don’t know that what we have now is better.
I can totally understand it starting then for you. But for me, a Gen X’er, the crazy 24/7 news cycle actually began during the gulf war. Look up “Scud stud”. It was a thing. It was 1990. CNN. If it weren’t for the 24/7 cable news craziness, Clinton likely would never have been impeached. It definitely began in 90, and took off fast. And they had A LOT of hours to fill.
I’m not in the US though, our news cycle didn’t speed up until the 2000’s. We didn’t have a network or channel dediated solely to news until 1992 (n-tv) and back then a lot of people still didn’t have cable. And if they did, this wasn’t what they watched. The second one came in 2000 and to this day, we really only have a handful of them. Our public stations ramp up their news coverage in times like these which everyone started doing on 9/11. I think we just have a very different news culture here but yeah, our media has certainly caught up to yours in the last maybe 10 years. It’s not good.
God no, definitely not good. I’m sorry we spread it!
LOL I think it was also just the rise of social media that gave it the last push. TV didn’t want social media to take their audience. At least we don’t have anything like Fox News. I’m honestly not even sure why, I’m just happy about it.
“Scud Stud” – ah yes, Wolf Blitzer, probably the first of the scud studs.
Uh…I’m a millennial (born in 87) and this is all kinds of wrong. I would say Baby Boomers have done the most damage to this country and the world. Gen X, no offense, gets forgotten a lot and has had to deal with the same crap as us but a bit longer. Also has this child not heard of the AIDS crisis or the Gulf War?! Are they not teaching that in schools anymore or somthing??
Just came here to say that I saw her Dad’s movie recently from back in the day (94, i think?)– “Reality Bites”. And she is a prefect mix of both her parents!! Def has Ethan’s eyes
I’m Gen X, and I am not sure why she is singling us out? Not only are we the smallest generation, But we just got to senior management! And we DID NOT have it easy. AIDS was terrifying and ravished an entire community, including my beloved uncle. It made the thought of having sex terrifying. The Cold War was no cake walk — nuclear war was a real threat. And don’t get me started on our parents. They were so self absorbed with their many existential crises, we were pretty much left to raise ourselves — heard of the latchkey generation?
@Marie…but that’s why we gen x have been so good at covid 19. We’ve been training our whole lives. Three recessions not including the dot com bust. The Cold War, fall of the Berlin Wall. AIDS and the no means no movement. In many areas date/marital rape was almost expected. Pro choice was sometimes legal but very hard to come by in reality. There were wars all over the world, and often privileged societies forgot as they were “over there”. Apartheid…anyone remember that? The world had some horrific situations even during our time. And now as as then, there will be heroes and villains. I feel honoured to have been on the planet at the same time as Nelson Mandela. Maya will hopefully stop bashing other generations…and who knows…maybe will be one of the unsung heroes.
Oh and 9/11 of course.
Exactly. We’re good at this because we know.
This new game of blaming previous generations irritates me. Life has never been a hunky dory utopia for anyone. GenXers grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement, Watergate, AIDs, Reagan, and the Cold War. We had a massive recession in the 1980s making it very difficult to find jobs well into the early 90s. We also had Bush’s first Iraq War, 9/11, Afghanistan, and the second Iraq War.
And Boomer people brought much of the amazing progress younger people seem to think just sprung out of thin air. They led the Civil Rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the LGBT movement and so much more.
Also the crack epidemic and the Drug War. My God. Those were horrible times.
Thank you, Mich, for point those things out. I’m also an actual Gen-Xer and I remember those things, too.
I also remember the very beginning of Aids (when it was GRID – Gay Related Immune Deficiency) and how horrible the response to that was. Does she have any idea how gay people were does she have any idea what it was like to be gay at that time? It’s certainly not great now, but back in the 70’s and 80′ very few people were out and same-sex marriage was unthinkable.
I remember multiple conversations about whether or not there would be a nuclear war killing everyone. No one was sure of the answer. I could go on.
I hate to sound harsh, but she sounds ignorant and self-absorbed. She learn something about history before she starts publicly commenting on it.
Thanks Mich. As a Boomer, I hope to God, Kaiser’s comment that the Boomers fucked everything up was a joke. It is so easy to forget, we lived through the Cold War (I remember drills when we had to get under our desks and put our hands over our heads —- as if that would protect us from an atomic bomb). Then there were the murders of Medgar Evers, JFK, Martin Luther King, and RFK and the profound impact those deaths had on us. There was the Freedom Riders, Vietnam, Kent State, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not to mention Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, the Organic Food, Recycling, LBGT movements and beginnings. There was a lot of pain and a lot of good beginnings that kept growing. So, please don’t say it was all our fault. History is a long line of decade after decade, century after century and every generation faces bad and creates good in some way.
Im Gen X (1975 model) and she is BANG ON!
I am in Australia and back in 1994 I got accepted into the most prestigious art school in the nation and spent three years studying Fine Arts…cost? $0. It was all subsidised by the government and instead of paying $50 K a year we paid nada.
Employment was sky high and so easy to get a job in a swanky bar and earn $1000 a week in tips on top of wages.
Cheap rent.
Cheap groceries.
Cheap fuel.
Now my 18 and 19 year old pay half what they earn on rent and have to repay tuition back to government.
Need I go on?
College tuition was better, I’ll give you that, but she’s talking about wars and pandemics and other things, and as you can see by the comments above, she’s clearly wrong.
I’m the same age as you, and maybe things were different on the other side of the world.
I live in the US and remember having drills in elementary school where we would take shelter under our desks because of the threat of nuclear war. We all were going to die because of the nukes race between Russia (the big bad) and the US. I grew thinking WW3 was around the corner. We had the Gulf War and AIDS. If you had sex, you were going to die. I knew people who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed and someone who died there. I had college loans and crappy starter jobs. Life was not like the movies.
I think things *were* easier with respect to the things you listed, but for her to say that war and illness skipped that generation is beyond ignorant. You could easily get a job and car and fill it with cheap gas, but you did it against the backdrop of the Vietnam war. You lived in fear of touching something a gay person touched in case they were unknowingly transmitting AIDS. Even in the 90s, when I was growing up, we were afraid to use pay phones in case someone had stashed an infected needle in the coin return. There were upsides and downsides to that time, as there are at any point in history.
When I was 21, I was fresh out of school trying to get a job during the recession in the early 90s. And I didn’t have the buzz of famous parents getting me in for an interview.
I’m not a history buff, how many wars has L.A. seen in the past 21 years?
Gang wars, drug wars, gun wars…
L.A. isn’t just Hollywood.
If she moved out and wants to be independent, I wonder why she didn’t just stay at her place?
I’m a Xennial and she has me confused. My parents both served during the Gulf War.
And if you look beyond American shores, you see war everywhere in those years. The Central American wars, Bosnia, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, the Iran/Iraq war, etc.
And I think younger adults fundamentally do not understand the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. It’s a testament to science and technology the world over that HIV/AIDS are viewed as manageable conditions and not the death sentence it used to be.
Maya has quite a bit to learn.
OMG. We were the first generation where it was expected that both partners had a job outside the home, except we didn’t have regular childcare available. We had Chernobyl, the Cold War, the Gulf War, AIDS. We entered jobs at more hours for less money than our parents. Oh and those parents are now getting to be an age where they need us to care for them while we are still raising our younger kids. And of course still working. And on the Internet, we get to listen to Boomers and Millenials getting in each others faces. But sure, we have it real easy.
Yup. All of this.
Clueless spoiled benefactor of nepotism says what?
Bless her heart.
What a stupid thing to say. Honey you have no idea what Gen X went through. F*ck right off.
My parents grew up in East Germany and my grandparents were traumatized from the Second World War. Yeah they had it so easy.
I think she’s mixing up her parents’ generation with her actual parents, who have been movie stars for most of their lives.
She could do with a little time outside her bubble, and it doesn’t look like she’s headed in that direction.
I’m an early Millenial (born in ’84) and I know every generation had their problems. It’s easy to look back and romantize the past. She mentioned she’s going through depression so it might be that. Its funny how the X-genders seem to be the generatiom that the Centennials will blame for everything as Millenials did with the boomers.
Also we tend to think a certain period of time was easy. I met a lady from California back on February that happened to be visiting my hometown to attend a rock festival and she told me how happy she was to have enjoyed her young years during the 70’s and I couldn’t agree more with her.
Yeah, nothing except little stuff like the Gulf war, war in the Balkans, the AIDs crisis and the constant threat of nuclear war throughout most of the 80’s. And that’s not even everything
Gen Xers lived through while also being ignored by pretty much everyone.
She can take her privileged ass to the nearest stadium and take all the seats.
Gulf I
Gulf II
Rwanda
Bosnia
Kosovo
AIDS
Ebola
Sars
Swine flu
Cold War
Threat of Nuclear Armageddon
1987 stock market crash
Afghanistan
9/11
07/07
2008 credit crisis
Etc etc
Easy as pie, the lot of it
Send the child to school. Even better, get her to use the biggest repository of free information in history – the internet
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@Andrew’s Nemesis,
I find it hysterical that people on this site who talk about awareness non-stop are being so tone-deaf. Claiming that YOU were “affected” by Rwanda and Bosnia when you literally sat on another continent and watched it unfold from afar is far less self-aware than what Maya said. Being alive during that time and being affected by it is VERY different.
Maya is absolutely right, Americans were NOT affected by most of these things. Watching 9/11 on TV is panic-inducing for sure, but in the end, none of you were in mortal danger from it if you were not in Manhattan. Knowing someone who fought in Afghanistan is NOT the same as hiding from bombs (sometimes AMERICAN bombs) in building basements with your babies.
America always had it the same as the rest of the world (AIDS, SARS, 2008) or better (Kosovo and Ebola were NOT affecting average Americans, for crying out loud), in the last century. Not being able to admit it is the epitome of privilege.
@El: Yes, these comments are rather cringe and lack the self-awareness that so many here are expecting of a twenty-one year old.
If I can be blunt, I expect I’ll be alive for another 60 years — Gen X won’t be. It will be the millennials and Gen Z who are dealing with the worst of what’s to come (food shortages, mass migration and the resultant territory disputes, resource hoarding, etc.) To act as though reading about the Rwandan or Bosnian genocides whilst cozied up safe in America was in any way equivalent to what’s to come is ego-driven fantasy and irresponsible. Boomers shoulder the biggest portion of blame, its true, but acting as if Gen X isn’t complicit is a bit ridiculous.
Is Maya 100% right? No, but she’s 21. I expect that. I don’t know what your excuse is if you’re over 40, as most of these commenters presumably are.
And I would point out to those of you here who are Gen X with children that you can expect to have this exact conversation (and others like it) with your own children someday when they realise what they’re up against and the world you brought them into. Almost every millennial and gen z kid I know has had that talk with their parents or plans to. Hopefully you’ll give them a less condescending answer than you did here — they didn’t have a choice. You did.
@Dandy
thank you!
Lost friends in Bosnia; also Gulf I and II, both serving and civilian. Don’t preach to the choir.
Oh my. It must be nice to be so stupid.
As a Gen-Xer I think it is so easy to blame us. We didn’t coast or have no issues, we just didn’t have social media to bitch about them constantly or share every bad thing that “happened” to us to the world, we put our heads down and did what had to be done.
There is blame for every generation in this, I think we should focus on those who are closed minded and unable to see the other side – regardless of age those are the people who we need to get on board. We all know someone of any age who doesn’t get it… and until those people are affected by an issue negatively they are never going to change.
The Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation? The Eastern European wars? The Gulf Wars? The 70s inflation? Reagan’s drug war? The AIDS pandemic? The IRA? These are just a handful of the things I remember from the 80s and early 90s when I was but a wee lass. Not to mention the massive burden Gen X women are handling as caretakers for their elderly parents while many still have school age children.
I’m focused on Millennial issues because I am a Millennial, but I’m not going to pretend it’s been easy street for lots of people. We center in on Boomers because most of the surviving ones these days are the wealthier demographcis, but plenty among them knew poverty and hardship.
How did Eastern European wars or Gulf wars affect the average American???
Of course anxiety- and uncertainly-inducing things happen everywhere, even in America, but to deny that Americans as a nation have not been on the receiving end of a war or a famine in a really long time is just… mind-boggling. To claim that we were affected by Rwanda is unfathomable. Rwandans were affected by Rwanda. Bosnians were affected by Bosnia. Iraqis and some American soldiers were affected by Iraq. The rest of us READ about those things, we didn’t have them happen to us.
Ummm . . . the threat of nuclear holocaust throughout our formative years, AIDS, multiple significant economic crashes, 9/11, endless war in which our generation served? M’kay.
Generations don’t serve in wars, people do. People were affected by wars, but America as a country very much was not. To claim that Gulf wars had an impact on us is a slap to the face of all the Iraqis who were slaughtered during those wars.
I remember hiding under a desk in elementary school for a “drill” meant to keep us safe from a Soviet attack and also fearing that AIDS could be passed on that same desk if someone had a nose bleed on it. We drove gas guzzling cars because there were no alternatives? But we celebrated Earth Day because there was a hole in the Ozone layer, acid rain and endangered eagles. My gay friends lost an entire generation of friends to a disease that was ignored and underplayed by a Republican administration and after Communism crumbled, we jumped right back into being scared of terrorists. Those were the good old days, for sure.
Before the 80’s, Americans had a lot of divisions of their factories in Southern Ontario. During the early 80’s those companies pulled out and sent their manufacturing to Mexico, pretty much all at once, leaving small to mid-sized communities economically devastated. So we were not driving around gas guzzling cars everywhere, as she asserts. There was walking and worrying and seeing your friends move away. I mean, we were still partying because there wasn’t much else to do, but if she’s going to SoulCycle instead of downing a case of beer with her buddies in an overgrown park, that’s on her.
I stood at the Berlin wall and watched people scream/cry when they finally saw loved ones for the first time. I remember doing drills to hide under my desk in the event of nuclear fallout. My husband served in Panama, Iraq, and Honduras and I listened to the partner of one of my best friends scream in pain all night when I stayed at their house because his hands felt like they were on fire from AIDS. I wept as I watched the towers fell and I took 10 to 12 meetings a day for years on end with people pleading with the non-profit I worked for to pay their mortgages for them so they didn’t lose everything. I returned home (often) to see my neighbors belongings on the front lawn and an eviction notice on the door. It’s not the same as WWII or the Great Depression, but my life is far from over. Each generation has its own pain and it’s own brilliance. My brother is a Gen X and he’s been a sustainability manager and leader in university innovation for climate change solutions for almost 2 decades – we care too hon. Our kiddos are living in this.
I’m gen x and my youth was a series of dead end jobs. Remember the recession in the early nineties. Every single person in my family got laid off, even my father.. But lots of good times too, no social media, no cell phones. I felt really free. Going to concerts and clubs that were actually affordable. Not feeling like I had to dress up and slather on a ton of makeup. Wonderful.
Oh in reference to A. I also saw a dear friend crying as they learned they had AIDS. They died a year later. So we did have our plague.
A startling amount of younger people I’ve met don’t know anything about the AIDS pandemic. It’s a really unsettling commentary on how well this country has done to write it out of our history, particularly in terms of how it was allowed to devastate the LGBT+ community.
That’s really terrible. theaidsmemorial on instagram does an excellent (and heart wrenching) job of making sure that we don’t forget the impact that AIDS had on the world and those who were lost to it.
This. I teach kids her age and the lack of awareness of HIV/AIDS is astounding to me.
With enough nepotism to keep you afloat, you can be ignorant as Maya.
Wow. Like, I like Maya Hawke and I think she’s arguably a better actor than both parents combined.
But WTAF.
Gurl. You need to go read. That’s just some tone deaf, ignorant shit.
Yes the generation that bleeds parents dry….most cant do anything with out the involvement of parents. I bet shes enjoying her fame because……of her parents!!
Every generation has a big traumatic event (or several) that defines their childhood/adolescence/adulthood, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a war with bombs and guns. Enough people have listed so many examples from the 70-90s so I don’t have to go on and list them. Gen X didn’t have some amazing, carefree existence where nothing bad happened ever. The 70s and 80s were also prime serial killer activity!! (If you google you’ll see there was a rise in serial killers starting in the 60s going up until the 80s when DNA first start being used in forensics).
No wars? Oh come on Maya, haven’t you done any research on the generation of your character on Stranger Things? Robin is what, about 16 or 17 in 1985? Come on girl, lol.
Vietnam, Gulf war and AIDS. I was three when Vietnam ended, in my teens when AIDS exploded over the planet and in my early 20’s when the gulf war happened. My cohort (Gen X) is the forgotten generation wedged between two larger ones and is usually left out of the generational battles.
I didn’t know that I had a generational term.
I feel included.
As for her, my mother used to say something all of the time that I swear comes back to me more and more…
“Nobody knows how stupid you are til you open your mouth”
That’s all.
No war or political unrest? No AIDS? The Vietnam and Cold Wars didn’t exist? lmfao. Fuck outta here. I was born in ’88 and she is full of shit. Whether or not she is being intentionally flippant make a point about privilege, she’s contributing to the spread of misinformation, and that is dangerous. She needs to walk this back.
I do not want to defend it, but he did not know how to divide what he said, I think I generalize everything … If we go to the artistic world of Hollywood, the artists of the 60s and 70s that for me was the true golden age such as Marlon Brando and Audrey Hepburn. (They are the ones who opened the world of entertainment in my opinion, the true blood, of what they were) The 80’s and 90’s, despite the fame of cute and cool, I hide a lot (HARLEY WEINSTEIN) and I see a type of pact, like everyone is going the same way, obvious for convenience. for example: because there are actors from the 80s and 90s, who do not allow young people to advance, such as the generation of young people having to ask their permission, praising their egos for these dinosaur actors, to continue in the industry. and with regard to society, I believe that everything progresses according to generation and education …
Good grief this child is delusional. AIDS, the gulf war, the Cold War, recessions after we graduated college, baby boomers making horrendours decisions that would affect us for a very long time. Baby boomers had it the easiest. They had jobs, the American dream was actually a thing for them (if they were priviled white people). It was not like that for Gen X. The econimy was not what it had been when they graduated college. I realize that the economy is even worse for Millenials, but do not for one second put all the blame on Gen X. We may have been slackers but we didnt have a choice. That was when Reagan made it lucractive for companies to manufacture offshore where overhead and labor costs were cheap. That is when things really started too get awful. It took so long to fix what could be fixed, and now we have someone 100 times worse. He is a baby boomer. Peace out.
I think people are taking this too literally. I felt like it was a bit of taking the piss. Her father was LITERALLY the poster child for GenX angst.
I think one of the issues that has impacted me a lot growing up and into adulthood is Homophobia. I’m a Graduate of high school in 1993 in NorCal. I’ve seen so much homophobia (& racism & bigotry.) I’m so glad the younger ones today have less concerns of those issues now, but to ignore those struggles is ignoring a large part of our experience. I have witnessed too many people be crushed, terrified, miserable, due to Homophobia. People were physically attacked, discriminated against for their HIV+ status also, some couldn’t get treatment, 2 friends of my parents died. One was a wonderful friend who I still miss, though he passed by the time I was 8.
Also I’d say sexism and all of society’s subversive and overt oppression and violence against women, sexual assaults on women and lack of true equality have also negatively impacted the lives of women around me and in my family, for generations. So, so not hard.
Lol, kids. I’m very happy to be able to encourage my sons to be whatever and whoever they need to be now as opposed to when I grew up. It’s wonderful to know that harassment is illegal now as well, we didn’t have many options regarding hate crimes, domestic violence and even crimes against children. It’s heartening that states are changing statutes and that there is much more support of victims.
Of course the young ones don’t get it! Smh
She does look so much like both of her parents. Absolutely gorgeous.
Im Xennial too! Born 1980. Not quite Gen X not quite Millennial but I relate to both on a lot of things. And…she’s not wrong. Though I would say the screws were put in place by Boomers and were sealed in by Gen X. Gen X was full of white youth angst which as a black kid growing up during that time was puzzling to me. I felt like all of the older white kids and young adults were rebelling against their privilege which was rather obnoxious. And youth Millennials werent all that different on the front. BUT. They were also dealing with student debt, environmental crisis and social media.
The white kid angst was about the apathy white, privileged parents had toward our generation of their children. Our parents were the first generation to have us all as accessories to a successful life image instead of family, and we literally were not hugged enough.
We were the first generation (of all races) to be born into largely divorced (blended or single-parent) homes. For the first time, family units were not two-parent homes, and our mothers were the first generation of women to “prove to the world” that they could have it all.
Gen X was neglected emotionally, used as props socially, and it was a lot of baggage. That’s where the angst came from. Most of us didn’t drive around in cars doing drugs and congratulating ourselves on being masters of the universe. I never rebelled against privilege. I was sad because I never lived in the same house with my dad, I had two step-parents who favored their biological children over me, and my mother was too self-absorbed to make any of that better. It was sadness from emotional neglect and a realization of how low on the priority list we were for our families. We were the first generation to be raised like that. Prior to Gen X, kids in every socio-economic situation were raised in much more stable homes than ours were by parents who viewed parenthood as a duty rather than a check in the box for success.
I cannot speak to the black experience of the 80’s and 90’s, of course, but our fault (the white kids of GenX) lies in our blindness to the experience of the people of color around us and the plight of the world at large. We were self-absorbed into our late 20’s, but most of us snapped out of it and are raising our children better than we were raised.
Everybody else pointed out how clueless she is. But it goes beyond just ignorance of history and facts. She thinks the Gen-Xers, who were her age or even younger when Reagan and Bush I were president, are somehow responsible for those men getting into the white house — yet her generation is in no way responsible for Trump getting in? This isn’t just ignorance, this is inability to think logically. She is an idiot, not just a sheltered and uneducated person.
I don’t think she’s being entirely fair to gen Xers. I’m a millennial and yeah, I’m generally mad at older people for how we got here. But it’s far more productive to look forwards than backwards. Gen Xers have also borne the burden of bad decisions from their predecessors. We can’t waste any more time yelling at each other for who caused what–it’s time to just suck it up and work together to fix these problems.
But I also think a person’s background matters just as much as their age in terms of their outlook. My mom is a Boomer who comes from wealth and privilege, and just keeps telling me that jobs are easy to find, I’m just not looking hard enough. With 22 million people unemployed. She believes the economy ‘will bounce back by June’ and everything will be normal again and doesn’t understand why I am so depressed. My dad is also a Boomer but grew up in a working class family and was a brick mason for seven years before going to college and becoming an engineer. He remembers the layoffs and lean times from his construction days. He knows finding a job right now is hard. He knows younger people are getting a raw deal. When he was little his family lived paycheck to paycheck. My mom never experienced that. She genuinely cares about people who are less well-off, but she also just can’t relate to them. She doesn’t know how to talk to them. She has never experienced the constant, low-level anxiety that comes from being poor. I think ultimately your background influences you more than how old you are.
Sorry, she sounds like an entitled brat. And not very smart.
She has formed her opinion of Gen X by looking at her celebrity parents who had more money than they could spend, ease, luxury, and fame in their early 20’s.
As a middle class Gen X’er who is normative for the US in every way imaginable (white, Christian, middle-middle class parents with government jobs, and relatively vanilla in every other way, too), I think my perspective on Gen X is a little clearer than hers. Gen X has plenty of faults, but she hasn’t landed on any of them accurately. Our faults are that we grew up thinking the world was fine, that race relations were good and “solved,” and that our participation in the world was unwanted/unneeded. That apathy we were accused of early on was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it was born out of being raised by the most oxygen-sucking generation America has ever seen.
Gen X was fully grown before we were made to understand how broken systems and social constructs were, and we’ve sat quietly learning the lessons we should have grasped about justice and social inequality and political corruption and journalistic malfeasance earlier on. Blame us for that.
But no strife? No wars? Seriously? Read a book, little girl. No plagues? You cannot be serious here, either. AIDS shook the entire planet and permanently marked how our generation views sex and sexuality. Our parents had more money, more entitlement, more personal hubris, more greed, and more power than any generation preceding them post-slavery, and they’ve lived longer, too. Mostly in their late 70’s and early 80’s now, our parents, the Boomers, are STILL in control, and Gen X learned by the age of 25 that we’d never hold the power in this country.
Gen X is the forgotten middle child generation, and Miss Hawke has pointed her privileged finger at the wrong generation. We should take ownership of our political apathy as a group in Gen X, but aside from that, she needs to sit down until she’s learned a bit more about life and how the world works.
Marigold…
👏👏👏
This. So much this.
Well said, Marigold.
Also, she’s just having a knee-jerk reaction to her parent’s generation.
Gen X is the generation now simultaneously taking care of their kids AND their parents. I loved her in ST but Maya needs to check her privilege because she’s just whining about not being able to party.
Sure we had a great childhood when you look at it in rose colored 80’s glasses but we lived all the bullshit. Still do. Sit down gen Z.
I was going to write but you nailed it, Marigold. We aren’t without any blame but this chick needs to spend less time partying and more time studying the 1980s and 1990s.
So as a Gen-Xer I am not living it right now with every other generation on Earth? When can I move to Mars. I need to leave.
No wars and no plagues? Then WTF was I doing in Kuwait, Iran and Iraq? Did we suddenly forget about AIDS? I was going to keep going with this, but I think I’ll just leave it here…
Signed a Desert Storm Veteran and a woman…
Exactly. Everyone I know my age (late Gen X here) has spent his/her entire adult life dealing with war. We have been at war, non-stop, since I was in high school (and I’m now 45). I’m appalled at this kid’s total lack of awareness of the world around her.
I hope she is firmly reprimanded for this series of statements. It’ll help her grow up and learn that she is not the axis around which the earth spins (something all humans that age have to learn to some degree), and that she doesn’t know enough, yet, to form such confidently arrogant opinions.
“We’re in our 20’s. We should be doing drugs.” Oh my word. What a vapid twit. Her parents were high as a kite in the 90’s, so she assumes the entire world lived like that. I’m so disappointed, too, because I enjoyed her work in Stranger Things.
It sounds lile her education was John Hughes movies with some Empire Records thrown in. At least she shows awareness for the opportunities she has.
I’ll never forget a moment that was profound for me as a kiddo. My dad was a home care nurse and we were visiting a man with AIDS. I remember the place was an apartment complex with all male AIDS patients. My father was giving crazy expensive medication to his patient and the young man was thriving. His friend was doing poorly and said, ‘I won’t get any medicine until a white cheerleader in Kansas gets AIDS.’ I was 8 at the time but I’ve never heard such true words.
The man that my pops cared for made me a mirror with driftwood and I still have it. Sorry for the random story. I started thinking back.
This child is a prime example of the quote, “the older I get, the less I know.” Right now, she’s got a PhD.
No war? Tell that to my brother who served during the Gulf War. Or watching any hope of retirement slip from my fingers yet again. How many times is this now? Three? Twit.
No latchkey kids, no abuse and neglect, no fake wars, no watching a teacher literally die in a space challenger explosion while we watched in our high school libraries. Definitely not around when high school shootings started. Nope, we had it easy…
I was literally in the library when the Challenger exploded. My school had TVs in the library and the cafeteria. Damn. That was horrifying.
She’s woefully OUT. OF. TOUCH.
I was her age when 911 happened GTFO
‘We’re in our 20s, we’re supposed to be having fun, and doing drugs, and partying. But instead… We’re going to SoulCycle and trying to outlive our planet’
Isn’t the soul cycle ceo a huge trumpster? Or am I thinking of equinox
Maya has a typical case of affluenza. What a spoiled brat. Please think before you open your mouth! Each generation faces their own challenges & deals with it for better or worse. We did our best. Please, please tell me what we could have done better Maya! SMDH.
I can imagine her and all the other nepotism spawn sitting around in some hipsterish mansion bitching and whining about this “plight”. She sounds naive with her simplistic evaluation of the differences in the generations and obviously is not educated in the events of history.
While she acknowledges her privilege, I don’t think she understands why people are over it really. To me, her acknowledgment of it sounds hollow, forced and defensive.
If she was really self-aware(which she is not yet), she would say to the agents and the casting directors to not let out who her parents were and not let them use her for her name. And if they refused this condition, she would say fuck you, as I’m sure there would still be a million other opportunities out there for her.
I’d like to think if I was in her shoes, I’d try to push it further and use that honor of having great actors for parents to do something more independent. Like ok, I’ll go out into the world, and I am grateful to you, but I’ll try and do it on my own? I wonder why she dropped out of Juilliard? College isn’t for everyone, but then…
There’s a great film called Moon with Sam Rockwell. Not hyped but still highly credible and when I found out it was directed by Duncan Jones, who turned out to be the son of David Bowie, I was surprised. I had no idea he was a director. That element of surprise made me respect him more in addition to the film he had made. It seems humble. It says I am doing what I love, but will go about it my way, maybe more quietly at first before I then show the full force of my power to the world.
And that’s something I like to see more in an industry which many are not, especially with the never ending rise of the nepotism lot.
I apologize for my rambling, I’m in quarantine.
Maya Hawke, you are talented but I hope you stop giving such tone deaf interviews or maybe just say, “Fuck it!” with conviction and take a different path.
Moon is so damn good. I forgot about Duncan. I love Source Code as well.
You’re right that she really isn’t self aware. Her parents just drilled that into the sell/bit.
There is also a culture of fear that x’ers were brought up with. Having your Halloween candy x-ray, McGruff the crime dog, not one but two movies of the week about Adam Walsh (A boy who was kidnapped in a mall and found decapitated). I remember as a child having bomb drills. I remember hearing of friends and family being diagnosed with AIDS and knowing that was the end for them. I remember Ryan White. I know that every time things seem to find a sense of stability there is some kind of major financial upheaval.
Should have been Generation W For Whiner.
Foreign Gen X.
I still think my childhood was a dream, we could play outside with friends, cities were safe, but everything has escaped from out hands and we had lived and endured it, if something went wrong, it’s because there was something under the surface.
Growing with the latent fear that two countries would finish us all, seeing the AIDS crisis and how homosexuals were derides and attacked. Famine and plagues in Africa made us see horrible truths, many people were running away from their countries, due to war, disease, there was just no cell phones or electronics to document it all.
We saw films of teens lives in the USA, and how rich and idiliccl was, all those Brat Pack – coming of age films with big green lawns, cars a 16, just wow.
We really had to struggle to study, going to the library, do research, if the person did not have the money, what would they do. I see that many today have better means, but many times do not know what to do with them.
Does she not kmow that we in Gen X are still alive (and many of us are trying to care for both parents AND children through this pandemic) and have therefore been through all the wars and shit she’s been through – plus more? I’m really asking.
Gen-X latch key kid who was completely ignored by my parents. Me and my siblings had to figure stuff out like dinner and laundry and homework because our selfish parents were still partying, working and doing their own thing. I can’t with this chick. There was nothing cool or easy peasy about my childhood. I’ve been working since I was 14.
@Cate you have no idea how much I relate to this. My work friends won’t let their kids to go or come home from school alone. I was coming home from school to an empty house since the 1st grade. My parents would be arrested today what they did back then.
This chick is just sick of her parents. Completely misses who Gen X is. Sickitating in her own super twerpy way.
No, we weren’t all doing drugs. Most of us were worried about the AIDS crisis and the cold war and grew up watching V. Our generation has been fucked economically by what OUR parents did.
Also — “had” it so easy? We are still here, still struggling. Those of us in the sandwich generation would like to see faux-self-aware “actresses” stfu. I’d have more respect if she were trying to do something other than what her parents were doing.
I’m born in 83 and mostly connect with the Gen X. Uhm, maybe they didn’t have wars, pandemic, etc. because they did it right and held people accountable and prevented some disasters. Maybe she should be thankful. Or maybe because her parents weren’t born in places were genocide, famine and epidemic like SARS, AIDS are prevalent. Genexers and Millenials will surely bring lots of diseases back due to rising anti vaxx causes. That is up to gen Z to stop that. Oh to be living white in America. Also, I remember back in my time, with the exception of Sofia Coppola and Gwyneth Paltrow, nepotism actors have to audition endlessly. People like Laura Dern, Julia Roberts, Robert Downy, Jr. didn’t have it easy. They line up for roles and not magically cast in a TV series.
BTW, I do like Maya. I guess she’s still a 21 year old, sheltered kid. She’s still cool in my eyes mainly because I love her parents. She doesn’t know how hard it was to be gay (openly or closeted) back in my days, not that it’s easier now but I wouldn’t want to go back to those times.
Also, at least her generation has better skincare products. We have to chose between Oxy or clearsil or sulfur mask or St. Ives scrub. And if you are east Asian, you only have to choose between peach beige or yellow beige for foundation shades.
My husband is Serbian and left his country to move to Canada as a teenager to avoid the war in his home country. Our Bosnian friend has had an ulcer for as long as I’ve known her (20 years, she’s in her 40s) that won’t heal due to the stress of the Bosnian war she witnessed and watching a guy be shot to pieces in her windowsill. So honey can sit down when it comes to her opinion about no wars…
I wonder what wars she has lived through, considering she lives in a Hollywood bubble. Also, she has it easier than the generation she is blaming, with two famous parents, girl didn’t have to do anything to end up on the cover of a magazine, she was just born into it. Can’t stand these privileged type of comments.