Why millennials like Ash Barty are rethinking work
When he was 31, Mick Jagger said that he would not be “caught dead” singing Satisfaction at 45. But almost half a century later, Jagger is still belting out the anthem at the age of 78, his youthful determination apparently long forgotten.
The past, however, is a foreign country: today’s young people do things differently and this week, the 25-year-old tennis star Ash Barty shocked the public by announcing her retirement.
She said her success had not given her satisfaction. Instead, it had redefined what success meant for her. “There was just a little part of me that wasn’t quite satisfied, wasn’t quite fulfilled,” she said. “The time is right now for me to … chase other dreams.”
Britain’s reigning US Open champion Emma Raducanu, who has previously spoken about prioritising her mental health, said Barty’s early retirement illustrated “how personal everyone’s objectives and goals are”.
Actors Tom Holland and Jack Gleeson would agree: the Spider-Man and Game of Thrones stars, both in their 20s, have had a rocky relationship with early fame. Holland weighed up quitting the profession altogether last year to return to dance, while Gleeson spent six years away from acting after playing the evil teenager Joffrey Baratheon, but returned to television in 2020.
High-profile retirements – or disaffection with fame – are a reflection of conversations going on across the younger generation, said Eliza Filby, a former history lecturer at King’s College London who specialises in the study of generations. “These celebrities are picking up on their generation’s zeitgeist by rejecting guidelines bequeathed to them as to how to live their lives,” she said. “For today’s young people, what they do is not who they are.”
Almuth McDowall, a
Read more on theguardian.com
