The word suggests perennials, perennial snow (the subject of a classic joke about Totti), a tiring eternity. This is also why the passage of the term “perennial” from a marketing gimmick to a category of the spirit has not yet taken place. But for years there have been those who have been cheering, using it in market research, in gossip and in podcasts. And there are those who want it for themselves, they find themselves there, they reassure themselves. Because “perennial”, according to Gina Pell, the digital entrepreneur from San Francisco who launched it in 2016, is a term that includes “people of all ages who are always curious, who always want to grow, who understand how to perceive themselves and others and the connections between them, and which resist pigeonholing ». Net of aging, net of belonging to groups often ignored such as older women.
Always blossom
The main perennials are those that “are 9 to 99 years old, but are often female and in their 50s,” says Pell. In market research they are referred to as perennials because it sounds better than “mature”. But also because, Pell wrote in Meet the Perennials, they are “ever blooming” women, always blooming. Thus we transcend generations and we evolve when needed and when we like. So you don’t get old, you change, but you continue to do things when you are young (but those who ran seven kilometers before work or drank three margaritas before dinner should go climbing; otherwise they are not perennial, they are suicidal).
Perennial or tired?
Thus, the term worries the most reflective perennials (we almost always speak of females, many men cis consider being perennials a right). They fear it requires eternal efforts to always be on the track, on a kind of groundhog day of fitness, career achievement, social success. And indeed. Typical perennials are women over forty-fifty-sixty who live like younger people. Working or otherwise informed and up-to-date and technological, they are lithe for yoga or triathlon tonics. And, we read in the women’s press, “they have an indecipherable physical appearance”, and net of Italian it has been a phenomenon that has been visible for years. There are many women who are no longer aged, and not just because they have had a lot of fillers. They have smooth faces quite similar to each other (the sad condition of perennials who care too much is to resemble other perennials who are clients of the same aesthetic doctors).
Non linear perennials
On the other hand. Sport, treatments, conscious nutrition, meditation, the more money available make you independent and enterprising. And very attractive to advertisers and marketers. Pell explains that large companies decide products and strategies based on algorithms on behavior, not on age, but age groupings remain an obsession. As is, in our society, in our culture, “the idea of having to all follow a certain path of life imposed”. Pell invites us to overcome these preconceptions. And «going beyond the linear mentality; we need to transcend, and understand that things have their cycles and never work as a line from failure to success. ‘ To do this, «you need to activate the perennial mentality».
“The future,” he said in an interview with Daily Telegraph, «Is in an approach that looks beyond. Even now, companies like Netflix and Amazon are profiling their customers based on taste and not age. Defining people according to their year of birth is so out of fashion ». And then the term perennial is useful in selling the ladies series (there is none more perennial than Grace and Frankie), almost as useful as moisturizers for older skin.
Thirteen years younger
Even because. according to various psycho-advertising surveys such as that of the French agency Superhuman, 80 per cent of women “do not recognize themselves in the way in which society constructs their image”; it is not the discovery of the millennium but at least it is acknowledged. And then, more interestingly, two thirds of the respondents “always feel young”. 92 percent of women between 45 and 60 “feel thirteen years younger on average,” and 65 percent believe they look younger. In addition to market research, there are Instagram-Facebook-Twitter, which give information. «Now thanks to social media you immediately understand what people want, and age has little to do with it. Advertising and marketing are moving from spending by focusing on a single demographic group to trying to enter a cultural zeitgeist, ”explained Pell. Zeigeist understood as the spirit of society and the culture of the time, sometimes expressed in clichés, clichés, emblematic cases. In the media there are stories of perennial redemption perhaps niche, with girls who “reinvent themselves” as they have been fired as event organizers and have opened vegan bakeries, things like that.
The quinquados risk
There are those who do not reinvent but want to stay young, trusting in the end of the sense of ridicule. In France they created the term quinquados (abbreviated to quinquas), which combines “fifty-year-old” and “teenager”. Sometimes the quinquados are in pairs, she swaps clothes with her daughter, he goes out with her daughter’s peers. Other times the women are not pathetic and the men are not rattusi; just nice (s), enthusiastic (s), occasionally unreliable. Or famous and famous.
The most popular
The identifying trait of perennial celebrities is even less clear than that of normal perennials, so they have pointed out all kinds. To say: according to several consultants and communicators, they are perennial Serena Williams, Emma Stone, Elon Musk, Michelle Obama, Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore, Jennifer Lopez, Penelope Cruz, Adele, Lorde, the Rolling Stones, U2, John Legend and Lady Gaga. Plus some sensational old women like Susan Sarandon, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton who is a fashion influencer on Instagram. Where the most loved perennials are honestly older. Like the absurd and regal Milanese of the Sciuraglam account and like Iconaccidental, a New York university professor discovered by chance and become a very chic bearer of clothes and accessories.
And this, in the end, is the reason for the hype around words and people. And age matters and how. Perennials understood as over 50, with more money than the young and more energy than the very old, are the richest and most attractive age range. So cajoled with complimenting terms and with promises of luxuriance, if not of eternity. And pushed to get busy, to move, to pursue projects, to consume. Even if those who age and evolve really do new things and change their life, but without the excitement of once upon a time. And he doesn’t define himself as perennial, even just for good luck (but there are many people who like it, and various podcasts; in Spanish Perennials by Fernanda Ribeiro and Natalia Dornellas, in English The Perennials Podcast e The Perennials Podcast Book Club, and they are boring, a good perennial deserves more).