Florence + The Machine's Heavy In Your Arms

In Florence + the Machine’s “Heavy in Your Arms” (2011), Florence describes a relationship in which she feels she is “heavy” and weighing her lover down. Using observations, statistics, and events regarding the mental, emotional, and social statuses of those of the Millennial and Gen Z generations, the heaviness Florence describes can be aptly applied to most people born in the late 1980s to early 2000s. Though there is no lover in the context of the experiences of an entire generation, the base story of “Heavy in Your Arms” is one of a conflict, and it can be shown that this conflict, as it applies to Millennials and Gen Z, is one between individuals of these generations and society. As the world exists today, the Millennial and Gen Z generations
This high rate of tuition has increased the average amount of debt young adults in America have; Phyllis Korkki of the New York Times calls this debt a “burden” and goes on to describe in her article on the subject how student debt makes people less likely to open their own businesses and buy homes, and Steven Rattner, also of The New York Times, warns his readers to “…be fretful over [Millennials’] economic well-being and fearful…for their prospects,” (Korkki; Rattner). Rattner also shows in his article how Americans’ increased lifespans, recent propensity to have less children, and the popularity of outsourcing has created an economy with much less wealth to offer to those entering the workforce; to support this, he shows that the average net worth of an American aged 18 to 34 had dropped 43% since 1995 as of 2015 (Rattner). This debt overwhelms those who suffer from it, leaving them experiencing its effects for years—reflective of the lyrics in “Heavy in Your Arms”, “I’m so heavy/heavy in your arms/and is it worth the wait/all this killing time” (Florence + the Machine). Relating to the conflict Florence discusses in other lines in her song, those burdened by debt have not taken to struggling silently; in 2015, there was a national protest to lower tuition costs, which
Though transgender people have existed as long as the concept of gender has, it was only recently that transgender people became visible on a broad stage: Laverne Cox, notable for her work as an actress on Orange is the New Black, reflected at the end of 2011 in a Huffington Post blog post about her acting career and movies concerning transgender people that she was aware of for that year; Caitlyn Jenner—former Olympic athlete—had a reality show, “I am Cait”, in 2015 and 2016 where she discussed her gender and her life; amongst other instances of transgender people appearing on television and in movies (Cox; Kelley). Although, according to GLSEN surveys, transgender high school students are verbally harassed more than 10% less than they were as little as 10 years ago, other groups in American society—particularly older people—have not shown such progress; North Carolina imposed a law in 2016—signed into law by the now 60 year old former governor of North Carolina, Pat McCrory—dictating that people use the bathroom of the gender assigned to them at birth, which caused people across the nation to become fearful that transgender people would attempt to harm them in bathrooms (“2015”; Berman). Transgender people as well as cisgender people have expressed their outrage at this law and the further repeals of