Howdy y’all! How are my sweet little chickies doing today? Do you all feel as though you’re blossoming into beautiful free-range chickens? Are you frolocking in the wind, staying warm in your coop, and dreaming of beautiful multi-colored eggs? Do tell please!
While I can get behind chicken eggs as a source of protein, I, along with a mass of Generation Z fellas, are unable to get behind cow milk as a nutrient source. You know the saying, “I’m not like other domestic fowls, I’m different,”? Well, I am like other Gen Z kids, and I will stand firmly in my opinion that cow milk is not the move folks.
While our Gen X and Boomer parents may live by the cow milk and die by the cow milk, we do not have to! There are so many more milk options available these days and since many of us are still considered to be in our formative years, I believe we have adapted to normalizing the criminalization of cow milk as it had it coming for days if not years. I kid, I kid. Being dramatic about arbitrary topics is simply a motiveless hobby of mine.
In all seriousness, Gen Z has turned the milk industry around, and Big Dairy quite honestly should be scared! There are so many non-dairy options for milk these days. Perhaps you’re a soy milk kind of chap or maybe you only vibe with oat milk. If neither of those fit your aesthetic, there is also rice, hemp, coconut, almond and cashew milk. As a non-dairy milk enthusiast, I find these milks to be much kinder on the taste buds and no longer do I have to water down the milk in my cereal to get rid of the undeniable smell cow milk protrudes.
So why has this generation turned against cow milk? Is it because cow milk smells like softcore steroids? It is because cow milk is too homogenous and while our ‘fit’s may be monochromatic, we like the little specks of darker colors the other milk options have? Surely it cannot be because cow milk is delivered through the udder of a cow and reminds us of our primitive days of our mother’s nursing us which does not fit into our idea of being strong independent adults that do not need another mammal to provide us with nutrition!
Well, I did some research and my findings have condensed into two main factors: one, we as a generation use wild cows frolicking in beautiful fields and looking at peace as memes, so how could we not, and two, Fergie has most likely subconsciously influenced our idea behind milk.
To quote “M.I.L.F.$” by Fergie, “Heard you in the mood for a little MILFshake, welcome to the Dairy Dutchess Love Factory, I could whip it up, fix you up straight away.” Yessss Fergie! But also…I no longer am able to not immediately sing the song in my head when I see someone drinking a glass of milk and assume that one is into mothers. It’s something I’m working on, okay!
Aside from MILFs, let us not forget the most iconic milk reference from “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas, which states, “mix your milk with my coco puff, milky milky coco, mix your milk with my coco puff, milky milky, righhhht.” Regardless of what these lyrics analytically mean, I believe that they have led us to believe that cow milk is for Fergie to sing about and not for us to ingest. Perhaps we will feel differently after our metamorphosis after our first Saturn return, but until then, bye bye Big Dairy!