Just a Gen X Girl in a Millennial World
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Self, Creativity, Writing, Life, Marketing

Something occurred to me the other day that made my head spin.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve entered some kind of zone of invisibility.

No, wait, I’m serious. Stay with me here.

Okay, first of all, I was born in 1971.

That makes me solidly part of Generation X.

Everyone knows that Gen X is the forgotten generation. That’s so known that it’s a freaking meme, right?

Like one minute it’s all about the Baby Boomers and then all of a sudden it’s all about Millennials.

And meanwhile, somehow I got stuck in the middle taking care of everyone.

I’ll be 48 in October, which seems to be like some kind of magical invisibility age. I’ll be standing right there and people just look through me, I swear. I feel like I need to pinch them by the cheeks and turn their face to me to make them look at me.

I’m at the door of being middle-aged and I’m a woman, which seems to make things even worse.

I looked up from working the other day and realized something. There are almost no women my age doing what I do.Very few women in their 40s or 50s write about productivity or about writing in general or are in the online business space.

There are some Millennial women. There are men my age, especially if they started younger. And there are most definitely Millennial men. In fact, this space is dominated by men in their late 20s and early 30s.

But Gen X women? Not so much.

Is that because there aren’t many who want to do this work?

Or is it because most just got tired of not being listened to?

Or are they out there and just actually invisible, so I can’t see them?

Oh. And I’m fat.

Everyone knows that being fat makes you invisible.

Taking up more space should make you more visible, but it doesn’t. I have a good friend who is much heavier than I am. I go to the doctor with him for support sometimes and I’m not joking, his doctors often ignore him and talk to me.

It’s strange and uncomfortable.

So, I’m a fat newly-middle-aged woman. And that’s given me the dubious superpower (I guess) of being able to walk through the world without being detected.

If I want to.

And if I don’t want to — I have to figure out how not to. This is not an easy superpower to turn off.

When I was twelve, my dad took me to see The Tap Dance Kid in Los Angeles.

When the kid’s sister, Emma, sang Four Strikes Against Me, I was absolutely riveted. I identified with her and this song so strongly. I begged my dad to buy me the album and I played the song over and over again.

That memory has stuck with me for more than 30 years.

Emma is young, female, black, and fat — her four strikes. She’s an older sister who nobody pays attention to and she feels unseen. I felt her when I was twelve, all the way down to my bones.

Today, I’m middle-aged, female, and fat. And I still feel Emma.

I belong to an informal group of writers who mostly all write in the same space that I do.

I hadn’t noticed before that I am the only person in the group who is a Gen X woman. Most of the group is Millennial men. There are a couple of other women, but they’re younger than me by at least ten years.

So, I posted something in this group about being frustrated about not getting the results I wanted lately. It seems like I have been writing into a kind of void.

My own followers, the people I’ve cultivated and nurtured and who have been with me a long time — they see me. But something has shifted lately. I can feel it.

I just couldn’t figure it out. So I asked this group: what am I doing wrong? Why is your work getting so much more attention than mine?

And then it hit me.

I’m not doing anything wrong.

I’ve just entered this middle-aged woman invisibility zone in a place that’s mostly populated by writers who could be my sons.

I’m not complaining. I know it might sound like I am, but I swear I’m not.

I’m kind of excited. Because now that I’ve figured this shit out, I can work with it.

You know the movie Ghost? (You might have to be a middle-aged woman to get the reference . . . )

Patrick Swayze’s character has died, but his spirit is still around and he wants to connect with Demi Moore’s character, because she’s his wife and someone’s trying to kill her.

He jumps around like a lunatic. Screams. Begs her to see him. None of it works. Because he’s invisible. She can’t see him, so none of that stuff will ever work, no matter how much of it he does.

He could spend eternity doing the things that people do to get attention and it would never, ever work.

He can’t get her to see him until he figures out a way to make his wife see him for what he is. He has to learn how to get her to notice him as a ghost.

And that’s what I realized this week.

Doing things the same way these Millennial guys do them will never work for me. Not really. Not the way I want them to. And trying to make that happen is threatening my sanity.

But I can figure out how to be seen just the way I am.

Emma Sheridan in The Tap Dance kid ends Four Strikes Against Me by belting out — “No one’s going to stop me. No one’s going to top me. You’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings. The game isn’t over until the fat lady sings.”

That about sums it up.

So, now what?

Patrick Swayze goes out and finds Whoopie Goldberg in Ghost— a fake medium who turns out to be a real medium who can hear him. She talks to his wife for him.

I’m not sure what the answer is for me.

Maybe being louder. A little more boisterous; a little less ladylike. It’s hard to admit, but I’m sure that there are ways that I comport myself that speak to my upbringing and not wanting to stand out.

How much of being invisible is my own fault?

The result of a lifetime of education designed to hammer me down and turn me into a standard adult that doesn’t stand out from all the other adults.

The result of nearly five decades of living in a world that has not turned out very many women who are speaking about the things I want to talk about.

I have legit considered an experiment that involves inventing a Millennial hipster man persona to write under. But . . . eh. I like being me.

I’ve changed my life in the last three years. I’ve started a business that took me from a $9 an hour day job to a six-figure income. I’ve sold two novels to a major publisher. I’ve even lost more than 100 pounds.

I’ve got something to say. I’ll figure out a way to be heard.

Yeah. This is going to be fun.