Redefining (My) Adulthood

Image description: Although this picture of BTS (left to right: Jungkook, Jin, V, Jimin, RM, Suga, and J-Hope) might seem an odd choice for a post about adulthood, read on to find out why the band inspired today's post and my thoughts about redefining this topic. Also, I've always loved the way this picture feels like the group moving forward together in their own unique way. That theme is very relevant to today's topic as well.

 

As 2022 begins, I am coming very close to the second anniversary of this blog – almost two years of talking about my aspec identity, and at least ten years or more of really living it. That’s a long time, and during both the ten years and the two years, I’ve learned a lot and grown a lot. I’ve developed as both an aspec person, and just as a person in general. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been what most people would probably describe as “mature,” in that I always seemed older than I was or sometimes acted with a more realistic frame of mind, even if I was being silly, humorous, or creative. But as time goes on, I often find myself wondering what it means to be mature, and what it means to mature in the sense of growing as a person, especially in my adulthood.

At the time of writing this post, I am twenty-six years old and will be turning twenty-seven later this year. For some strange reason, hitting twenty-six was a weird experience for me, one that previous ages wasn’t. Maybe it’s because I could trick myself a little when I turned twenty-five by thinking of it as comfortably “mid-twenties” rather than “late-twenties”. Perhaps it’s due in part to turning twenty-five in 2020, when COVID and quarantine made holidays like birthdays feel surreal. But either way, as I now truly realize I’m much closer to my thirties than I am to my teens, I am really left to feel the weight of being an “adult,” and am left with an even bigger realization to go with it – I don’t actually know what it means to be an adult.

When I don’t feel like an adult, I don’t mean it in the sense of being treated like a kid by family members or by friends, nor do I mean that not having or doing “adult” things causes me to feel inadequate; quite the opposite, in fact, and in many ways I’m quite happy with my life and my lifestyle. Rather, it’s the notion of “adulthood” as society often tries to frame it that’s the real issue and is the thing that keeps me from fully understanding what my own adulthood will look like. As a result, I want to explore how I can redefine the concept of adulthood for myself as an aspec person, and how perhaps other people can redefine adulthood within society at large.

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What Does It Mean to Be an Adult?

I’m sure we’ve all playfully used the term “adulting” to mean the boring, mundane things we don’t really want to do, and I don’t doubt that all of us to some extent feel like we’re flying through our adult years using the “fake it till you make it” mentality. That’s life, after all. But for me, this sense of not feeling like an adult runs deeper because, as an aspec person, it can be even harder for me to really get a sense of what my adulthood should look like. Our society has certain stereotypical ways to measure adulthood, everything from living alone for the first time to getting married and having children. The former is something that can be easier to brush off in this day and age; as someone who lives with my parents, I don’t feel any shame and awkwardness around this, and in fact know quite a few people who are actually older than I am who gladly live with their parents for a variety of reasons.

However, the other stereotypical “adulthood” markers are not so easily overcome. Because we live in a world where “adult” is often conflated with sexuality, this feeling goes beyond the act of not hitting usual metrics; it also has a certain social and cultural connotation to go with it. Think of how often pieces of media are described as “adult” – “adult humor” or “adult comedy,” for instance, can often mean humor of a sexual nature, which I as a sex-repulsed asexual will never willingly choose to interact with. Other times, a piece of media may be described as having “adult themes,” and while these can more broadly refer to anything from violence to language to even drinking or drug use, there is also sometimes the understanding that this will mean sexual content or situations as well. The implication of describing these things as “adult” seems to be that all other things are “not adult,” and while that is probably an unfair simplification in many circumstances, in many other cases, that actually does seem to be what people think.

Even our rating systems for television, movies, and video games carry a level of this, where “adult” or “mature audiences” seem to be defined as people who can handle this level of content. Now, of course there are many mature adults who do not wish to interact with this type of “mature” content – for instance, people who are triggered by certain things, or who don’t want to interact with media that’s overly violent or contains strong language. But I think sometimes the implication can be that “family-friendly” means “childish” or “watered down,” and often times society will assign these labels to people who don’t want to consume “mature” content, and do so without considering all the facts.

These things make it so that we tend to divide people into the camp of “mature” or “adult”, and by extension “not mature” or “childish.” As I’ve discussed in my tropes series, not only is it very easy to fall into that latter camp as an aspec person, but it is very easy to then be pegged as uninteresting, unworthy, and “less than.” Often times, the common societally accepted way to define an “adult” is undesirable or straight up unattainable for an aspec person like me, and we are left to either hide what society dubs as our “shortcomings,” or else we are forced to endure people’s casual ignorance on how greatly these matters cause us to struggle in our day to day lives.

“To Become an Adult is to Become Someone Who Finds It Too Hard to Hold onto a Dream”

I’m sure none of my regular readers will be surprised to see me reference BTS (first BTS reference for 2022!). The issues mentioned in this post are problems that regularly come up within the BTS fandom, and in fact, experiencing these issues firsthand myself is what inspired me to write this post in the first place. One of the many reasons why I am so attached to the seven-member Korean supergroup is the fact that I find their music extremely accessible and safe, as I’ve mentioned in several posts, including my Ace Safe Space lists. Because a huge majority of their work is non-sexual, I always feel very secure and at peace when I listen to them or watch their performances.

That, of course, makes it extremely disheartening when some fans lobby for BTS to become more sexualized in the future. And, given the subject matter of today’s post, I’m sure you’re not surprised to know that this lobbying is often defended by saying something along the lines of “they’re not kids, they’re adults, they should be allowed to act like it.” That argument has a lot to unpack, starting with the obvious fact I’ve been discussing this entire time, which is, of course, that adulthood and sexuality are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the most ironic thing about the “they’re adults” argument is that nearly all of the more sexualized moments in BTS’s canon comes from material they did when they were younger. That’s not to say, of course, that they’ve never done a sexy dance pose or wore a revealing shirt in their later years; that would just be completely false. And it’s also not to say that they never revisit the songs from their past where their content is a bit more suggestive in nature. But the way they do so is often deliberate and thought out.

I think an excellent example of this is the 2014 song “Boy In Luv.” If you’re familiar with BTS or even just my analysis of them, you may notice this song’s title bears a heavy resemblance to a far more recent song – 2019’s “Boy With Luv” (music video below) – and that is completely deliberate. “Boy With Luv’s” Korean title is “A Poem for the Small Things,” and thus the English title/subtitle is definitely a choice (in a live broadcast, group leader and main lyricist RM talks about this very thing). 2019’s “Boy With Luv” sounds, by its title alone, like a love letter, and it is, but not in the way you might expect. The “you” referenced in its many lyrics, especially in lines such as “I want to be with you for everything” and “I'm just gonna keep you safe” very clearly reflect the boys’ feelings towards their fans, rather than a fictional “you,” as is the case in 2014’s “Boy In Luv.” That song comes from BTS’s past as young hip-hop artists, when they were primarily framed as bad boy rebels and their music was crafted to fit that particular persona.

The older song “Boy In Luv” comes from an album called Skool Luv Affair, which, as the title aptly demonstrates, was themed on the notion of the bad boys falling in crazy, messy teenage love. Unlike “Boy With Luv,” the older song is not a fan-fueled love letter, but more of a typical “I’ve got to have you” type love song that I think it’s safe to say probably wasn’t coming from reality, but was rather written to a fictional "you". Why then would this song be tied to “Boy With Luv,” with its sweet lyrics and pink-tinged music video? By tying the two songs together, despite the heavy difference in their theming and execution, I think BTS is making a point about who they want to be in the present – as in, people and artists who care far more about the well-being of their fans and expressing that love than being beholden to any type of sexualized or romanticized ideal of what they should be or what they should want.

It would be very easy for BTS to ignore those old songs as either not being genuine representations of themselves, or not what they want from their careers/messaging. After all, BTS is famous the world over for the message of “love yourself” far more than anything about romance. However, something I admire about BTS is that they don’t just let the past fade into obscurity and often showcase their older songs alongside newer ones. But again, that is a deliberate choice. For instance, performing “Boy In Luv” and then performing “Boy With Luv” immediately following it in shows like the 2019 Melon Music Awards (see video below) is meant to showcase their growth – where they’ve been and where they’re going, all themed to the notion of past, present, and future. I am a firm believer that throwing out the old songs is a mistake, as not only does it ignore BTS’s history, it means the erasure of some truly excellent songs; but I also believe it is a mistake to not keep the old songs in context, especially since it seems very keeping with the band’s personal philosophy that they want to honor and embrace the past while still moving forward. It seems to me that what they’re moving forward into is almost always less sexualized than some of those old things, and that’s a choice they seem to be secure in, at least form my perspective. Of course, I always live in constant fear that that may change – in large part due to the attitudes of other fans.

Part of this struggle comes about because BTS's fandom ARMY is so diverse in its age ranges, and you have children, teens, young adults, and older adults all together in one fandom. I believe it’s a mistake to let any one age range determine the type of content everyone sees, but it’s also extremely tough to balance things so everyone is happy. Additionally, because of this fact, it becomes very easy for older fans to assume that anyone making objections to content must be children. And while that may be the case in some instances, assuming that it’s true in every case is exactly the problem. There are plenty of reasons why people prefer to see BTS continue to avoid sexualized content or overly romantic themes in their music – whether it’s for reasons like mine, or something as fundamental as a person’s cultural or religious attitudes. To assume that these people are children is insensitive, and, for people like me who are adults but are constantly made to feel like we’re doing adulthood wrong, it can be extremely damaging. By making these assumptions about people, you devalue them, their experiences, and their opinions. And, in so doing, you push them out of their fandoms.

Often times, this is completely unintentional. People who do want to see sexual content in their media or their fandoms sometimes feel like they need to defend themselves – and in many cases, they may really need to. As such, they get justifiably defensive if people object to sexual content. This is one of the many reasons why it can be tough to be aspec in fandom, because, although we’re not trying to trample on anyone else’s sexuality and just want to hang on to our safe spaces, it can be easy to misconstrue our actions. In the case of something like the BTS fandom, I myself get frustrated because I cling to the boys and their music so much precisely because it’s not sexual, and thus people saying they hope it becomes sexual makes me feel like those safe spaces are being wrestled from my hands, even when people have no idea they’re doing that. And so, these types of problems go round and round in an endless cycle, usually with aspec people as the losers.

Moments like these not only push me and people like me out of our fandoms and rob us of our safe spaces, but they leave us with the uncomfortable question of whether or not people will truly accept us as adults. In my own experiences as an ARMY in these situations, I had many very nice people reach out to me and say they’ve had similar experiences even without being aspec – for instance, if they believe in abstinence or if they simply don’t have a romantic or sexual relationship in their life and are ostracized for it. To me, this is further proof of how aspec issues affect allosexual people too, and how these often-cruel ways of describing non-sexual people and their opinions effect everyone.

But beyond that, the boys themselves don’t seem to think of their adulthood in that manner either. In fact, the quote I used as the title of this section – “to become an adult is to become someone who finds it too hard to hold onto a dream” – is from a song called “28,” a solo song by member Suga. The song’s Korean title is “I Guess I’m Slowly Becoming an Adult” and, as you can probably guess from the melancholy nature of that line, is about the themes of growing older, and in so doing becoming more uncertain despite knowing more about the world, as well as losing touch with the things you wanted in life. Many times, when BTS discuss their adulthood, they discuss it in a similar fashion, talking about the ways in which they themselves still feel like children, struggling with the expectations their society places on adulthood, etc.

Obviously I don’t know the boys personally, and so the things I know about them and their attitudes are limited to their music, their live broadcasts, and things like interviews or documentaries. But as far as I see, these are not people who embrace adulthood as an opportunity to get more sexual in their work; rather it seems to me that they take it as an opportunity to be more honest about themselves, their fears, their limits, and where they’ve been as well as where they’re going. Personally, I find those things more valuable, and, given my own experiences, all the more relatable and inspirational. To me, BTS represents the challenge we all face – to define our own adulthood and our own experience, rather than let others define it for us. From 2013 to now, that has been a constant in their music far more than anything sexualized. I believe to ignore that fact is to ignore not only a huge part of what makes BTS who they are, but to ignore a vital lesson too.

Different People, Different Adulthoods

So this all brings me back around to the question I asked in the first section – what does it mean to be an adult? And honestly, I don’t believe that question has one answer, or if it does, it certainly is not about sexual maturity alone. For some people, that may be a big part of it. For others, marriage and children and family life may be the defining trait. But for other people, especially those of us who won’t ever hit those metrics and do not want to, it means something else. In order for the definition of adulthood to change, we don’t have to come up with new criteria; rather, we have to acknowledge that different people have different experiences, and different things that act as the clear boundary point between their adolescence and their adulthood. Not only can we do that with our attitudes as people, but we can do it in our media too.

This is something I really appreciate about the anime Yuri on Ice. Because the cast of characters is made up of different figure skaters from around the world, we see a huge range of personalities, interests, and maturity levels, regardless of age. For instance, main character Yuri Katsuki is twenty-three years old for most of the series, but his anxieties make him far less confident than the fifteen-year-old Yuri Plisetsky of Russia. Despite the Russian Yuri’s young age, his intense personality is very different from that of some of the other young teens competing throughout the run of the show, and even some of the older adults. Even characters that are the same age show a lot of variation in personality. One of my personal favorite examples comes when comparing the boisterous and self-assured nature of nineteen-year-old Canadian skater Jean-Jacques (JJ) Leroy to the sweet, bright-eyed optimism of twenty-year-old Thai skater Phichit Chulanont.

Image description: The character Phichit from anime series Yuri On Ice. Phichit is an adorable sweetheart who loves taking photos for social media, adores his pet hamsters, and dreams of one day having his own spectacular ice show. His cheerful nature and happy dreams are very different than some of the other skaters around him in the series, but that's okay.

I love that the anime never makes it seem like these personality variations are personal failings, or that a character like Phichit is less mature than a character like JJ. For instance, JJ is shown to first be in a committed romantic relationship and later gets engaged, whereas a character like Phichit has no clear relationship to speak of, and that’s fine. The show never compares or contrasts these things at all. In fact, the only character who ever really seems to make a big deal about the age of the younger competitors (by calling them “children”) actually seems to be one of the least emotionally mature of the bunch. And, although I don’t know for sure, I feel like this fact is done on purpose to show that the assumption that the younger competitors shouldn’t be treated with respect is not a hallmark of a well-adjusted adult. What does make these characters adults? The anime never specifies, nor is it overly concerned with these types of distinctions. Rather, is focuses on their personalities – their struggles and triumphs, the way they overcome obstacles, the way they interact with the world around them, and their dreams. For each of those characters, adulthood means something different, and I believe the same is true for all of us.

We each can define what adulthood means for ourselves. The events I described in my fandom life as well as my everyday life have had me thinking about this very topic a great deal, leaving me with the sense of wondering how to define (and redefine) my own adulthood. For me, I believe adulthood is about the ability to take responsibility for one’s own actions in a way you are never quite required to do as a child. Certainly, childhood does have responsibilities, and childhood is where children learn that actions have consequences, but as we grow older, I believe true maturity is to realize those consequences more fully, to realize that not everything is black and white, and to understand the often-difficult nature of the world.

Some people might read that definition of adulthood and think of it as too intense, pessimistic, or gloomy, and that’s fine, because their version of adulthood is not the same as mine. The acknowledgement of that fact is, in my opinion, a vital step. Whether in fandom or in regular day to day conversation, it is a mistake to assume everyone’s life and life path is the same. I don’t think we’ll ever see a change in things like “mature” as a TV rating or “adult” as an occasional synonym for “sexual” (and I don’t even really know if such changes are necessary or productive). But what I do hope we see is less experiences like I’ve had in my fandoms, and more experiences where we can all acknowledge that just because someone’s adulthood is different from ours, that doesn’t automatically make it childish, immature, invalid, or unworthy of respect. After all, adulting is hard enough already without those definitions making it harder.