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Ever heard of 'Generation Jones'? These not-quite-Gen-X-baby-boomers are a unique bunch.

This "microgeneration" grew up in a narrow window of time that gave them specific qualities.

Photo Credits: Michelle Obama, US Department of Education, Lawrence Jackson

Generation Jones includes Michelle Obama, George Clooney, Kamala Harris, Keanu Reeves and more.

We hear a lot about the major generation categories—boomers, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z and the up-and-coming Gen Alpha. But there are folks who don't quite fit into those boxes. These in-betweeners, sometimes called "cuspers," are members of microgenerations that straddle two of the biggies.

"Xennial" is the nickname for those who fall on the cusp of Gen X and millennial, but there's also a lesser-known microgeneration that straddles Gen X and baby boomers. The folks born from 1954 to 1965 are known as Generation Jones, and they got thrust into the spotlight as Vice President Kamala Harris (born in 1964) became a presidential hopeful in 2024.

generations, gen jones, boomers, gen x, on the cusp between gen x and baby boomerGeneration Jones was born between 1954 and 1965.Photo credit: Canva

Like President Obama before her, Harris is a Gen Joneser—not exactly a classic baby boomer but not quite Gen X. Born in October 1964, Harris falls just a few months shy of official Gen X territory. But what exactly differentiates Gen Jones from the boomers and Gen Xers that flank it?

"Generation Jones" was coined by writer, television producer and social commentator Jonathan Pontell to describe the decade of Americans who grew up in the '60s and '70s. As Pontell wrote of Gen Jonesers in Politico:

"We fill the space between Woodstock and Lollapalooza, between the Paris student riots and the anti-globalisation protests, and between Dylan going electric and Nirvana going unplugged. Jonesers have a unique identity separate from Boomers and GenXers. An avalanche of attitudinal and behavioural data corroborates this distinction."

Pontell describes Jonesers as "practical idealists" who were "forged in the fires of social upheaval while too young to play a part." They are the younger siblings of the boomer civil rights and anti-war activists who grew up witnessing and being moved by the passion of those movements but were met with a fatigued culture by the time they themselves came of age. Sometimes, they're described as the cool older siblings of Gen X. Unlike their older boomer counterparts, most Jonesers were not raised by WWII veteran fathers and were too young to be drafted into Vietnam, leaving them in between on military experience.

Gen Jones gets its name from the competitive "keeping up with the Joneses" spirit that spawned during their populous birth years, but also from the term "jonesin'," meaning an intense craving, that they coined—a drug reference but also a reflection of the yearning to make a difference that their "unrequited idealism" left them with. According to Pontell, their competitiveness and identity as a "generation aching to act" may make Jonesers particularly effective leaders:

"What makes us Jonesers also makes us uniquely positioned to bring about a new era in international affairs. Our practical idealism was created by witnessing the often unrealistic idealism of the 1960s. And we weren’t engaged in that era’s ideological battles; we were children playing with toys while boomers argued over issues. Our non-ideological pragmatism allows us to resolve intra-boomer skirmishes and to bridge that volatile Boomer-GenXer divide. We can lead."

@grownupdish

I found my people and we are Generation Jones! Get ready to re-live our childhoods and follow for more. #grownupdish #midlife #midlifewomen #boomer #babyboomer #generationx #genx #1963 #over50 #generationjones #generationalmarketing #adulting #greenscreen

However, generations aren't just calculated by birth year but by a person's cultural reality. Some on the cusp may find themselves identifying more with one generation than the other, such as being culturally more Gen X than boomer. And, of course, not everyone fits into whatever generality they happened to be born into, so stereotyping someone based on their birth year isn't a wise practice. Knowing about these microgenerational differences, however, can help us understand certain sociological realities better as well as help people feel like they have a "home" in the generational discourse.

As many Gen Jonesers have commented, it's nice to "find your people" when you haven't felt like you've fit into the generation you fall into by age. Perhaps in our fast-paced, ever-shifting, interconnected world where culture shifts so swiftly, we need to break generations into 10 year increments instead of 20 to 30 to give everyone a generation that better suits their sensibilities.

This article originally appeared last year and has been updated.

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‘Absolutely terrible for women’: Kamala Harris blasts health bill in fiery essay.

In an op-ed in Lenny newsletter, Sen. Kamala Harris of California attacked the new health care bill drawn up by her (all-male) colleagues in the Senate — a bill that "would be absolutely terrible for women," she wrote.

"The Senate Republican health care plan is, as the young people might say, a 'hot mess,'" Harris lambasted, noting that women would take the brunt of its negative effects.

If the bill becomes law as is, many key provisions in the Affordable Care Act that help women — particularly vulnerable, low-income women — would be stripped away.

As the senator explained, the Better Care Reconciliation Act would:

  1. Bar women on Medicaid from visiting Planned Parenthood, even though about half of the organization's patients rely on Medicaid for their care.
  2. Reverse the ACA's requirement that insurers cover birth control and maternity care — a setback that specifically targets women.
  3. Stick women with a hefty "pregnancy tax" from greedy health insurance providers simply for becoming a parent.

"This is not a time for courtesy," Harris wrote. "This is a time for courage."

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

While the fate of BCRA is hanging in the balance, Harris is calling on all of us to find our inner superhero.

A handful of key Republican senators have publicly denounced the bill, which suffered an onslaught of negative press coverage after the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would knock roughly 22 million Americans off their health insurance by 2026.

It may be in a "bad place," CNN's Phil Mattingly wrote, but "big pieces of legislation die a thousand declared deaths before they magically find a way to passage." This is why Harris is encouraging every Lenny reader to take action until the bill is, without a doubt, dead.

"Confronted with this catastrophic health care proposal, all of us have a choice," the senator argued. "It's a little like the choice Diana faces in 'Wonder Woman,' which I saw a few weeks ago and loved. Do we steer clear of the troubles of the world? Or do we join the fight? For me, the answer is easy: Join the fight. Make your voices heard. Because this is not a drill."

Reach out to your senators and voice your opposition to the Senate GOP's health care bill.

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Kirsten Powers shut down a colleague who called Kamala Harris 'hysterical.'

The clip has gone viral — and for really good reason.

Sen. Kamala Harris went into the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on June 13, 2017 with a list of hard-hitting questions for Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Though Sessions did what he could to dodge them, Harris was dogged in her pursuit of the truth.

Anyone who tuned in to CNN later that night for coverage of the hearing heard a slightly different analysis, including one word in particular that stood out: "hysterical."

USA Today's Kirsten Powers took issue with former Trump advisor Jason Miller's description of Harris's behavior and asked him to explain why he thought Harris was being any more "hysterical" than her male counterparts.

"I think calling her hysterical is probably a little gendered," Powers told him, when he couldn't give an explanation.

Before Powers had even finished her statement, panelist Jeffrey Lord interrupted to insist "hysteria is a neutral quality."

"It's just women who are usually called hysterical," Powers responded.

And she's right.

As a concept, "hysteria" can be traced back to an ancient Greek belief that connects excessive emotion to the uterus. Seriously.

British scholar Helen King traces the term back to Hippocrates. While that usage faded, "hysteria" returned during the Victorian era and has been used as an excuse to dismiss women as being uncontrollable, irrational bundles of emotion ever since.

And although associated with witch trials and the anti-suffragist movement, hysteria also helped lead to the invention of the vibrator — so, silver linings, I suppose.

And while it's no longer solely used to describe women, a simple keyword search on Google Books of all English books published between 1800 and 2000 show the descriptor is applied to women on a much more regular basis than men.

Image via Google Books Ngram Viewer.

Add in the fact that there's no conclusive evidence that women are any more "emotional" than men, and you see where the problem is with singling Harris out specifically as being the "hysterical" one in that hearing.

In the context of the hearing, if you were to label anyone "hysterical," the most appropriate recipient would probably be a visibly flustered Sessions, who at one point talked about how Harris' questions made him feel nervous.

GIF from Washington Post/YouTube.

Too often, "hysteria" is still used to dismiss strong women with opinions and drive.

In Miller's case, whatever point he had in trying to dismiss Harris' questioning was rendered moot by a sloppy choice of words that reflected his own sexism.

He might claim that his perspective was "objective" in ways that Powers' analysis wasn't (the implication being that Powers isn't capable of seeing things rationally); but the moment he called Harris "hysterical," he betrayed his own subconscious fear of — and bias against — strong and opinionated women.

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During this dismal election, women of color quietly made history in the Senate.

Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States.

The pundits didn't see it coming. The polls were all wrong. And many of us — particularly the groups our new president-elect has targeted throughout much of his campaign — feel like we've woken up in a country that no longer wants us. A country we no longer recognize.

This is scary.

Even though today is a tough day, I know I'm finding comfort in remembering that history was made last night in a different but still good way.

The 115th Congress will have a record-high 21 female senators in it next year, including more women of color than ever before.

This session, 20 of the 100 senators are women. Although an increase by one is admittedly not a huge jump, we'll still have the most women ever in the U.S. Senate next year.

While numbers fluctuated in the years between the bars above, overall the figures represent a good sign for gender equality in Washington. Image by Michael Calcagno/Upworthy.

Meanwhile, the number of women of color in the Senate quadrupled.

Catherine Cortez Masto beat Joe Heck in Nevada to become the very first Latina elected to the Senate.

She'll be taking the seat of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who is retiring.

“It should have happened a long time ago,” she told Fusion in September of the possibility of making history.

Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.

She has no plans to put a progressive agenda on hold because of a President Trump.

“I’ll be one hell of a checks and balances on him,” she told a crowd after the election. “Tonight, we start our fight together.”

Tammy Duckworth, a double-amputee veteran of the Iraq War who was born in Thailand, cruised to victory over incumbent Mark Kirk in Illinois.

"The military gave me leadership skills," she once told the Asian American Policy Review. "It taught me to stand up and express myself. It taught me, then, to defend what I think is the best solution."

Democrat Tammy Duckworth of Illinois. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

Plenty of people around the country were rooting especially hard for Duckworth after her opponent made a racist jab at her family during a debate last month.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris held on to her sizable lead and will soon become America's first female biracial senator.

"All of the most substantial movements in this country started with or have been championed by students," she told Lenny last year. "I feel strongly we want to encourage student voice and take it seriously."

Democrat Kamala Harris of California. Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images for Variety.

These trailblazers will be joining the ranks of other senators who've made history in Washington recently — women like Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay senator, and Mazie Hirono, the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the upper chamber, in 2012.

These women and so many others reflect a Senate that's (slowly but surely) looking more and more like the American electorate.

We've got a long way to go, especially with Donald Trump poised to be the 45th president of the United States. But the changing faces of our leaders mean more and more groups and communities — women, racial minorities, the LGBTQ community, and so many others — have someone fighting for them in the halls of Congress. Representation matters because without their say in Washington, it's easy for the voices of these groups — their concerns, their challenges, their dreams — to go unheard.

Particularly in the years ahead, under a president who ran his campaign on divisiveness and scapegoating, it's more critical now than ever before that we hear these voices and make room for them at the table.

Female senators at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

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