Why is everyone suddenly talking about cheugy style?
Once upon a time (2013), a student at Beverly Hills High School by the name of Gaby Rasson added a new word to the teen lexicon: cheugy. Now 23, the gen-Zer had succeeded in wryly encapsulating the outmoded trappings of the millennial lifestyle in two syllables. Cheugy (its pronounced chew-gee) encompasses everything from excruciating email greetings such as Happy Friyay to interiors (terrazzo surfaces) and entertainment (Friends: The Reunion). Certain typefaces (lobster) are cheugy, as are the types of photos that millennials sometimes post on Instagram (the ones where all the subjects have their arms linked, backs to the camera wearing matching T-shirts). At the time of writing, Instagram account @CheugLife had also added proms and bachelor pads to the list. Boomerangs are cheugy. Having (or using the term) Instagram boyfriend is cheugier still. Yelling at them in public for not getting the shot is the cheugiest of all. Well, as The New York Times explains, cheugy first took hold among Rassons friendship group, before graduating with them to various college campuses. The 2021 spikewhich is happening on (and because of) TikTok thanks to LA-based creator Hallie Cains viral elucidation of what cheuginess actually is, and a flood of other videos that mock the cheugier sides of lifeis actually playing catch up on a satirical social movement thats now around eight years old. Meaning that the current cheugy wave is itself, ironically, pretty cheugy. Those bullet-pointed articles youve no doubt already come across that definitive label live, laugh, love signage as the ultimate endpoint of cheugy arent it, however. In reality, the spike in awareness of cheuginess is far more nuancedit succeeds in holding a mirror up to the times that were living in, as even the most entrenched capitalist ways face fresh scrutiny from the under 24s. Beyond semantics or comedic effect, the reason cheugy hits the virtual nail on the head is that it delineates the aftermath of the aggressive consumerist marketing that millennials, as a generation, endured. Social commentators who alleged, back in 2017, that those born between 1981 and 1996 consumed avocado toast en masse, while wearing designer sneakers, and paid through the nose for self-care experiences in Pepto-Bismol pink surroundings, didnt foresee that homogeneity itself would become a generational battleground between the worlds younger echelons.