OK Boomer — do you want 1945 or 1964?
I find it slightly surprising that Boomer commentators continue to insist on using dates from the US Census Bureau that date them from 1946–1964. This is not just because generations are not defined by demographic leaps and falls but shared experiences, e.g. the First World War generation, the Second World War generation or even the Covid Generation. Also, it is because of who they are giving up.
These are some of the people born in 1945 — Debbie Harry, Goldie Hawn, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Bob Marley, Helen Mirren, Jacqueline Wilson, Tom Sellick, Van Morrison, Steve Martin, Bryan Ferry, Bette Midler, Franz Beckenbauer, Vince McMahon, Virginia Wade, Jaclyn Smith, Carly Simon, Don McLean, Mia Farrow and Pete Townsend.
In other words, if we accept the definition of Boomer as 1946–1964 The Who classic: “Talking About My Generation” becomes a song about the Silent Generation rather than the Boomers.
Who are they gaining? Well, one character is Mookie from the 1989 film, “Do the Right Thing”. In 1989 he would universally have been described as a miscreant from the generation younger than the Boomers. He would have been placed in the same bracket as characters from “Boyz in the Hood”, 1991. Some people born in 1964: Eazy-E, Michelle Obama, Sandra Bullock, Courteney Cox, Jeff Bezos, Keanu Reeves. Also, Boris Johnson and Kamala Harris. Is this the reason — a desire to feel politically empowered?
As someone born in 1970 I would have thought of, say, Debbie Harry as older than my generation but younger than my parents’ generation. The same for all the people in that list. I would not have thought of Courteney Cox in the same way. Indeed, two of her fellow “Friends” cast members are born in 1969 — Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry. To be honest Lisa Kudrow does seem a little older but still part of the same group. She is, in fact, born in 1963.
Here is someone else born in 1963: Brad Pitt. His comments about “Fight Club”, 1999, are revealing. “I think there’s a self-defense mechanism that keeps my generation from having any real honest connection or commitment with our true feelings.” Meanwhile, his alter ego, Edward Norton, born 1969, said of the Beetle, “We smash it … because it seemed like the classic example of a Baby Boomer generation marketing plan that sold culture back to us.”
When Douglas Coupland first wrote “Generation X” in 1991 he set it in 1989 with characters born in their late 20s, i.e. born, like him, in the early 1960s.
If I were a Boomer I would swap 1945 for 1964 and even 1944 for 1963. So the dates would read 1943–1962. Ironically, some other Boomer, William Strauss and Neil Howe, go further, giving them 1943–1960. That puts President Obama, 1961, in the GenX camp which makes sense as he refers to Boomers in the third person. He writes,
“In the back and forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the baby boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage. The victories that the sixties generation brought about–the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties and the healthy willingness to question authority — have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions — that quality of trust and fellow feeling-that bring us together as Americans.”
Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope
I can understand Boomers wanting to keep hold of him even if the evidence is to the contrary. However, while some Boomers might feel that they are gaining something by going down to 1964, not only do they suffer the ignominy of people in those years refusing to be characterized as Boomers but they also lose what to my 1970 brain is a whole lot of very cool people. They even lose the anthem, “Talking about my generation”!