Redefining (My) Adulthood, part 2

Image description: An image of BTS member Kim Seokjin during his joyful solo concerts which, at the time of this post, are currently ongoing. My last post on this subject was heavily about BTS and had them as the cover image, so it felt appropriate to have this picture of Jin as the cover image of this one, since I will be talking about him later on. Read on to find out how, and why today's subject is deeply important to me at the moment.

If you’re reading this post at the time of its original posting (or very close), it’s only a handful of days until I turn thirty years old. Although age is just a number and the idea that somehow I will feel a major difference from one day to the next between twenty-nine and thirty is absurd, I still can’t help but feel a little flabbergasted by this age milestone. As I’m sure most people will agree, I never really got the memo that I’m an adult, and as such I tend to still think of myself as being in my teens or early twenties.

In fact, I sometimes even get mistaken as such. As someone who has been short in stature my entire life, a lot of people tend to assume I’m younger than I am and always have. When I was younger, I also paradoxically got treated as older than I was too once people got to know me, due to having a more mature attitude, but on first glance, it was always very easy for people to assume I was still a child. This was a dichotomy that was often a little confusing for me and sometimes downright frustrating – especially since being treated as older than I was made it all the more annoying to then be treated as younger by people who didn’t know me.

However, the idea of being seen as an adult is not just something that eludes me because of my height or my appearance; as I’ve mentioned before on the blog, the idea of being an adult in an oversexualized world can mean something very different than behavior, maturity level, or appearance. As someone who lives in the Western hemisphere, I find that a lot of people choose to define adulthood and what it means to be an adult solely by your sexual and/or romantic relationships, as well as similar life experiences

As an aromantic asexual for whom these milestones will never be a part of my life, that means I tend to have a tenuous relationship with what adulthood actually even means. A few years ago, I did a post entirely about this phenomenon, in which I focused not just on my own experiences (although that was of course part of it – hence the way the titles of these posts are formatted), but on how adulthood is portrayed within media and our broader society. Today, I want to discuss this topic again, but since I am approaching a milestone age, I’d like to flip my focus a little.

Whereas my own personal experiences were a smaller part of the other post, for this post, I want my own thoughts and feelings to take center stage. While of course I will still be talking about the idea of adulthood and being an adult through the lens of society and culture, I want to unpack some of my feelings about this topic and revisit the limitations of these ideas through my own lens too. So I hope you’ll join me today for some more personal reflections on what it means to be an adult in my own life – measured entirely through metrics not related to what most people consider “normal.”

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What Do I Think It Means to Be an Adult?

If you asked me what event made me realize I’m an adult and I wanted to respond with a humorous answer, I would tell you it was the time when my best friend and I were travelling together and we were referred to as adults by some of the other people at our hotel. We had been in the hotel pool’s hot tub, when it was crashed by a group of teenaged boys. While not especially unruly or disruptive, they were very obviously out of place and the rest of the people in the hot tub sort of left to let them have the space by themselves, instead retreating to a different hot tub on the other end of the pool. When my friend and I arrived, one of the couples there had seen us – and the arrival of the teens – at the other tub, and greeted us by saying all the adults had left to come here. It was actually quite amusing to be identified as an adult compared to the goofy teens, and somewhat humorously surprising.

As I stated in my introduction, I’ve spent most of my life having people mistake me for someone younger, something which was very annoying when I was a pre-teen being mistaken for a child, but which I love nowadays when I sometimes get mistaken for a college kid (college-aged people are still, of course, adults, but I think you understand what I mean). Therefore, it’s always a surprise when I actually get referred to as an adult by people or get called “ma’am” in social situations. There must be something about me that identifies me as an adult at least some of the time – something that isn’t reliant on physical attributes.

To that end, if you asked me to give you a more serious answer for what made me realize I’m an adult, I’d say it would be the times in my life when older coworkers, friends, and relatives view me as an equal. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately at my current job, since I sort of fall directly in the middle of my younger coworkers and my older coworkers, but am often seen as an equal or partner of my older coworkers, despite my age. Being seen as a responsible adult in these cases has nothing to do with my lifestyle, but has everything to do with how I otherwise present myself, which is something I think society would benefit from understanding.

Of course, various societies and cultures not only have different metrics for adulthood and “normal life,” as well as different ideas about ages and milestones. Here in the United States, these things are perhaps a bit less rigid than in other parts of the world, but there is a definite idea about what it means to be an adult overall, as I’ve discussed in the past and in the first iteration of this post. While not always applicable, in my own experience I’ve seen the way society and culture expect adults to have some combination of things like romance, sex, marriage, or children, depending on the situation or social group in question.

However, the truth is that while these things are often part of adulthood for many people, being an adult is in no way, shape, or form tied to these things. You don’t need to have these things to be considered an adult, despite how society acts or how people try to pressure us when we get to a certain age. There is a strange tendency in our society to think that these things are some sort of magic threshold that allow people to cross the boundary line from adolescence into adulthood, but throughout my twenties, I’ve experienced very different boundaries that have made me into an adult.

Many of these boundaries are very subtle and have nothing to do with relationships, but rather have everything to do with my own self-improvement and my own growth. To me, what has truly made me start seeing myself as an adult are attributes such as learning to take accountability for my actions, being there for the people who matter to me, and proving I’m someone who can be relied on in various situations. This is why I find it so powerful when adults I respect consider me a peer or when they trust me enough to share their struggles with me. In my opinion and for my own life, these things are more powerful indicators of my adulthood than any other metric society could use, and I think that needs to be hammered home sometimes.

For different people, adulthood is bound to mean different things. For some people, graduating from college may be the metric they use to feel like an adult. Or maybe it’s getting their own place to live for the first time or being hired at their first job. Maybe it is indeed having a steady relationship, moving in with their partner, or getting married. Maybe it is having children. But none of these metrics can or should be universally applied. If someone didn’t go to college, does that make them still a child? If someone lives in a multi-generational home rather than on their own, does that mean they’re not an adult? If someone never gets married or has children, does that make them immature?

Naturally, there will always be people who don’t understand alternate ways of life and there will always be people who don’t respect that some people value different metrics and milestones, and those people will always find ways to tear other people down. But for as much as I wish I could say this was an issue endemic to just haters or chalk it up to ignorance, this attitude is much more prevalent and in many ways is a socially acceptable form of bigotry that many people don’t even realize is as insidious as it actually is.

While challenging that is more difficult than I can fully unpack, the reason why I have these posts as part of my “redefining” series is because I truly believe we need to examine societal attitudes around this concept. I don’t mean that we need to change the age at which we see people as adults or even stop using the aforementioned metrics as ways we measure our own adulthood; the problem is not with the actual concept of being an adult. Rather, the issue is with the way society tries to make adulthood have one universally applicable meaning, complete with metrics that are completely arbitrary, and it’s that faux definition that I think we can and should redefine.

How Do We Redefine Adulthood?

Not long ago, for a completely different project (video below), I was researching the idea of liminality – the state of being in which you transition between two things or states of being. One of the most common states of liminality that most people experience in their lifetime is the transition between adolescence and adulthood; in fact, young people in and of themselves are considered “liminal beings,” since they’re not yet children but are not yet adults, and this (at least in part) often explains why youth and adolescence are such emotionally fraught and difficult times.

During my research, however, I was fascinated by the idea that liminality doesn’t just happen to individuals, but can happen to entire groups, especially groups that aren’t able to feel truly accepted by society at large. This can include any number of minority identities, including queer identities, and this feeling of liminality can last indefinitely for these groups and thus last for the entire life of an individual identifying with that group. This idea was a subtly transformative one for me, and it helped me understand why I often feel displaced or unsettled by my day-to-day life, even well into what society considers my adulthood.

For me, that feeling of liminality may never go away. I may always feel in-between, and society may always treat me as such, but I actually think there’s something profound about that. I’ve always loved concepts such as liminal space, which is heavily related to this concept, and have found meaning in the idea of spaces that serve as transitional or temporary. Like me, these spaces can’t be entirely this or that, and they can’t be entirely considered “normal” either, which is something I feel very acutely. Furthermore, the idea of minority groups being liminal refers to the idea of not ever really achieving true acceptance, something I also struggle with.

Again, trying to fully unpack the idea of people who are stuck between these two extremes or discuss the idea of adults who still embrace things that society considers “childlike” is far more complex than I can address here. But what I can address is the fact that society needs to release some of its ideas about what makes an adult. This is a complicated topic, since it deals with things such as gender roles, societal double standards, and more, but I think a lot of it boils down to one of the most common and enduring factors in discrimination – people simply not understanding the differences between us.

This is part of why I brought up the example of liminality and that feeling of being stuck in transition, because, despite very different circumstances, it’s something we can all relate to. Everyone knows what it feels like to have a liminal experience or to be a liminal being, and because of that, I think everyone should understand what it feels like to feel displaced. Adulthood is tough and we all feel off-balance from time to time in ways that should make us more sympathetic to each other and the different struggles we face, and I believe the best way to encourage people to redefine their definitions of adulthood is to remind people of those struggles.

By simply reflecting on our own struggles and the struggles of others, we can be reminded to have empathy and understand for those who have different life experiences that we ourselves have. Those differences are valuable and important and should be celebrated, and at the same time, we should be able to acknowledge how much unites us despite these essential differences. But I also think we need to reflect on our own selves too. We need to redefine our own adulthood by resisting the people who would take that choice from us and would try to make us something more “familiar” or “normal.”

The Power of Refusing to “Grow Up”

I talk a lot about tropes and phrases I think are subtly very damaging – everything from phrases that bug me (like “normal life”) to words I despise (such as “prude.”) But another phrase that significantly bothers me is when people are told to “grow up” as an insult or a dismissive putdown. Granted, there are definitely instances where people should be told to grow up: for instance, everyone who is rude to people in retail and the service industry is absolutely immature and does need to grow up. But for the most part, that is not what people mean when they use this phrase; rather, they use this phrase to dismiss someone’s personality, interests, or life choices, simply because they do not measure up to what other people value.

In my previous post on this subject, I spoke a lot about my favorite band, the Korean supergroup BTS and the pressure some fans put on them to become more sexual because, in the view of these fans, this is what adults are supposed to do. Over the past few years and for a variety of reasons, this has become even worse, further highlighting to me the utterly pernicious nature of this attitude. But during that time, I’ve seen another variant on this attitude, one that is arguably worse.

If you read my post for my 5th anniversary, you’ll see I spent a great deal of that post talking about BTS member Jin, the oldest member of the group who is known for having a warm-hearted and cheerful personality. As I discuss in that post, Jin’s bright attitude has become increasingly important to me over the years, and is something I’ve especially cherished since his discharge from his mandatory military service, as I was afraid he might lose it during that difficult and demanding time. Instead, Jin has come back with even more of that bright energy, almost refusing to let hardship change him.

As someone who loves the wonder and whimsy Jin manages to bring to the situations he’s in, nothing makes me happier than knowing he’s still the same as he was before the military. However, not everyone feels the same. Some people believe that, because Jin is in his thirties now, he should quit the band in order to get married and have children, ostensibly because that’s what people his age “should be doing” in their view, and they’re attempting to force their own metrics of adulthood onto a person they’ve never met. This is not something that happens only to celebrities like Jin, of course, but something that happens to people of all kinds regardless of identity. So, while I always find these things frustrating, I don’t find them especially surprising.

Image description: In 2021, Jin made a fun and silly song for his birthday called "Super Tuna" - a song about his love of fishing. When he returned from his military service in 2024, he made a second verse to the song, complete with a cute music video to go along with it. The above image is from that MV and happens during Jin's line to the titular super tuna in which he asks it to "please bite my fishing rod." I'm including it here because I find it deeply amusing that haters want Jin to leave BTS to go off and get married and meanwhile he's refusing to let go of his whimsy. If anything, he's doubling down on it, and I find that beautiful.

However, there are other ways Jin is treated and dismissed thanks to his personality. To quote my anniversary post, Jin often receives “hateful comments telling him to ‘grow up’ or calling him ‘immature’ for the way he acts and views the world,” and I believe this is “an attitude that society not only entrenches, but encourages.” In his case, these insults have been lobbed against him for things as simple as playing computer games on live broadcast for the entertainment of his fans or for naming his debut album Happy. While some of these things are no doubt thanks to BTS’s haters doing the only thing they’re good at and throwing ridiculous criticism at the group, I think there’s more to unpack here.

Notice that these things are also implicitly tied to the idea of adulthood, as if there is only one way to adult and that you must meet this metric or else be ostracized for it. As I said in that previous post, I believe society actually encourages us to see things like happiness, fun, or joy as immature, especially when these things are not connected to sex and/or romance, and that is incredibly problematic. For that reason, I believe that something we can do as individuals in an effort to redefine our own adulthood is to refuse to buy into the idea that we can only be adults if we follow someone else’s metrics. In short, we can refuse to listen to people who try to steal our joy, or who use the phrase “grow up” as a shorthand for “be more normal.”

Adulthood doesn’t have to be some sort of horrifyingly joyless slog, nor does it have to be a factory where everyone forces themselves to have identical experiences. As individuals, we can choose to be happy, to love ourselves, and to take control of our own lives. We can choose to make the best of our circumstances or create new ones. We can dedicate our lives to chasing our dreams or just living in the moment. If you’re lucky enough to choose what to do with your adulthood, I believe we should all seize those choices and make them to the fullest. That to me is a much better indicator of adulthood than any of these other arbitrary metrics – by making choices about our own lives, our own wants, and our own dreams, we are truly able to wield our power as adults.

Something that I have often said about my own adulthood is the fact that I don’t love always having to be responsible and deal with things on my own, I do love the freedom to make my own choices about my life – about the things I do, the things I want, and the things I value. I believe knowing all of these things about one’s self is the true mark of maturity, regardless of where you live, your relationship status, or whether or not you have children. Society is full of arbitrary and artificial metrics like this – benchmarks it likes to tell us we must hit or else we can’t be truly called adults – but these things are not law. Heck, they’re not even universally agreed upon, even among people who would consider themselves “normal.”

In my original version of this post, I mentioned that I think we should all be at least somewhat suspicious of people who try to dissuade us from self-love, happiness, or joy. To that same end, I feel we should be equally suspicious of anyone who tries to make us adopt their own metrics of what our adulthood should look like. I know this from experience as someone who will never hit the standards of “normal adulthood” that different factions of society want to throw at me, but who is nevertheless an adult in other senses of the word. 

I may have hobbies that other people can’t understand, or care about things that society dubs “childlike,” or refuse to let people steal my joy or try to puppet me to live the life they want, but that doesn’t take away from my adulthood. If anything, I think resisting these things makes me even more of an adult, because I am able to see through the lies that society tells us and the ways they try to entrench those lies. To that end, I think the most adult, mature, and powerful thing we can do as individuals is refuse to “grow up” when we’re told to do so, instead embracing the fullness of the things we care about, all while cultivating our own personalities.

In my experience, society is always trying to make us feel childish for something we like. I’ve experienced this as a BTS fan (“they’re just a boy band for little girls”), I’ve experienced this as a nerd who likes things like Star Trek, I’ve experienced this as an adult who likes Disney (“Disney is just for kids”). But who gets to decide that these things are “immature” while things like sports fandoms are considered socially acceptable, just to name one example? I think this just proves how these metrics are not real and that we shouldn’t have to plan our lives around them. If someone who likes a specific, socially accepted movie genre or sport or type of music doesn’t have to “grow up,” why should I?

I firmly believe that our society and culture try to paint a picture of what a “normal” person should like – a definition that changes depending on where you are, what social group dominates the conversation, and more. But because these things are ever-changing, these are not solid things to build your life and your personality on. No one else has to live our lives, and so the only truth that really matters is our own, something which is quietly very powerful and subversive. I think if more of us resisted these doctrines and decided our own metrics for adulthood, we’d not only be able to change the definition of our adulthood, but might be able to evolve society’s standards too.

Image description: Me at one of Jin's solo concerts, having the most fun I've ever had. If people consider this type of joy, happiness, and personal fulfilment to be juvenile, then I'll happily be a kid.

When I did my previous “Redefining (My) Adulthood” post, I was in the process of realizing I was closer to age thirty than I was to age twenty; needless to say, to be doing a follow up to that post mere days before I actually do turn thirty is a little surreal. In that post, I mentioned not really knowing what it means to be an adult thanks to society’s tendency to conflate adulthood with metrics I cannot and will not ever reach. While that still frustrates me deeply and it’s still something I desperately hope will change in future, I am nevertheless proud to write this post today and be able to say that, between that previous post and this one, I’ve learned a lot about myself and about what it means to be an adult through my own metrics, not anyone else’s.

Something I’ve always hoped my thirties would bring me would be continued awareness of these things. I hope that, as I leave my twenties behind, I can embrace myself even more fully and use my lived experiences, my felt emotions, and my various struggles to continue to grow into an even more well-rounded person. If I can do any of these things, I will consider that a true marker of my maturity and my adulthood, even if society looks down on those things. If sex, romance, and “normal life” are what society considers adulthood, I want no part of it, and I will gladly continue to become my own person, one decade of life at a time.