by Chris Alarie
One of the most insipid journalistic trends of recent years is the preponderance of articles dissecting, quantifying, and criticizing the supposed tastes, behaviors, and personality flaws of the generation known as the Millennials. Key among these articles is a sub-genre criticizing the supposed inability of Millennials to engage in healthy romantic relationships—ostensibly the result of a “hookup culture”. While these articles—including those from that paragon of Millennial-bashing, the New York Times—are obviously ill-conceived, 1 there is some truth to the idea that the current generation is not getting married as young or at as high of a rate as previous generations. The reasons for this are complex and myriad, but there is one key cause that I believe has been overlooked: the unrealistic romantic expectations fostered by the 1990s teen drama Boy Meets World.
One of the most insipid journalistic trends of recent years is the preponderance of articles dissecting, quantifying, and criticizing the supposed tastes, behaviors, and personality flaws of the generation known as the Millennials. Key among these articles is a sub-genre criticizing the supposed inability of Millennials to engage in healthy romantic relationships—ostensibly the result of a “hookup culture”. While these articles—including those from that paragon of Millennial-bashing, the New York Times—are obviously ill-conceived, 1 there is some truth to the idea that the current generation is not getting married as young or at as high of a rate as previous generations. The reasons for this are complex and myriad, but there is one key cause that I believe has been overlooked: the unrealistic romantic expectations fostered by the 1990s teen drama Boy Meets World.
For
seven seasons from 1993 through 2000, Boy Meets World
aired on ABC as a part of its TGIF programming block.2 The story of a young, Jewish boy, Cory Matthews, and his experience
growing up in Philadelphia with his suspiciously un-Jewish family,3 Boy Meets World
centered on Cory's romantic relationship with Topanga Lawrence, whom
he would marry by the end of the series. The relationship—which,
through some retconning, was depicted as being essentially
lifelong—is idealized to an almost obsessive degree, not only by
Topanga and (especially) Cory, but by everybody around them. Even the
show's other central relationship—that between Cory and his
James-Dean-lite best friend, Shawn Hunter—is heavily influenced by
the Cory-Topanga relationship.
While
Shawn is depicted as being envious of a number of aspects of Cory's
life throughout the series (his functional family, his relative
wealth, etc.), his jealousy of Cory and Topanga's ostensibly perfect
relationship becomes one of his defining characteristics by the end
of the series. In the middle seasons, Shawn's popularity with girls
is shown to be one of his few advantages over Cory and one of the few
things that brings him happiness in his otherwise troubled life.
However, as the characters age and Cory and Topanga become more
focused on their romantic relationship, Shawn becomes increasingly
more jealous—not of Topanga for having replaced him as Cory's
primary partner but rather of Cory and Topanga's relationship. In
fact, he spends much of the later seasons desperately searching for
“something like what Cory and Topanga have.” In particular, his
more realistic, on-again, off-again relationship with Angela during
the last three seasons is explicitly contrasted with the stability
and magic of the Cory-Topanga union. Apparently, this
has continued
into the recent companion series/reboot, Girl Meets World,
which depicts the same characters now in adulthood:
While the causes behind the lower marriage rate for Millennials are complicated and multivariate, I believe that a key component is that, in a sense, many of us are like Shawn: unable to settle down because we are desperate for a perfect relationship like Cory and Topanga's. Millennials are noted for our idealism, and I believe that a frustrated sort of idealism is a key factor in our lower marriage rates. Many of us are delaying marriage because we have not found our Topanga4 and rather than accept a realistic, flawed relationship, we are idealistically pursuing the mystical unicorn that is a Cory-Topanga style relationship. And, loathe as I am to give Buzzfeed credit for anything, that website sort of manages to illustrate this phenomenon, in a roundabout way, by identifying the problem and then simply reinforcing it in a listicle of “cute” and “heartwarming”5 GIFs entitled “20 Ways Cory And Topanga Gave You Unrealistic Expectations About Relationships”.
While the causes behind the lower marriage rate for Millennials are complicated and multivariate, I believe that a key component is that, in a sense, many of us are like Shawn: unable to settle down because we are desperate for a perfect relationship like Cory and Topanga's. Millennials are noted for our idealism, and I believe that a frustrated sort of idealism is a key factor in our lower marriage rates. Many of us are delaying marriage because we have not found our Topanga4 and rather than accept a realistic, flawed relationship, we are idealistically pursuing the mystical unicorn that is a Cory-Topanga style relationship. And, loathe as I am to give Buzzfeed credit for anything, that website sort of manages to illustrate this phenomenon, in a roundabout way, by identifying the problem and then simply reinforcing it in a listicle of “cute” and “heartwarming”5 GIFs entitled “20 Ways Cory And Topanga Gave You Unrealistic Expectations About Relationships”.
This
insipid pseudo-journalism accidentally demonstrates how surprisingly
influential this particular 1990s teen comedy6 has been in setting unrealistic romantic expectations for an entire
generation,7
serving, in part, to hinder that generation from settling into
marriage and other established relationships in a manner similar to
previous generations.8
Some anecdotal evidence would seems to reinforce my claims, as I have
had a number of conversations with unmarried Millennial friends about
these topics. In these conversations, I have observed both a tendency
toward what I see as unrealistic romantic expectations and a
willingness to identify Boy
Meets World
as a partial source of those expectations. As my friend Amy told me,
“Yeah man, Topanga fucked me up!”
Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
Chris Alarie is Senior Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.
1 One of the best takedowns of the arguments about the supposed hookup culture comes from, of all places, Jezebel.↩
2 The show has also aired in syndication in perpetuity over the last decade and a half.↩
3 The issue of Cory's singular Jewishness within his non-Jewish biological family is never explicitly addressed at any point in the show. But it reads loudly as subtext. This isn't actually relevant to my main argument, however.↩
4 And everyone seems to be looking for their Topanga, never their Cory—even the women with whom I spoke said that they were looking for their Topanga. I don’t know if this is just because Cory was the main character of the show or if it is old fashioned sexism, with the man being associated with agency and the woman being a passive object of desire.↩
5 I am also generally loathe to use scare quotes, but I think it is appropriate in this particular usage.↩
6 For whatever reason, Boy Meets World seems to have been a surprisingly influential TV show for the Millennial generation.↩
7 The unhealthy, obsessive relationship between Ross and Rachel on Friends could also conceivably have a similar sort of influence. But all of the characters on that show are so deeply disturbing in a number of ways that it is difficult to imagine anyone other than a low-level sociopath looking to them as a model for any sort of behavior.↩
8 I should note that I don't necessarily think that this is a bad thing. I am not trying to make an argument in favor of or against marriage but rather try to explain the undue influence that Boy Meets World has had in regards to this issue.↩