I saw a TikTok the other day about how millennial women loved color as kids.
And I mean LOVED color.
We were the generation of Lisa Frank and Limited Too. Everything was bright colors, animal prints, patterns, glitter, butterflies, and dolphins inexplicably swimming through rainbow-colored galaxies. Our school supplies looked like a unicorn had exploded. We wore glitter on our bodies without needing a special occasion. We had inflatable furniture, beaded curtains, and enough hot pink to cause permanent retinal damage.
It was a glorious time to be alive.
I personally remember going to the hardware store with my mom and picking out hot pink paint for the built-in shelves in my bedroom. Not blush. Not dusty rose. HOT. PINK. The kind of pink that practically required sunglasses.
And what did I put on those shelves? An entire collection of pink Beanie Babies, obviously. Because apparently I had a theme and I was committed to it.
I had sparkly curtains and beads. Pink was everything.
Hell, my first username was HotPink79. (And if I ever chatted with you in an AOL chatroom and claimed I was 19 when I was actually 11…no, I didn’t.)
We were colorful little creatures, and we were unapologetic about it.
And then we grew up.
We started buying houses. Houses with white walls. White cabinetry. White furniture. Gray flooring. Maybe a tasteful beige throw pillow if we were feeling particularly adventurous.
Everything was white.
No color. Just white.
Really fucking white.
Somewhere between our butterfly hair clips and our mortgage applications, we apparently decided that being a responsible adult meant living inside a dentist’s office.
The TikTok suggested that this transition represented something deeper. That somewhere along the way, millennial women lost their color. Their hopes, their dreams, their sense of possibility.
And maybe there’s something to that.
After all, we’ve lived through approximately 47 once-in-a-lifetime historical events. Economic recessions, terrorist attacks, pandemics, housing crises, and whatever fresh hell the universe has planned for next Tuesday.
We are the undisputed queens of navigating unprecedented circumstances.
But I also think something else happened.
We decided that adulthood was supposed to look a certain way.
Being grown up meant being sophisticated. Put together. Professional. Responsible.
And apparently sophisticated people don’t have hot pink bookshelves or glitter on their faces.
They have neutral color palettes and decorative bowls filled with wooden beads that serve absolutely no purpose.
We traded our colorful bedrooms for homes that looked like real estate listings. We started buying things because they looked mature, not necessarily because they made us happy.
I don’t think we even realized we were doing it.
We were just following the blueprint we’d been handed.
Get the degree. Get the job. Buy the house. Have the kids. Pick a respectable paint color.
Become a grown-up.
And perhaps, somewhere along the way, we confused being taken seriously with taking ourselves seriously.
Now, apparently, we’re entering our millennial green era.
Sage green walls. Olive green cabinets. Plants everywhere. Earth tones. Natural textures. A little more personality creeping into spaces that were once aggressively neutral.
And I am absolutely here for it.
Personally, I’ve been drifting into what I can only describe as my boho-meets-woodland-witch decorating era.
I’ve been painting furniture green, collecting interesting little objects, rearranging shelves, and finding ways to make my house feel less like a catalog and more like an actual reflection of the person who lives here.
Some colors are bright. Some are muted. Some are earthy and cozy. There’s a growing collection of plants, whimsical things, and pieces that probably don’t match according to any interior design expert.
But I like them.
And that’s becoming a pretty compelling reason to have something.
The transformation isn’t limited to my house, either.
I bought the sparkly shoes.
I bought face glitter. Technically for a costume, but let’s not pretend I won’t find another excuse to use it.
I’ve started choosing things because they make me smile rather than because they’re practical, sensible, or what a 38-year-old woman is supposed to like.
And I find myself wondering why I ever stopped.
Why did glitter become something reserved for Halloween? Why did bright colors become childish? Why did I decide that my house needed to look like someone who owned a matching set of luggage lived there?
Some of it is nostalgia, I’m sure.
There’s something comforting about remembering who we were before careers, bills, responsibilities, and the general exhaustion of existing in the modern world took over.
But I think there’s more to it.
I think I’m remembering who I am.
As a kid, I didn’t worry whether my hot pink shelves were tasteful. I didn’t consider whether my pink Beanie Babies would clash with the rest of the room. I didn’t need a Pinterest board to validate my decorating decisions.
I liked pink.
So I painted the damn shelves pink.
It was that simple.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped trusting that kind of uncomplicated joy.
I started considering what made sense. What was appropriate. What was practical. What would look good to someone else.
Not just with decorating, either.
There are so many little ways we edit ourselves as we get older. We quiet down our interests. We choose the safer option. We talk ourselves out of things because they’re silly or frivolous or not particularly useful.
We become very good at being the people we think we’re supposed to be.
And sometimes we forget to ask whether those people are actually us.
Lately, I’ve been asking that question more.
What do I actually like?
What makes me happy?
What would I choose if I weren’t thinking about whether it was sensible, sophisticated, or something a grown woman should be doing?
And the answers, apparently, involve a lot of green paint, sparkly shoes, and occasional face glitter.
It’s funny, because I don’t actually want my old hot pink bedroom back. I don’t need Lisa Frank dolphins plastered across every available surface. Although, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t immediately rule out a glittery leopard.
My tastes have changed. I’ve changed.
But that little girl who walked into a hardware store and confidently chose the loudest pink she could find?
She’s still here.
She’s just been a little quiet for a while.
Maybe this new obsession with color isn’t about trying to relive childhood. Maybe it’s about finally being old enough to stop caring so much about what adulthood is supposed to look like.
Maybe we’re not having some collective millennial identity crisis.
Maybe we’re finally getting comfortable enough to have an identity again.
And maybe my sage green bookshelf and sparkly shoes aren’t signs of some dramatic personal transformation.
Maybe they’re just signs that I’m making room for myself.
Because I don’t think I lost my color.
I think I spent a long time convincing myself I didn’t need it.
And now?
I want it back.
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