Readers,
Today I got to chat with journalist Amanda Fortini over Substack Live about her recent T Magazine article, “Is Gen X Actually the Greatest Generation?”
It’s a wide-ranging piece about the cultural shifts that influenced those of us born between 1965 and 1981 (give or take on both ends), and the subsequent cultural and creative shifts our cohort unleashed as a result. As Amanda points out, the art, music, and literature put forth by that cohort—our mutual cohort—has had a strong and lasting impact.
For a long time I’ve talked about how the impact on our parents of second-wave feminism, the sexual revolution of the 60s, and the divorce boom of the 70s in turn affected us, their kids. Fortini drills down on a more specific catalyst, which makes perfect sense to me: the advent of “The Pill,” the first oral contraceptive, in 1960. It changed so much for The Silent Generation and older Baby Boomers. It freed them to change their lives, ending unhappy marriages they’d entered too young. It made it easier for women to go back to work. And it turned us into free-range latch-key kids who grew up too young in some ways, while remaining arrested in childhood in other ways.
While Amanda and I are both part of that demographic, we came of age at different points along the Gen X spectrum. We are 11 years apart, yet part of the same broad “age group.” Gen X. Boomer. Millennial. The Silent Generation. Such delineations provide a convenient and useful shorthand for understanding what historical events affected who we’ve become. But they’re also constructs, and how people see themselves fitting into them can be fluid.
There was an interesting discussion about that kind of demographic fluidity in the comments on this post from a couple of years ago:
It was a great conversation. If you missed it over Substack Live, you can watch it up above. ⬆️
Thanks so much to Amanda Fortini for the chat. Check out her newsletter, PENNYROYAL.
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