The invisible GenX woman

By Karla Lester

Video killed the radio star by The Buggles launched MTV 45 years ago and changed things forever. GenX is the MTV generation.

GenX is the middle child generation between Boomers and Millennials. We had big hair and listened to Hair bands. We watched Brat pack movies like St. Elmo’s Fire, Breakfast Club and worked fast food. John Cusack, my favorite, held up his boombox in Say Anything, blaring In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. 

GenX made mixtapes for friends or their crush. The girls had big hair and the guys had mullets. Most of us weren’t Valley Girls, though we quoted the movie. GenX women had feathered hair and lots of perms. We put Sun In in our hair to make it lighter. Side ponytails were a thing and so was Madonna. 

Diet culture of the 80’s was really big. We were told to eat low fat and low calorie and marketed Dexatrim. It was never about health. Only about weight and seeking the male gaze. Jane Fonda started working out and the aerobics craze took off. Leg warmers and all. Food was convenient and not always healthy. Olivia Newton John sang Let’s get physical, which was about anything but fitness. 

GenX is smaller in population because of the introduction of the birth control pill in the 1960’s. The sexual revolution was stifled by the AIDS epidemic. We learned about “safe sex” and were taught to “just say no” to drugs by Nancy Reagan and her war on drugs. Some of us were Like a Virgin because we were more of the science olympiad and marching band ilk and others were navigating HIV risk and practicing safe sex.

In War Games, a teen hacks into a U.S. military supercomputer from his personal computer and accidentally simulates a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. We grew up in the silent fear of the Cold War, the Iran Contra scandal, knew all the words to Purple Rain, feared acid rain and Chernobyl. Though we had MTV, we were not watching cable news or following politics 24/7. Many call us the first tech-savvy generation.We were the first to have cable television and MTV and personal computers. We went from Atari to personal computers to iphones and now AI. ChatGPT did not write this blog, though they will likely steal it. 

The GenX woman is self reliant and independent. She is very achievement focused. The male centered life of their mothers didn’t always work out for them. Told we can’t have it all when we were just trying to make it work while working.

Sometimes, the forgotten generation or first generation of latchkey kids. There were more children of divorce, single parent homes, and dual income families. My parents got divorced when I was five years old, finalized in my first week of kindergarten. I was one of two kids in my grade with divorced parents and then over time, that grew. A lot of GenX women grew up in dysfunctional families that cared more about what people thought of them than what was happening at home. 

Between Saturday morning cartoons, School House Rock and watching Love Boat and Fantasy Island, we were marketed, “I can bring home the bacon. Fry it up in a pan. And never ever let you forget you’re a man.” GenX women said, “Gag me with a spoon.” 

The Equal Rights Amendment told us we could be a Girl Boss. We watched 9 to 5 and then went off to a very patriarchal workplace. More GenX women went to college and closed the gender gap in higher education, but the gender pay gap still exists. 

Work-life balance was the unattainable goal. GenX women were told to do it all, but we can’t have it all. GenX women were still doing most of the work at home. “The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home” by Arlie Russell Hochschild was published in 1989. I read it in a women’s studies class in college and was incensed to learn that women had been fed a bunch of lies. Women who go to work come home and work a second shift too. 

GenX women laughed off a lot of aggression, harassment and discrimination. We said sorry and still say sorry a lot for things that weren’t and aren’t our fault. 

Most of us drove not so nice cars. Some of us barely got access to really shitty cars that could be used only to go to work and then broke down on the way to McDonald’s where my Mom got me a job on my 16th birthday. That’s where Assistant Manager Barry shoved me up against the drive thru window, my fake topsiders dangling an inch off the ground, my polyester McDonald’s uniform and visor askew. “You and your Smart Ass mouth need to shut up.” I think Barry thought he was in Die Hard. 

“Thanks for calling me smart, Barry. Sorry I can’t return the compliment.”

Barry should have been fired. But, every GenX woman knows there’s no way he would have if I had reported him. I quit, even though I just got a nickel raise to $3.35/hour. Next job I worked at a bank opening accounts, CD’s and got paid $4.50/ hour. Take that Barry! The VP of the bank was a short guy with darting eyes who wouldn’t stop staring at my chest, his eyes searching for something that wasn’t there. So sorry, Jeff. I just need to know how to change the printer toner. 

GenX guys didn’t always have it going on. 

“All the nerds love Karla,” my Mom, Barb, used to tell everyone. “It’s because she’s so nice to them.” 

Just to shut him up, I went out on a date with a guy who kept bugging me. He put his arm around me in the movie and I thought I was going to barf. I told him I had to go to the bathroom and I called my Mom on the pay phone outside the movie theater and asked her to come pick me up. She couldn’t, but told me to tell him I just want to be friends. He was leaning in for a kiss as I broke the news. One foot out the door, “Hey, let’s just be friends.” He was bragging about the gas mileage of his Dad’s Ford Escort the whole date. Boring was this guy’s first, middle and last name. 

GenX women don’t like disappointing people. Another guy I hung out with wore a trench coat, had a beat up car and spray painted U2 on it. He asked me to prom and I said no because I didn’t have romantic feelings (not that I would use those terms) for him. He didn’t go to his senior prom. I was a junior. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I stopped feeling bad about it when my own son asked a girl to Homecoming and she told him she wouldn’t have time to get a dress. They were friends and he was bummed. But, I thought good for her to say no if she didn’t want to go with him. 

Roe v. Wade passed in 1973. It’s been undone. Peri menopause and menopause hit GenX women hard and we didn’t even know we were in it. We were the generation of women who couldn’t have hormonal replacement therapy and are now past the window where it might be helpful. We lathered baby oil all over us to get tan and are now going to the dermatologist to get checked for skin cancer . 

Though we screamed until we lost our voices at concerts, our voices have often been silenced. We are invisible at times. We are non confrontational and have no clue what we are really feeling because no one was ever listening or asked us. We had the empowerment of being free range kids in the neighborhood and no one caring about where we were and no one asking or caring about our feelings. It’s time to get internal and to stop saying Sorry. 

GenX women can grind out a goal and become exhausted and burnt out. Like women of every generation, there is invisible labor that is layered on GenX women, many sandwiched and caregiving. Moving into the next chapter of our lives, GenX women can get intentional about what we want. Instead of self-reliance, GenX women can rely on each other. 

There is an authenticity, a humanity, a sense of humor that is GenX. Girls just want to have fun. Yes, and we also want meaningful and impactful lives and connection with people we love. 

Don’t stop believin’ that GenX is the best generation. For sure, the coolest generation. A rad generation of resilient women. Totally. GenX women, I see you. I hear you.