Gen Z, Let the Millennials Have Milk Bar

In addition to our looks & general existence, it’s now a distinctly millennial trait to enjoy Milk Bar's birthday cake...and I'm about to walk into a river.

By Lauren Tousignant | December 15, 2023 | 3:04pm

Photo via Getty Entertainment Cake

Gen Z, Let the Millennials Have Milk Bar

I hate to wade into the generation wars on a Friday during the holiday season when we should all be enjoying Cher’s Christmas album, but Gen Z refuses to let millennials have one single day of peace. I bit my tongue during the skinny jean discourse, I kept my head down when we were ordered to hide our side parts or die, and I’ve done my best to limit my emoji use, lest a 22-year-old in a baby tee pulls a knife out of their baguette bag to chop my fingers off.

But the latest attack is too much for any debt-saddled millennial, who can’t get a good night’s sleep without three white noise machines, an ergonomic pillow, mouth tape, and a playlist of soft-spoken affirmations whispering that we’ll be OK, to bear. In addition to our looks and general existence, it’s (apparently) now a distinctly millennial trait to enjoy cake. Specifically, birthday cake from Milk Bar—arguably the best birthday cake???

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On Thursday, one social media user tweeted, “When Taylor Swift tells you she loves being a millennial…BELIEVE HER…she had a milk bar cake at her birthday party…in the year 20203.” Gen Z, I love you, I really do, I think you’re all smart and funny and will do great, important things but, like, what the fuck do you want from us???!? A birthday cake made of Twinkies and fruit roll-ups because that’d be 90s nOsTaLgIa or whatever. We already lived through the 90s, and it was a great decade so I’m sorry you weren’t there, but I had a Twinkie in my lunchbox once a week when I was in third grade in 1998. I don’t want any more Twinkies. I want a fucking slice of Christina Tosi’s delicious, sugar-soaked birthday cake with rainbow sprinkles that is definitely going to give me heartburn but if there’s anything I’m willing to risk heartburn for, it’s Milk Bar! Please??!!?!?

“Our message [to Gen Z] is that you are not nice. Not nice to millennials and we have fucking had it,” Iliza Schlesinger joked in a recent rant about millennials’ precarious position sandwiched between Boomers who hate us and Gen Z’ers who both hate us and think we’re cringe. (Sorry Gen X, I know you guys always get ignored, but if I were you, I’d cherish it.) “You need to know a little bit about the history of my generation and that is that we have taken it up the fucking ass our whole existence.” We really have 😭

Luckily, a lot of replies to the tweet agreed that Milk Bar was great and questioned why millennials couldn’t enjoy dessert “in the year 2023.” And Jezebel’s own Gen Z writer reassured me that she loves Milk Bar. So, more birthday cake for the rest of us, I guess!