I spam Gen Z terms like it’s my full-time job and I’m getting paid a CEO’s salary. I write emails to my retail boss titled “Hey Diva [smiley face emoji],” wear high-heeled boots all winter long and crank the speaker in my car as loud as it’ll go so the bass is shaking my slightly disturbing Sonny Angels glued to my dash. One might suggest I live in excess.
Slinging Gen Z slang gives me freedom to accentuate a point so past reasonable that it’s reaching excess. I love the way diva sounds in my mouth, the way it shapes a conversation. I use this word to gauge how in tune we are with one another — can you match my freak, yes or no?
I love nasty women, divas. The meaner, the nastier, the better — I want you to be so unlikable that I want to become you. Where are the people who are annoying, dirty, hedonistic and bra-less? When did we lose authenticity to make way for aesthetic?
We lost it when we all wanted to be cool. Cool this, cool that, “Buy this so you too can become cool,” says the robotic voice from your open Instagram page. I will not embrace the monotone voice calling for inauthenticity by performing a version of myself centered on perfection for an audience I do not care about. Let’s embrace mess, the diva, if you will. Divas live in the land of muchness: too loud, too aggressive, too intelligent. In other words, they’re NASSSSTYYY. Maybe we should bottle this plethora of muchness, sell it, double it and make it mandatory. I want you to be hated because at least if you’re hated, you will be hated as yourself.
Nerds, I love em. Tell me why you love World War I reconstructive plastic surgery books — speak to me about what interests you, I need to know. I’m on my hands and knees begging in the local Costco — there’s a literacy crisis. The world is drowning in clones, and I need all the information I can get to wade amongst the useless garbage of sameness. We have brainwashed ourselves into thinking that liking the same things equals coolness. It doesn’t. When we all become cookie-cutter versions of ourselves, we risk losing the opportunity for growth and individuality, trading it in for Tyler, your next-door neighbour, who uses a litre of water per ChatGPT prompt to look up “Ways to be cool.”
I froth at the mouth thinking about my next use of baddie, diva, baby girl mystique and chic. It’s insatiable. Gen Z terms are my weapon of choice, tied to creativity and identity, used to communicate with people to test them, to understand them — am I too cringe for them? Because I love that they hate me.
Where is the spotlight, the feather boa, the drama? It’s crushed under your morbidly sensible Converse sneaker. The diva is less about stomping on people metaphorically and physically and more of an assist in bringing a smidge of decadence into the monotone sameness of everyday.
It’s a need, as Chappell Roan needs her bedazzled, out-of-this-world on-stage costumes. The image of the diva encourages self-indulgence and independence rather than dependence on a narrative that may not be your own. Social constructs ask too much, chastising anyone who challenges homogenized conformity as excessive, making the glamorous figure of the prima donna into a form of “bad behaviour” instead of a fully realized person exerting control over their own image.
Long live the diva, the ones who demand self-respect instead of shrinking, the nerds in exuding muchness. Aesthetic is temporary, baby girl mystique is forever. Choose to be authentic, reject social surveillance and accept individuality.
