Zainab Jeewanjee

I’m not going to pretend and say the Kansas City Chiefs were amazing yesterday and I love football. Truth is, I love a winter Sunday afternoon amidst a new year, with game day eats and this big American production that is the Super Bowl. Even the years I don’t watch the game, I make sure to catch the national anthem performance, the halftime show and the ads – it’s fun leaning into the cultural zeitgeist, this grand snapshot of mainstream consumer and pop culture for any year.

And this year’s Super Bowl collage was unsurprisingly geared toward Millennials and our purchasing power. I was looking forward to ads with Alicia Silverstone and Ben Stiller, but both ads fell a little short – they were not particularly clever or original, yet they weren’t total disappointments either. They let us relish in the nostalgia of Zoolander and Cher Horowitz from Clueless and Ben Stiller and Alicia Silverstone haven’t missed a beat since their heydays and that was a treat to see.

But what I loved most were Millennial sentiments of parenthood on full display at the Super Bowl. We saw it in Rihanna’s halftime show which doubled as a pregnancy announcement, and in some of the biggest advertisements from Amazon & Kia.

In “Binky Dad” we get a glimpse into the glory that is Millennial fatherhood as a dad goes full superhero to urgently retrieve his infants favorite pacifier in a Kia he drives like a Batmobile. It’s funny, it’s cute and speaks volumes about how dads today consider parenthood a central part of their identity and are more involved with their kids than ever before. And market forces have responded in kind – we see less male gaze and men being lauded for being able to crack open beer cans at a beach in today’s Super Bowl ads, and more of men actually gazing at their babies and being celebrated for changing diapers and grocery shopping. Millennial dads and I’d say Gen X as well, are redefining parenthood, for the better.

Amazon’s “Saving Sawyer” gives us a view into the chaos and closeness of Millennial life and how pets are an integral part of our families. It’s an homage to the humanity and resilience of Millennials as we withstand the challenges of our time like parenting in dual working families and through a pandemic — and how nonetheless, our parenting extends to our furry family members who are non-negotiable. This ad takes you on a rollercoaster of emotion in under two minutes, and in the best way possible.

And redefining parenthood was personified at halftime, where Rihanna brought mom power to the show; performing with a confidence that for many of us, comes precisely with motherhood. Her minimalist (relative to past performers) choice of wardrobe and choreography amplified her achievements and her baby bump; she performed one hit after another from a catalogue spanning 15 years and it was a stunning visual. Seeing this superstar pregnant, looking gorgeous, and performing on this grand stage without missing a beat speaks volumes about how millennial moms juggle work and our personal lives. It’s testimony to the very high expectations we put on today’s moms and how still, we rise to them – redefining motherhood, womanhood and finding our confidence in the process. Rihanna actually said it best herself before the performance at a press conference promoting the halftime show:

“When you become a mom, there’s something that just happens where you feel like you could take on the world, you can do anything”.

Let’s enjoy this moment as millennials – we’re kind of a big deal right now. Just like how we made sure skinny jeans are here to stay, (no matter how a fickle fashion industry may try to wrestle them away from us), we’re influencing culture for the better.