Introducing: The Luz BagGetting older warrants an automatic pass to maturity, its emblems recognized in wisdom lines arounds the eyes and hair laced with hints of grey. But this mindset overlooks the person that is young but grew up quickly; who tackled the world head-on and at breakneck speed. The sixteen-year-old in Johannesburg forced to abandon their childhood from the age of, say, ten, is light years ahead of the fifty-year-old who lived a life unscathed somewhere in the West. The latter has no real grasp of hard struggle. Experience is everything. And as the late R&B crooner Aaliyah concluded, sans the romantic leanings, age is just a number. Over time, though, the young adult label has morphed into an assemblage of categorical sects that have come to wield influence over an entire culture. Welcome to the world of intergenerational cohorts.
