What is Love?

Generational generalizations are a slippery slope — we all know that by now, don’t we? Yet we can’t resist thinking in those terms, because popular attitudes do indeed morph over the decades. From the Greatest Generation to the Boomers to Gen X to Millennials to Gen Z to Gen Alpha, technology and social upheavals have made for stark contrasts in the aesthetics and mores of each successive wave of babies, all exposed to radically different worlds from their parents’ as they grow into adulthood. 

We’re all trying to figure out how Gen Z fits in, even Gen Z. With our heads whipping back and forth between screens as that generation has grown up, born roughly between 1997 and 2012 (as some define it), we’re all left with that feeling of “what just happened?” Perhaps The Economist got it right with the 2018 headline, “Teenagers are better behaved and less hedonistic nowadays — but they are also lonelier and more isolated.” Put more poignantly, we can quote Millennial poet Dylan Krieger, who writes in “internal internet”:
if you see something, say something. tell the devil on your shoulder, despite his wi-fi whiz kid wishing well you find yourself googling: how to not feel so alone

Perhaps reacting to that paradox of loneliness in the age of connection, Gen Z, by and large, is adapting, and taking the rest of us along with them, not content with the pronouncements of glib headlines. Follow us, then, as we follow them and all the myriad ways they’re answering the timeless question, “What is Love?”

“The theme of this Valentine’s Day: resistance”

Mia Atoms (our first subject’s nom de internet) has seen a lot of changes in her 26 years, and not all for the good. At the older end of the Gen Z spectrum, she’s almost nostalgic for the era of flip phones and Blockbuster video rentals. “It’s a paradox,” she says. “I feel very lucky, but also disgusted by the society I am an adult in. I spend a lot of time online, and sometimes I feel grossed out by it. I think about ‘the time before,’ because I did get to experience that — before the screens took over our lives, and AI and all that. Oh my God, now people are falling in love with AI chat bots! We’re in this era of, like, social media psychosis.”

Yet in the next breath, she sees the value of those screens. “Now you can have connections with people in places that you never imagined, you know? Like, I have friends in Australia, friends in Kentucky. I’ve never been to Kentucky! So that’s a positive part.” And for Atoms, the key to making the most of such connections boils down to one word: friendship.

“I know it’s going to be Valentine’s Day, you know, but I have personally been messaging my best friends about things like our book club. Like, ‘Let’s do this for Valentine’s Day.’ Because me and my best friend have been dating people, but we’ve come to this realization, and now we’re trying to de-center the romantic relationship.”

With dating apps, she says, “you can just swipe, swipe, swipe, and receive all this validation from all these people that you match with. But in the end, I don’t actually know you, right? All I know is these pictures and quotes that you’ve curated of yourself.  I feel like we need to scrap it all. Go back to the basics. Let’s bump into people at shows. Let’s get coffee with people, you know, compliment people, tell someone in person. That’s my new ethos of meeting people, whether it be for relationships or friendships or anything. Let’s make 2026 a year of friendship. I’m focusing on myself and my family and my friendships, and then from that, I’ll have a better foundation for when I want to be in a relationship.”

For Atoms, a very politically aware Gen Z’er, that friendship has value beyond desire or romance. “There’s too much other shit to worry about right now. You know, we’ve got a whack job President, we have ICE. It’s love in the time of war. And we’ve grown up watching all of this. I was a junior in high school during the 2016 elections, watching it in real time, and I turned 21 in the pandemic. So I think just building community is one of the most important things we could do right now, in response to everything that’s going on. I talk about this with people my age all the time.” 

The answers they arrive at, Atoms says, don’t necessarily need traditional romance. “People are finding fulfillment and love in their friendships and themselves. You know? There’s a big uptick in that, and that’s also why the birth rates are going down. People aren’t getting married. That’s also  scaring the old-ass Republicans that we have in office, right? Which is why they’re peddling all this ‘tradwife’ stuff. We’re not falling in line. 

“Just being a single woman of childbearing age, in and of itself, is an act of resistance. Focusing on your friendships, living in a big house with your friends, having a community with your friends, is an act of resistance. Growing a garden and sharing your fruits and vegetables with your neighbors is an act of resistance. Through friendship and community, through trust, that is how organization happens. 

“That’s the theme of this Valentine’s Day: resistance. So, like, me and my girls, we’re gonna go to the casino to have fun — yeah — and to win. I’m gonna win it big!”  — Alex Greene

Want a cookie?

Sometimes things are just meant to happen. Like the meeting of Krystion Pegues, 25, and Jerry Parker, 27.

They met two days after Valentine’s Day, 2024 at Oasis Hookah Bar on Highland Street. Parker saw Pegues sitting next to one of her friends at the bar. She wasn’t looking at him. “She was sitting there just scrolling on her phone,” Parker says. “She was beautiful. I felt like I had a slight connection with her.” She wasn’t like other women there who were “very raunchy, loud, and wanted to be seen.”

It looked as if Pegues was about to leave, so Parker acted quickly. He walked over to the bar and “in a slick manner” asked a “stupid question” of his friend who works in the kitchen. “So I could kind of bump into her. I did that on purpose,” Parker says, “I think I asked, ‘Hey, what time do you close tonight?’” 

He and Pegues talked a bit. Then Pegues said she and her friend were leaving. She said, “Yeah, we’re going home.” As they left, Parker went out to the parking lot to get his lighter out of his car.  He discovered he was parked next to Pegues and thought, “Oh, like this is lining up.”

He walked over to their car and they began talking. That’s when Pegues offered Parker one of the cookies she’d bought from Insomnia. “I knew she was a sweetheart when she offered me a cookie,” Parker says. Pegues also gave him her Instagram address when he asked her for it. “I texted her that night to make sure she got home safely,” Parker says. “That’s the way I do things. I didn’t want to do too much.”

But that was enough. That hit home with Pegues. “He was very responsible,” she says, adding, “I could tell he was genuinely trying to make sure I got home safe.”

She had also liked Parker’s demeanor when she met him. “I liked how nervous he was. I feel like some men approach and they’re very bold or very flashy.” And she says, “I feel like some guys play it cool.” But with Parker she felt, “I can trust this guy and see where things go.”

They began dating. And they’ve been together ever since. Now they have nicknames for each other — she’s “Pooh” and “Boo Boo,” he’s “Tigger” and “Sugar Babe.”

Asked how they were going to celebrate this coming Valentine’s Day, Pegues says, “We are getting massages and I want to go to the museum. Just take the day as it comes. The museum, massage, and dinner. We’re thinking about The Pink Palace.” It might not be a cookie, but Parker will probably show up with something sweet, maybe in a heart-shaped box.  “I always make sure I show up with something,” he says. “Because I know she deserves it. Because I know I’d do anything for her — literally — in this world.” — Michael Donahue

“I’m blessed to have the friends that I do.”

Meghan Moody’s earliest celebrations of Valentine’s Day began when she was a child. She credits her parents for shaping her view of the holiday, as they were always her Valentines. The 27-year-old Memphis native likened the occasion to that of Christmas or Easter, as she would come downstairs to see displays of love symbolized through candy and gifts from her parents.

The day was made even sweeter by her granddad, who would buy her a Valentine’s Day stuffed animal adorned with the corresponding year and a heart. “[Valentine’s Day] is just about letting the people around you know you love them,” Moody says. “I’ve always gotten my mom flowers, my granddaddy and my dad flowers.”

Her inclination towards celebrating love wasn’t just reserved for her family, though. In high school she remembers filling Mason jars with her friends’ names and filling them with candy and a special note detailing how much they meant to her. “That was something that turned into — over the years — making sure there was time etched out for me and my friends,” Moody says.

These gestures were a further extension of an idea her parents instilled in her. She knew that if she wanted community, she would have to show up for them as well. Even when it’s not Valentine’s Day she likes to send thoughtful messages to her circle. However, the 14th of February allows her to put an extra sparkle on her signature acts of affirmation.

As she and her circle grew into adults, they found themselves being more intentional about celebrating their friendship. Moody says her and her friends’ iteration of Galentine’s Day popped up in their late-teens/early-twenties, manifesting as gatherings and activities celebrated before or after Valentine’s Day. She says this was because she didn’t view friendship or platonic love as an “either/or” when paired with romantic relationships. Moody is a firm believer that one is not a replacement for the other.

“While romantic partners are important, I don’t think you should abandon any friendships,” Moody says. “Asking your romantic partner to be everything in your life — your best friend, confidant, therapist, XYZ— can be a heavy burden.”

Moody says she’s been single for a while, and it doesn’t bother her. In fact, when she was recently asked by a friend about her bout of singledom, she noted that her life was “extremely full,” thanks to the love her parents and friends have cultivated. “My parents made sure that I felt loved inside the house and they had already formed a community I felt supported in, so I never really had to go further than home to find security,” Moody says. “Then you add on the fact that I’m blessed to have the friends that I do. I feel like they really model what healthy friendships look like. I feel seen and accepted there.”

She’s especially grateful for the vulnerability this has afforded her. Moody feels her most authentic when she’s with her friends and family. This, paired with her hobbies, makes her content, saying that a romantic interest would have to add onto this.

At this point in her life, she’s unsure of what they might look like, but feels like it may be surplus, since she does have so much love in her life. 

But, she says, there’s always room for more.  — Kailynn Johnson

Sex doesn’t sell? 

Sex closed the Downtown Hooters.

OK, new attitudes toward sex closed the Downtown Hooters. OK, new attitudes towards sex, inflation, food costs, labor costs, consumer spending, online porn, DoorDash, mounting debt, and a lot of other things closed the Downtown Hooters. But that list still includes sex, or titillation, a tentpole of its business.  

Hooters at large isn’t going anywhere. The owners ordered a “Re-Hooteriziation,” a process that sought to scrub Hooters’ raunchy image with something a bit more family friendly. Many kids can still eat free at many locations on Monday Fundays, for example. The company also launched a fast-casual, no-hot-pants brand called Hoots.    

Still, the chain filed for bankruptcy and has shed dozens of locations over the past few years. This included the high-profile corner spot at Peabody Place and B.B. King Boulevard, just a stone’s throw from Beale Street. That’s the kind of location that makes you wonder, “If Hooters can’t make it there, can it make it anywhere?”

Markets move for many reasons. For Hooters, not to mention strip clubs and other sex-adjacent venues everywhere, it was partly due to Millennials’ and Gen Z’s changing attitudes toward sex.

Proof is hard to come by, especially for Hooters. But for strip clubs, marketwatcher IBIS World said the strip club industry has “been falling out of favor,” especially as “U.S. culture has evolved and people, particularly young adults, have become more aware of misogyny and exploitation.” That dropped the $4.2 billion industry by 1.1 percent in 2025. No small change, especially after terrible drags during the pandemic. 

What is also true is that sexual activity among adolescents fell from 2013 to 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey, from 47 percent in 2013 to 32 percent in 2023. 

Why? Researchers tried to explain in a separate 2023 study. Young people are having fewer boyfriends, girlfriends, and partners than they used to, the researchers from Rutgers University and the State University of New York said. They’re also drinking less alcohol. They’re not making as much money and sometimes still live with their parents. Finally, the researchers suggested that spending more money on computer games meant less money for going out, which lowers the chances of relationships and then sex. 

Younger folks, too, ask for sexual consent more often now, according to the CDC. Males asked more frequently than females that study found. These data points can’t ever prove there’s less objectification — less ogling — happening. But they may offer a glimpse of changes in attitudes towards respect for women. 

And that could be bad news for the titillation industry. Sex alone cannot be blamed for stumbles at “breasteraunts” and strip clubs. But the writing is on the wall, especially on the darkened doors of Memphis’ venerable Downtown Hooters.  — Toby Sells.