Apparently, I’m a Millennial.
According to some, this means I am probably “entitled,” and at least a little bit apathetic. Personally, I’ve always taken the label to mean, mainly, that we grew up with social media, cell phones, etc., but the truth is I’m just a smidge too old for that. I graduated high school in 2001, which means I didn’t have access to Facebook or my own phone until college; I never even sent a text message until the spring of 2008, when I was 24 years old (and promptly racked up a huge bill in per-message charges, like, you know, an old person might). So the label doesn’t seem to fit quite right. However, according to most sources, including the Pew Research Center, I’m a member of this Millennial generation:
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/
Certainly, I feel that I have more in common with Millennials than “Gen-Xers,” the generation just before me, so I’m not really bothered by the label. Still, Millennials are routinely maligned, as part of some odd ongoing war with “Boomers” (Pew notes that the Baby Boomer generation is the only one whose dates are formally defined by the U.S. Census Bureau). We Millennials are meant to reflect the spirit of the 90s, replete with its apathetic materialism, political disinterest, technological explosion, and excellent music, whereas the Baby Boomers are meant to be associated with the sexual and cultural revolutions of the 1960s, as well as that decade’s excellent music. Yet, while it may well be true that the music you listen to and the television you watch as a youth defines you for lifetime, somehow it seems a bit odd for Millennials to take the blame for the weaknesses of society during the time we grew up. When we are accused of being spoiled, or not understanding the “real world,” isn’t that really an accusation of our parents? For example, one clichéd complaint about Millennials has to do with “participation trophies” — that is, that we somehow don’t understand or accept the concept of “losing” because we all received trophies just for participating in competitive events. But not a single Millennial had any say in the handing out of these trophies; rather, our parents’ generation, mostly Boomers, made those decisions all on their own, when we were just kids.
Honestly, associating us with a heyday when we were all teenagers seems a bit odd — and just as oddly, we associate the Baby Boomers with the 60s, when they, too, were mostly too young to actually be driving much of the social upheaval of the era. Yes, these were the formative experiences of our young lives — Vietnam for the Boomers, 9/11 for us — or perhaps the Beatles vs. the Backstreet Boys? Good God, that’s distressing — but we cannot possibly be held accountable for the culture of our respective eras. Teenagers may seem to drive the engine of consumerism, but when we’re young, when we aren’t the vaunted “18–49” demographic, we aren’t in any position of power to control the culture the surrounds us; really, the television shows and popular music and cultural/political movements of an era are hardly decided by the impressionable generation of youngsters with whom they will forever be associated. Millennials did not have a say over the war in Iraq; Gen-Xers played no role in the decadence of the 80s; the “Greatest Generation” that came of age during World War II may have exhibited plenty of bravery, but few of them were even old enough to vote for Roosevelt even once; and the Baby Boomers were not, as they often proclaim themselves to be, the leaders of either the Civil Rights movement or the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
In fact, we Millennials are just coming into our own now, for the first time. You can tell by the wave of 90s nostalgia, in the form of sequels to Full House, Saved By The Bell, and many others, heralding our coming into our own as adults, helping to actually shape the culture, and not only consume it. However, this nostalgia hides our real cultural contributions. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born 1989) is our first highly-visible political leader; Drake (1986) our best-selling music artist; Phoebe Waller-Bridge (1985) a leader in our new golden age of television. That is to say, now is the time to assess what Millennials actually stand for, and to look at the types of culture and politics that actually represent us as a generation.
If we use the Pew dates above, the first Millennials turned 35 in 2016, so that seems like a good age to set for the true beginning of generation’s role in cultural leadership. That means that, as Millennials, we have to own the election of Donald Trump, but we also own MeToo and a new peak of BLM. Setting aside whether that is, on balance, a good or bad record so far, it certainly flies in the face of our alleged “apathy.” The past 5 years, the first of our true adulthood, have evidenced anything but apathy; they have been tumultuous and dramatic, while we have been vociferous and active.
I am struck by the realization that while my generation was weaned on the apathetic mythology of films such as Clerks or Reality Bites, these movies were not made by anyone even remotely Millennial. Pretty much everyone associated with the films and tv of the 90s were Gen-Xers; the rest were Boomers. With this in mind, I thought of redefining the generations based on a different window, that is, when they indeed turned 35 — so we can see what each generation stood for when they first reached a position of actual cultural power and influence.
Here is a new annotated timeline:
“Greatest Generation” — born 1901–1927 — reached adulthood 1936–1962.
Yes, they are named for fighting in WWII, but it should be noted that the Greatest Generation also should be credited with spearheading Civil Rights and laying the groundwork for the 60s. Here’s a list of Greatest Generationers whose legacies have nothing to do with Omaha Beach:
Rosa Parks (1913)
John F. Kennedy (1917)
Timothy Leary (1920)
Betty Friedan (1921)
Norman Mailer (1923)
James Baldwin (1924)
Malcolm X (1925)
Lenny Bruce (1925)
Medgar Evars (1925)
Allen Ginsberg (1926)
Cesar Chavez (1927)
This is obviously only a partial list, but it’s interesting to me how these figures so associated with the fierce social and political changes of the 1950s-60s belong to a generation that we commonly — and, I’m arguing here, erroneously — associate with the 40s.
“Silent Generation” — born 1928–1945 — reached adulthood 1963–1980
Just from the years listed, we can see that “silent” is an incredible misnomer. Let’s examine some of the leaders of this generation:
Andy Warhol (1928)
Stanley Kubrick (1928)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929)
Odetta Holmes (1930)
Philip Roth (1933)
Gloria Steinem (1934)
Charles Manson (1934)
Robert Redford (1936)
Abby Hoffman (1936)
Jane Fonda (1937)
Bob Dylan (1941)
All of the Beatles, Stones, and most rock stars of the 60s (mostly 1940–43)
Martin Scorsese (1942)
Huey Newton (1942)
Judith Bernstein (1942)
This is, self-evidently, an abbreviated list of the leaders of the 1960s, culturally and politically. So, if we’re going to credit this interwar generation with the promise of the 60s … what ends up being the Baby Boomer legacy?
“Baby Boomers” — born 1946–1964 — reached adulthood 1981–1999
By repositioning the Boomers as such, we can see that, once they were actually adults, they were responsible for the Reagan era and all that followed, as well as the Information Age revolution (that is to say, maybe Al Gore — born 1948 — really did invent the Internet?). Here are some actual Baby Boomers, whom you’ll recognize from a very different era than the 60s:
David Letterman (1947)
Condoleeza Rice (1954)
Jerry Seinfeld (1954)
Matt Groening (1954)
Al Sharpton (1954)
Steve Jobs (1955)
Bill Gates (1955)
Madonna (1958)
Michael Jackson (1958)
Ellen Degeneres (1958)
George Stephanopoulos (1961)
Barack Obama (1961)
Jon Stewart (1962)
Michael Jordan (1963)
Jeff Bezos (1964)
That is to say, the 80s and 90s are the actual product of the Boomers — not the product of the Millennials or the Gen-Xers — while the spirit 60s and 70s met their demise just as the Boomers came fully of age. John Lennon was not a Baby Boomer, but John Cougar Mellencamp was.
To be blunt: while my generation already has plenty of fun picking on the Boomers, I’m arguing that this criticism actually doesn’t go far enough. The Boomers do not deserve credit for the Civil Rights movement, for Woodstock, or for SDS, all of which were run by “Silent Generation”ers. The Baby Boomers should, instead, be associated with the era in which they, for the first time, actually held political and social power: the Reagan era. And they have, it turns out, held this power for far longer than a single generation; those Boomers who took hold of our society in the 1980s are still in charge now, and the generation that followed them has never actually had any control.
I noticed this because part of the fun of this article has been looking up famous people’s birth years; in trying to center this politically, I started going through Presidents. Tell me what you notice:
Kennedy — 1917
Johnson — 1908
Nixon — 1913
Ford — 1913
Carter — 1924
Reagan — 1911
Bush — 1924
Clinton — 1946
Bush — 1946
Obama — 1961
Trump — 1946
Biden — 1942
From 1961–2021, only two of these generations were represented in the Oval Office. The poorly-named “Silent Generation” that I heralded above had never had a candidate win the White House until now, with Biden; they were entirely skipped over (Ted Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, or John McCain could have represented this generation, if they’d won their chance). Instead, a series of Presidents born within a small span of years held onto power up through Bush Sr., and they were then immediately succeeded by four consecutive Baby Boomer Presidents. No one born in the 1930s or 1950s has ever been President; and this is actually an aberration, as the only other birth decade in U.S. history that has also been completely skipped over is the 1810s. Scroll back up and look at the list of impressive cultural figures born during the Depression or the War — no one from that generation has ever been President, until now.
Another way of looking at this is that, while Presidents such as Reagan, Trump, and Biden were criticized as being “old,” they were in fact contemporaries of recent leaders — Reagan the same age, roughly, as Kennedy and Nixon; Biden the same age, roughly, as the Clintons and Bush Jr. — and show not the aging of the political class but rather that first the “Greatest Generation” and now the “Baby Boomers” have been unwilling to give up power. This trend may well continue; the 2 most recent VPs, Harris and Pence, are both Boomers, so the generational stranglehold on power may not be over. As Gen-X is used to being skipped over (including in this very article), this will probably come as no surprise to them.
Meanwhile, my generation has yet to actually define itself, but as I said, we are starting to. Let’s forget everything we think we know about “Millennials,” insofar as that implies “90s kids.” Those years were, in actuality, the Boomer years. Ours are ahead; and the Zoomers, who experienced this Pandemic from their remote classrooms as no other generation could, will begin to tell us what they actually stand for in 11 short years. I, for one, am eager to see what they’ll bring to the table.
