GenX, AARP is comin’ for ya!

July 2, 2021

For the few of us who watched the Academy Awards this spring, you get a sense that this show isn’t made for those under 50 years old. Try as they might, the Oscar producers haven’t attracted the pre-50 crowd. And, AARP knows this as they debuted an ad targeting the GenX market featuring a middle-aged skateboarder representing the Nirvana generation.

Who knows: our mindfulness teacher and former shredder Teddi Dean might know the guy?

A recent New York Times story outlined how Generation X, seven years into their 50s, is ripe territory for the world’s largest aging advocacy organization. For a generation in which many stars died young (think Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur), imagining retirement communities might feel apocalyptic.

As is true with any generic generational narrative, it can feel superficial and misplaced as so much of what happens with an age demographic is related to stage of life rather than the TV sitcoms we shared as kids.

For you GenXers, do you think you see aging differently than Boomers or Millennials? If so, in what ways?

Look for this post in my (or MEA’s) social media, where I welcome you to answer this question.