What Dreams Are Made Of: The Beautiful Trauma of Millennial Cringe
Words: Louisa Davies
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When I was 12 years old, I decided to cut the feet off my 50 denier tights for the first time, and style them with a patchwork denim mini skirt. I came downstairs, my mum looked at me and commented on how she’d have worn the same outfit in the 80s, and how fashion always makes its way back round. I scoffed, disgusted at 12 years old that my mum would ever be able to relate to me (sorry Sarah), and went to Milton Keynes shopping centre to spend £10 on Mcdonalds and Snoopy underwear from H&M. Now, at the grand old age of 33, I’ve seen it with my own eyes: Millennial culture being thrown around as nostalgia, reboots of Scrubs and Malcolm in the Middle, UAL girlies in Camberwell wearing dragon cargo trousers I definitely had from Tammy Girl, but nothing screamed it more than attending Hilary Duff at the O2 Arena this month.
Lizzie McGuire was a rite of passage for us millennials, and let’s not even get started on the iconic movie - a great watch on a Sunday when you’re hungover, btw. So Hilary Duff headlining the O2 arena? A must. On the tube, I saw people of my age, dressed in purples and pinks, with diamantes on their faces. Girlies gassed to get there, but then worrying about their laptop bags being too big to take in. Combatting the reality of their current life whilst trying to sink back into their younger selves. I saw girls at the escalators embracing their friends, excited to sing their hearts out, striding towards the arena in black, chunky flatforms. I saw hair so perfectly crimped it brought tears to my eyes, imagining these girls reaching into the forgotten corners of their bathroom cabinets, blowing off the dust of their Babyliss Hair Stylers that slowly got disregarded for low sleek buns. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The atmosphere reminded me of a daisy chain, people connected no matter where they’d grown from, connected by the love of the Duff. Before sitting down, Perfect Day by Hoku ran through the stalls as we all spent our sweet, sweet disposable income on bottles of rose. By the time Hilary (first name basis now don’t @ me) came on stage, singing a selection of her core hits mixed in with her new bangers, stating it’s ‘really cool to be this age and be doing something that makes you so proud of yourself’, I looked around wondering, how could anybody hate this?
“ I’m proud of me, I’m proud of us, and I hope us cringey millennials can inspire the next generation to Come Clean - trust me, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.”
Millennial cringe is a phrase being thrown around daily, referencing the fact that we are no longer the driving force of pop culture. Our Gen Z and Alpha counterparts take an interest in rinsing us from everything from our side pouts, our love for ankle socks, and ‘boy done good’ outlook on life. Being considered ‘cringe’ has become a synonym for a generation who grew up on Myspace Bulletins, the last motley crew who remember life with a dial up internet. Our nonchalance for being deemed ‘embarrassing’, or uploading Prosecco clinking Boomerangs is ingrained in the stereotype of our generation, and it’s only in recent years that the culture we grew up on has been celebrated.
Hilary Duff herself has stated that she spent years trying to shed her Lizzie McGuire image, desperate to be seen as someone other than a teenage girl in loud colours, but in recent years she’s looked at her past more fondly, choosing to honour her past rather than erase it. Being in your thirties feels like a confusing maze of different doors, trying to keep some open to remind you of who you were before it all got so serious, attempting to stay relevant in a world that awarded you years of your late twenties locked away in a global pandemic, and also facing peers at work who don’t understand your references. We treat this ‘cringe’ as an insult, something to hide away from, but how do we shed a label we never asked to wear?
Data shows that 68% of Gen Z’s (London Nightlife Taskforce report 2026) current economic conditions make them participate less in clubbing and nightlife. In 2025, Gen Z were less likely to drink alcohol compared to millennials, with only 76% taking part in debaucherous, bottomless brunch led deeds. And d’ya know what? Fair play. They’ve inherited a world where they grew up being Snapchatted aged 11 in English class, never knowing what it’s like to not have a social media presence, plagued by Trump, Reform, increased university fees and AI taking their jobs. We state that ‘to be cringe is to be free’, but as a generation who exist completely online whether they consented or not, perhaps their freedom has never been truly straight forward. The concept of letting go to the power of cringe is something they cannot fathom. A study by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation showed that only 45% of Gen Z describe themselves as ‘thriving’, compared to 60% of millennials who took this study at the same age. This could be confounded by an overwhelming sense of choice and information - so, are Gen Z actually asking for an invitation into the cringe led club of millennials?
On the overground home from Hilary Duff, I got chatting to a 19 year old girl next to me. (She told me I looked 22, but that’s by the by.) I asked what it is about millennials that cringe her generation out so much., ‘It was just the way you grew up… technology wasn’t there for you, you got to be a kid more. Maybe we are embarrassed by that because we never knew it.’ As I strode home from Peckham Rye station, I felt changed. Labelling something as ‘cringe’ is a defensive mechanism for us all, but for the younger generation, projecting it into us could be a source of vulnerability they wish we could see. Y2K trends have never been cooler, digital cameras and taking photos at gigs on a Nintendo DS is all the rage, and the fact Hilary Duff can sell out arenas in 2026 is indicative of a change in the air. The nostalgia we feel as millennials, is a world we lived, and want to feel again - for Gen Z, they’re lusting after a life they never lived. We take for granted the dial up internet, the phones shut in teachers drawers, of making mistakes without being surveilled, and people are now craving that.
Perhaps this nostalgia feels strange to me as it doesn’t feel so far away. We were the last generation to experience a world without Snapchat, but also the first to experience a new source of pain that stemmed from cyber revolutions, recessions and more. The label of ‘cringe’ feels misaligned, as how can we be cringe when we’re all still learning ourselves? Is it a case of realigning the label as one that is universal across all young people, and one that we navigate together in an increasingly terrifying world? Perhaps we need to stop the think pieces on how different we are, unite in our joined love for the ridiculous and the fun, and let go together.
When Hilary Duff sang her last song, the iconic ‘What Dreams Are Made Of’, I was reminded of 12 year old me, seeing the Lizzie McGuire film in the cinema, donning my homemade pair of footless tights, sat amongst my best friends, with popcorn stuck on school shoes (we never had outside trainers to wear). I think she’d be proud of me, for embracing my identity in this ripe old age, for holding my best friend close as we sang, and for knowing that despite life’s trials and tribulations, you’ll always have the memories. I’m proud of me, I’m proud of us, and I hope us cringey millennials can inspire the next generation to Come Clean - trust me, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
