How the Gen Z pout became armor against millennial cringe

Article Tools

Contact The Editor Articles By This Author

How would you look if you successfully spun yourself from a Downtown it-girl to the co-star of your own movie to the creator of your own series on HBO? If you're Rachel Sennott? Kinda sulky.

Or if you were being photographed on a red carpet at a star-studded pre-Oscars party? If you're Lily-Rose Depp? Totally over it.

This week, online discourse flared up around the so-called Gen Z pout. It's kind of like if you combined the penetrating malaise of the "Gen Z stare" with the plump protrusion of the millennial "duck face."

There are some differences between the Gen Z pout and its older "duck face" cousin that could be missed by an untrained eye (or an eye embedded in the skull of someone with more pressing things to think about).

Compare the lowered lids of Sennott with the alert gaze of duck face progenitors Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen.

Back in 2008, a "source close to" the twins told OK! magazine, "Every time they pose and smile, they say the word ‘prune.'" Today.com tried to corroborate this with "another source close to the Olsens" who "could not confirm the precise word they use as their smile trigger, but says their smiles are keys to their identity."

I choose to believe the prune lore and have been repeating it before group photos for decades. But either way, duck face sent a message that you were expecting to be photographed, that you were prepared, poised and putting your best lip forward.

The Gen Z pout also accentuates the lip (and whatever you may have injected into it), but the messaging is different. It's less of a snatched "Give the people what they want" and more of a bratty "Fine. Take your picture."

I will confess: I find it absolutely charming when Sennott does it. She's got the pillowy lips and heavy eyelids to pull it off, combined with the necessary charisma to project glamour and humor while performing disaffection.

Who among us is not disaffected right now?

Every time someone asks me how I'm doing, I feel the need to hedge my answer with "Well, the world's on fire, but …" or "I mean, these are all first-world problems, but …" or "I still have a job, but …"

Watching Sennott sulk at photographers while all her dreams are coming true feels so very au courant.

Or maybe she just started pouting in response to that 2023 meme of her smiling with the caption, "she kinda look like her name is Fatima but in a white way."

What does that mean? Her friend and collaborator Jordan Firstman said it meant that she was a "woman of the people," but no one really knows. But I can imagine how a vague and pervasive comment like that might inspire me to experiment with the faces I make in photos.

Photo poses have trend cycles. During the early-aughts heyday of the Cobrasnake and Last Nights Party, people thought it was cool to pretend your finger was a mustache. Now there are entire stock photo collections of "finger hipster mustache." Some gay guys used to think making "bear face" was cool? Now … well, some people still think it's cool.

Did you clock that shade I just threw at "bear face"? How even though I'm part of the bear community, I wish to distance myself from its cringier corners?

There's something similar at play with the pout, methinks.

On TikTok, there is an entire subgenre of "millennial cringe" compilations featuring 30-somethings making goofy faces. If you sustain a cool, detached pout, you'll never risk being lumped in with the googly, giggly millennials repeatedly dragged online.

It reminds me a bit of Susan Bordo describing heroin chic in 1997 as "the allure, the safety, of being beyond needing, beyond caring, beyond desire." There's something a little sad about a (new) generation of young people that thinks smiling is embarrassing.

So here's my theory about how we got to the Gen Z pout: First we had grunge-era heroin chic, where detachment reigned supreme; "duck face" was a reaction to this, with celebrities wanting to look ready to be photographed as tabloid culture ramped up; faux-candid "you caught me!" hipster photos were a reaction to celebrity polish; hipster portraiture begot millennial cringe, which the Gen Z pout inoculates against.

Does that seem right? As someone who lived through these eras, it does to me.

I may be overthinking it (though "overthinking it" is kind of my whole job). Occam's razor tells us that if people are pouting in photos it's because they like the way they look when they pout.

To quote Lady Gaga, when an onlooker asked her why she looked so blue: "I'm not sad. It's just fashion."

Shane O'Neill connects the dots between entertainment news, internet fads, celebrity gossip and pop culture ephemera to sketch a portrait of how we live today.