Generation Catalano?

By virtue of being born in the early 70s, I'm fully ensconced in Generation X. There's no getting around it, and as much as I'd like to say that, no, I'm not that "stereotypical X'er" -- jaded, suspicious of authority, cynical to a fault -- for better or worse, I do personify a lot of the qualities ascribed to my generation. (Being a contrarian is very "gen-x," too, as my first reaction to a list of characteristics of those born in the 60s and 70s is "Nuh-uh, not me.") But as someone who spent part of her teen years in the 80s, and part in the 90s, I've always felt I was a younger X'er. But I just missed being part of Generation Catalano.

Oh damn.

According to Doree Shafrir's Slate article, "Generation Catalano" is sort of the younger siblings of Generation X. Or maybe the Millennials' older brothers and sisters. Or maybe something entirely all their own:

I was born during Jimmy Carter's presidency, a one-term administration remembered mostly for the Iran hostage crisis, the New York City blackout, and stagflation. The Carter babies—anyone born between his inauguration in January 1977 and Reagan's in January 1981—are now 30 to 34, and, like Carter himself, the weirdly brilliant yet deeply weird born-again Christian peanut farmer, this micro-generation is hard to pin down. We identify with some of Gen X's cynicism and suspicion of authority—watching Pee-Wee Herman proclaim, "I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel," will do that to a kid—but we were too young to claim Singles and Reality Bites and Slacker as our own (though that didn't stop me from buying the soundtracks). And, while the proud alienation of the Gen X worldview doesn't totally sit right, we certainly don't yearn for the Organization Man-like conformity that the Millennials seem to crave.

I'm tempted to play the doubting X'er, but then she's goes on to say something  I think is very telling about the difference between people my age, and those just a few years younger:

In Generation X, one of the protagonists, Andy, reflects that "we live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there's a great deal in which we choose not to participate." It's no coincidence that Gen X's greatest artistic legacy is probably grunge, which is all about glorifying marginalization and alienation. Millennials, though, have been forced to live lives on the periphery, when they had always expected that they would be at the center. As Malone points out, the Fleet Foxes, led by 25-year-old Robin Pecknold, sing about thinking that they were "special snowflakes" but finding that they are in fact "cogs in some great machinery." In contrast, the most famous musician from Generation Catalano is probably 34-year-old Kanye West, who actually is something of a special snowflake—and at the same time that he has released some of the best music of the last few years (and gotten very rich off of it), he's also been engaged a very public battle with himself. Like West, Generation Catalano is never fully comfortable with its place in the world; we wander away from the periphery and back again.