Some members of the twentysomething population don't care for the term "Generation X."
"X is meaningless to me," says Matt Goldberg, the 24-year-old managing editor of a hot-off-the press magazine - Swing - geared to the generation that includes director John Singleton, actress Julia Roberts, rapper Queen Latifah and $40 million-dollar-man Shaquille O'Neal. Goldberg and editor-publisher David Lauren, 22, prefer the term "paradox generation.""Division within ourselves" or "the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of generations" is how one of the reporters in the debut issue of Swing defines "paradox." One of the missions of the new glossy is to dispel the media notion that anyone born between 1964 and 1974 is an Alex Keaton cut-out, with the conservative look and attitude of Michael J. Fox's "Family Ties" character.
The overseer of this new addition to the magazine world is the son of designer Ralph Lauren.
Two days after the magazine hit print, the younger Lauren combed the newsstands of Manhattan to see how his debut into the world of publishing was faring. He returned with glowing reports of sell-outs, but the newsstand success that pleased him the most was hearing that 65 copies sold out within four hours at his alma mater, Duke University. For the nationwide November debut, 200,000 copies were printed.
The concept for the magazine, Lauren says, originated while he was a student at Duke, and the name Swing was adopted because of the twentysomething generation's clout.
"We're a generation about influence. We can swing the vote, affect advertising," says Lauren of a peer group that represents 46 million voices and $125 billion in spending power.
Ralph Lauren happens to be one of the major advertisers in the first issue of the magazine, with six full-page ads - ads that are there, states David Lauren, because the magazine's designated readership also happens to be the target market for many of his father's design labels and fragrances. One of Ralph Lauren's competitors, Tommy Hilfiger, also advertises in the premier issue.
However, fashion isn't one of the topics covered in the magazine's articles. What is included are profiles of the most powerful twentysomethings in America (from those in the stock market to those in the music market), social issues such as who should pay the check on a date and financial insights into the how-tos of independent record labels or starting a retirement fund.
While the magazine reports the latest in lifestyle trends from Manhattan cafes that offer coin-operated computer chat with their cafe lattes to West Coast cigar clubs for women, writers explore the paradoxes in everything from sex to politics. On the latter, they admit that their generation wants change but has voted far less often than any other generation before them. On the former, one writer points out that her generation has "had more sex education than any other generation in American history" but that 20 percent of all new AIDS cases are diagnosed in people in their 20s.
"Our publication is not angry or trendy," says Lauren, sitting in his Madison Avenue office sprinkled with photographs of Paul Newman, Gary Cooper and the Beatles. "We're not speaking for this generation. We are simply a vehicle for different views and attitudes of our age group."
"My parents had (role models) John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio and Audrey Hepburn. Who do we have?" asks Lauren.
He ties his comments into the contents of the magazine as he starts to flip through its pages.
"Instead of John Wayne, we're stuck with `Wayne's World,' " laments one writer while, in another interview, Spin Doctors' front man Chris Barron, 25, rejects the idea of Nintendo thinking and promotes a return to the classicism of Shakespeare and Homer.
"Generating our own heroes" is one of the responsibilities Lauren says his generation faces.
"What sets this magazine apart is that it's for men and women in their 20s who are just coming out of college and looking to see where they are going. It addresses the questions of how this age group will relate to the world around them," he says.
The world around them gave them caffeine-free colas and fat-free brownies once they were weaned from Twinkies and fast-food breakfasts. As a generation feeling the pressure to be eco-friendly to save their futures, they scrutinize labels that promise unbleached and unscented contents while trying to break the habit of buying disposable razors.
While that may share many a paradox with baby boomers, Lauren sees his magazine as a vehicle tailored to his generation's need to define its own passions and missions. Generation segregation is not something David Lauren has experienced with a father he describes as "too hip for a generation gap."
But Ralph Lauren is a member of the older generation, and his name is a household word. David Lauren is a member of a generation-in-waiting, and he wants to get his words into twentysomething households.
"It is inevitable that every generation gets its chance to run the world," says Goldberg.