There’s a line from Slouching Towards Bethlehem that I once looked up online, printed out on my office printer, and brought with me on a road trip in my early 20s (yes, really): “One of the mixed blessings of being 20 and 21 and even 23 is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened before.” Does that quote go hard as hell? Absolutely. But now that I’m in my seasoned early 30s, I’m ready to paraphrase Joan Didion and say that actually, one of the mixed blessings of being 30, 31, and even 32 is realizing that you can keep being confused and deranged once you’re off your parents’ health insurance.
It’s obviously not news that you can keep on being a flop after you’ve graduated from your 20s (hello, Carrie Bradshaw got six seasons, two movies, and a spinoff out of it!), but I won’t lie: As chaotic and often miserable as my 20s were, it was also nice to be so…what’s the phrase I’m looking for? “Dialed-in?” “Culturally relevant?” “Directly marketed to?” There’s definitely a lot I don’t understand about the current zeitgeist, from the rise of the soul tie to the concept of being “boysober,” but as I’ve crept further and further into my third decade of life, I’ve realized how ridiculous it was to think that all things fun and messy and risible would disappear from my life once I learned what an FSA account was, and paid off (some of) my credit card debt.
As fate would have it, we seem to be entering something I’d like to term a ~Saturn return girl summer~, with Charli XCX’s much-memed latest album Brat signifying the true ascendance of the semi-grown adult who still wants to have madcap adventures despite being in possession of an extensive nighttime skin-care routine that involves at least one wildly expensive unguent. (God, I could cry for all the time I went to sleep in my 20s covered in a fine sheen of glitter and pizza grease.) I once thought my 30s would be all about taking a warm bath to Enya’s “Dark Sky Island” and then going to sleep early, and I’m not going to lie—that does happen with no small degree of frequency. But I also want to embarrass myself in the club to “Talk Talk” at my earliest opportunity! Women contain multitudes!
Astrologically, a Saturn return refers to the roughly 29 years it takes for Saturn to (you guessed it) return to the same zodiac position it occupied at the time of your birth, but musically speaking, Brat is just one of a deep bench albums that seem designed to be blasted on repeat while you enjoy 30th-birthday cake. After all, Robyn released her eighth solo album, Honey, when she was 39 years old; SZA was fully 32 when SOS dropped; Hayley Kiyoko came out with the immortal summer-’22 banger “For the Girls” at 31; and Ariana Grande had a lot to say about her own return (she’s 30) on Eternal Summer. Basically, if you’ve waited in an endless gay bar bathroom line to the strains of “F2F,” or ever participated in a Robyn dance party, you were enjoying the artistic output of post-Saturn-return musicians without even knowing it.
There are plenty of ways to ring in a Saturn-return-girl summer, and they don’t necessarily have to include arrested development (the psychological concept, not the show). You can be a Saturn-return girl while you feed your baby or plant vegetables in your garden or go out to celebrate a big promotion at work, so long as there’s a thumping, frenetic beat blasting behind you while you do it. See you out there, my fellow over-30 ride-or-dies, and remember: If you see me at the club, come say hi, because I will definitely have Advil, Lactaid, and/or noise-canceling earplugs in my tiny little purse for you.
