#303: Gen Z: Milk or Wine? 🇰🇷 & Local News!

This week’s edition covers stories 
from April 4th to April 10th, 2024.

Today’s issue is 820 words, a 5-minute read.

Good Morning fellow readers, Isabella here.

We’re slowly stepping into Spring and that means more warm outdoor activities, cafecitos in the park, and fairs/festivals are just around the corner. If you spend much time on, near, or around the Stone Arch bridge, here’s your reminder that they’ll close the St. Anthony Main side through Spring 2025! Don’t worry, though, you need not stray too far away. There’s a reason why they re-opened the Third Ave bridge! For those into art fairs, there will be no Uptown Art fair this year due to the Hennepin Avenue Reconstruction project (don’t say I didn’t warn ya) – womp, womp! Howeverrr, there will be a Minneapolis Sculpture Garden Art Fair on May 11 and 12 during Mother’s Day weekend.

Feeling old? Gen Z is apparently aging like milk. Yeah, you read right. Not like wine, but milk. There’s a little trend online, allegedly begun by Millenials, where Gen Zers are asking people on TikTok ‘How old do I look?’ Many of them are told they look twice or three times their age – ouch! Is this true? No. Most believe that we have a skewed perception of what natural aging looks like in an era where every influencer and celebrity has invested thousands into plastic surgery, high-end cosmetics, and other unknown methods. I mean, even pre-teens are investing hundreds of dollars into skincare routines when they’ve barely been out of the womb! Don’t even get me started on the Ozempic weight trend. Fellow YouTuber Salem Tovar does a great job explaining the trend and the consequences of societal beauty standards here. Embrace your age and all the wrinkles, stretch marks, and whatnot that come with it! 

Meanwhile in Minneapolis… residents of the Phillips West neighborhood are concerned about a new homeless encampment that is causing hazardous living conditions. Residents in the area have sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey, MPD Chief Brian O’Hara and the entire City Council asking for them to close down the encampment, according to KSTP. Not too far away, the Minneapolis City Council continues to discuss the future of the old Third Precinct. You’re probably thinking, ‘But Isabella, didn’t you tell us there was a chance to turn it into a Black cultural center?’ Yes, but the City Council is really pushing for a voting services center. Council Member Jason Chavez says that he doesn’t think the plan encompasses what residents want or what the community needs, according to the Sahan Journal. As a fellow neighbor, Mr. Chavez isn’t incorrect, especially when many in the neighborhood can’t vote.

Sephora sales are booming thanks to the Sephora kids are growing the multi-billion skincare market, or as Jojo Siwa enters her “mature” era as she has started a new music genre of – wait for it – Gay Pop (chronically online girl, Nicole Rafiee, explaining the Jojo Siwa lore and her rebrand here), the world is concerned with other matters. 

South Korea is having elections and apparently, a lot of Korean women are saying “no” to marriage, childbirth, dating, and even sex. The 4B movement has increased among Korean women. ‘4B’ is an abbreviation for four words that all begin with bi-, or “no”: bihon, Bichulsan, biyeonae, and bisekseu. These encompass a no to heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, and heterosexual sexual relationships. Most women in this movement have gone as far as to distance themselves from the men in their lives because of this lifestyle and philosophy. Thought to have begun sometime around 2015 or 2016, women grew to adhere to a “no marriage” lifestyle, The Cut explains. Korea began to see an increase in women’s college enrollment, surpassing those of men, or women as equal competitors in the workspace, who have then come to be labeled as ‘kimchinyeo’ or “kimchee women”, a label to mean selfish and self-obsessed. Since December 2016, Korea’s fertility rate has reached the lowest globally. To counteract it, the Korean government “launched an online “National Birth Map” that showed the number of women of reproductive age in each municipality” – To me, it’s giving: A Handmaid’s Tale. 

Amongst promises to abolish the country’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, continuing with the largest gender pay gap in the world, the growth of misogynistic and anti-feminist communities such as “Ilbe”, and more. In the meantime, in a 2019 survey, “nearly 70% of men in their 20s think discrimination against men is serious”, according to NPR. South Korea is no different than the rest of the world, as the country contends many cases of femicide, revenge porn, dating violence, or spy-cam sex crimes. On the other hand, gender conflict is exacerbated by a highly competitive culture controlled by higher executives who were brought up in a more sexist era. Some Korean men see the current political climate as equally harmful as neither men nor women in their 20s and under can successfully thrive in this dissenting culture. 

The Cut’s story features an interviewee named Taekyung who identifies with “political lesbianism.” This ideology, emerging from second-wave feminism in the late 60s and early 70s, often leans “hetero-fatalistic” (or pessimistic about heterosexual relationships). It emphasizes a choice-based view of sexuality. However, Taekyung herself has little interest in dating other women and doesn’t label her sexual orientation. Critics argue that these radical feminist views can become “transphobic and gender essentialist.” Taekyung, on the other hand, seeks a safe space focused solely on women, a place where she can simply “be a person.”

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Stay informed, stay connected. 

See you next week! 

-Isabella and the NewPrensa team

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