They're Selling Us Daddy's Car After All

The leading edge of the Boomers are becoming linked to their parents in ways they haven't seen since Detroit gave up on selling us Daddy's Oldsmobile. Whatever the specifics of our own needs and interests, we begin being herded back into our parents' marketing niche as soon as we sign on for AARP at 50.

It's no small irony for the generation who perhaps worked the hardest to separate.

As a group, we probably made the biggest leap ever away from the 'rents when we pushed back around the draft and Viet Nam, then insisted that Nixon not skate on Watergate. Later, we led the leap in to the digital age and on to the Internet, leaving a number of elders feeling out of the swim and pressed to catch up.

By combining those larger leaps with a lot of smaller shifts, we may have become more autonomous and self-defined than any generation before us. But today as they approach their own retirement phase, the leading wedge of 50+ Boomers find themselves lumped into their parent's demo anyway.

The leading edge of the Boomers are becoming linked to their parents in ways they haven't seen since Detroit gave up on selling us Daddy's Oldsmobile. Whatever the specifics of our own needs and interests, we begin being herded back into our parents' marketing niche as soon as we sign on for AARP at 50.

It's no small irony for the generation who perhaps worked the hardest to separate.

As a group, we probably made the biggest leap ever away from the 'rents when we pushed back around the draft and Viet Nam, then insisted that Nixon not skate on Watergate. Later, we led the leap in to the digital age and on to the Internet, leaving a number of elders feeling out of the swim and pressed to catch up.

By combining those larger leaps with a lot of smaller shifts, we may have become more autonomous and self-defined than any generation before us. But today as they approach their own retirement phase, the leading wedge of 50+ Boomers find themselves lumped into their parent's demo anyway.

Shilling for Dinah and Dean
When it comes time to sell us retirement offerings it's amazing how much of Madison Avenue still wants to pitch Daddy's Oldsmobile, and how many hopeful parents appear to be waiting for us to finally want the same things they do.

Visit almost any commercial site with a "senior" slant, even those that incorporate the word "Boomer" in their keywords and logos, and they're lining up to sell you things like pill dispensers and denture cream with spritely, trite little pitches as if they were shilling for Dinah Shore.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's anything bad about remembering Dinah (or Dean-o) fondly. I am just saying it's not the angle to use if you want me to stop channel surfing.

Sometimes it's depressingly retro enough to make you wish for a fake ID like the one you had at 20.


Cozily quilted
Here approaching the flip side of life, it seems our gen is again coming on to a crossroads with some pivotal choices to make.

If we don't want to 'diss our own elders (or hurt their feelings) it would seem that we need to smile and nod while they point with pride to a cozily quilted retirement world in which they hope we will be joining them soon, since we weren't so eager to join them back when.  But popular culture has not been kind to the elderly in recent decades. Their last cultural hgh point was the "Golden Girls"  and not much has changed in the eldest tiers to see much there today that still looks relevant.

Consider the kinds of images that have been implanted for us around the term "senior citizen." Acres of look-alike condos in Florida. Discounts on movies and early bird menus. Lady lounge singers singing off key. Doilies and chintz. Grumpy old men and carpy old ladies. Platters of comfort foods at all-you-can-eat buffets. Being patronized by chirpy youngers who talk to you like a toddler. Gadgets and gizmos with extra large letters and dumbed-down functions that seem to presume you've never pointed a cursor.

Yahshureyoubetcha all that imagery so works for me. Just hand me a chocolate Ex-Lax, please.


50 as the new 30 (in a not-good way)
Between the lines, all the above implies that a 20th century sense of "aging" persists. It suggests a demographic that can be expected to have a bright lens on the past, a hazy lens on the present, and no lens on the future at all.

Small wonder that "age-ism" in employment is a growning issue for job-hunting 50- and 60-somethings. Too many youngers see 50 today in the same way that we saw 30 back when, i.e. too far over the hill to be relevant.

 

Thankfully for the Boomers just edging into this sphere, Dennis Hopper has already become emblematic of a new "Edgester" ethos -- This will not be your Daddy's retirement. The next-to-retire gen doesn't want to be seen as "senior" anything. Certainly not yet, and perhaps, maybe, never.

Perhaps it's our own new form of "hell no, we won't go." But I suspect we are on the cusp of another large leap that will change our entire impression of what it means to grow old.

In the future, age may be seen as much less about your DOB and much more about your attitude.


Turn that gold into platinum?
I doubt many Boomers think we can stop the clock and skip the whole aging thing.  But to the extent we think about it at all, we are coming to see our "golden" years much differently than our parents.

Where lots of them couldn't wait to relax and kick back with the grandkids, a whole lot of us expect to keep rocking out to Springsteen and Santana while remaining fully engaged in the world of grownups.

"Live long and lively, then check out quickly" may become our next new refrain. We moved fast through every other phase, why not speed dial through the end-stage as well?

I heard recently from a marketing manager of a large retirement complex that the younger elders in her community intend to "skip assisted living" entirely, and hope to hang out at home with an occasional hired  hand until it is time for hospice. Instead of seeking congregate care in advance of need just in case, the next-to-retire gen will be seeking intentional communities built around mutual interests. They want to support sustained autonomy and they plan to weave their own safety nets.

So why don't we upgrade that AmEx that Madison Ave. wants to hand us and reframe our own retirement  as Platinum rather than Gold? How about we define our next stage as a phase of increasing, instead of declining, impact, where learning and creativity will be maximized and wisdom freely shared?

In the same way that Boomers first made it OK for the "youngins" to have a meaningful impact, we could do the same thing on the flip side and use our retirement to spotlight the benefits of all we have learned from the crazy quilts of our own experience.

(continued in post 1.3b: A preview of the "New Old")

Shilling for Dinah and Dean
When it comes time to sell us retirement offerings it's amazing how much of Madison Avenue still wants to pitch Daddy's Oldsmobile, and how many hopeful parents appear to be waiting for us to finally want the same things they do.

Visit almost any commercial site with a "senior" slant, even those that incorporate the word "Boomer" in their keywords and logos, and they're lining up to sell you things like pill dispensers and denture cream with spritely, trite little pitches as if they were shilling for Dinah Shore.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there's anything bad about remembering Dinah (or Dean-o) fondly. I am just saying it's not the angle to use if you want me to stop channel surfing.

Sometimes it's depressingly retro enough to make you wish for a fake ID like the one you had at 20.


Cozily quilted
Here approaching the flip side of life, it seems our gen is again coming on to a crossroads with some pivotal choices to make.

If we don't want to 'diss our own elders (or hurt their feelings) it would seem that we need to smile and nod while they point with pride to a cozily quilted retirement world in which they hope we will be joining them soon, since we weren't so eager to join them back when.  But popular culture has not been kind to the elderly in recent decades. Their last cultural hgh point was the "Golden Girls"  and not much has changed in the eldest tiers to see much there today that still looks relevant.

Consider the kinds of images that have been implanted for us around the term "senior citizen." Acres of look-alike condos in Florida. Discounts on movies and early bird menus. Lady lounge singers singing off key. Doilies and chintz. Grumpy old men and carpy old ladies. Platters of comfort foods at all-you-can-eat buffets. Being patronized by chirpy youngers who talk to you like a toddler. Gadgets and gizmos with extra large letters and dumbed-down functions that seem to presume you've never pointed a cursor.

Yahshureyoubetcha all that imagery so works for me. Just hand me a chocolate Ex-Lax, please.


50 as the new 30 (in a not-good way)
Between the lines, all the above implies that a 20th century sense of "aging" persists. It suggests a demographic that can be expected to have a bright lens on the past, a hazy lens on the present, and no lens on the future at all.

Small wonder that "age-ism" in employment is a growning issue for job-hunting 50- and 60-somethings. Too many youngers see 50 today in the same way that we saw 30 back when, i.e. too far over the hill to be relevant.

 

Thankfully for the Boomers just edging into this sphere, Dennis Hopper has already become emblematic of a new "Edgester" ethos -- This will not be your Daddy's retirement. The next-to-retire gen doesn't want to be seen as "senior" anything. Certainly not yet, and perhaps, maybe, never.

Perhaps it's our own new form of "hell no, we won't go." But I suspect we are on the cusp of another large leap that will change our entire impression of what it means to grow old.

In the future, age may be seen as much less about your DOB and much more about your attitude.


Turn that gold into platinum?
I doubt many Boomers think we can stop the clock and skip the whole aging thing.  But to the extent we think about it at all, we are coming to see our "golden" years much differently than our parents.

Where lots of them couldn't wait to relax and kick back with the grandkids, a whole lot of us expect to keep rocking out to Springsteen and Santana while remaining fully engaged in the world of grownups.

"Live long and lively, then check out quickly" may become our next new refrain. We moved fast through every other phase, why not speed dial through the end-stage as well?

I heard recently from a marketing manager of a large retirement complex that the younger elders in her community intend to "skip assisted living" entirely, and hope to hang out at home with an occasional hired  hand until it is time for hospice. Instead of seeking congregate care in advance of need just in case, the next-to-retire gen will be seeking intentional communities built around mutual interests. They want to support sustained autonomy and they plan to weave their own safety nets.

So why don't we upgrade that AmEx that Madison Ave. wants to hand us and reframe our own retirement  as Platinum rather than Gold? How about we define our next stage as a phase of increasing, instead of declining, impact, where learning and creativity will be maximized and wisdom freely shared?

In the same way that Boomers first made it OK for the "youngins" to have a meaningful impact, we could do the same thing on the flip side and use our retirement to spotlight the benefits of all we have learned from the crazy quilts of our own experience.

(continued in post 1.3b: A preview of the "New Old")