When actor Luke Perry, best known for portraying TV heartthrob Dylan McKay on the '90s teen drama “Beverly Hills, 90210,” died Monday after suffering a massive stroke, there were the usual public displays of sadness when a public figure leaves us. But his passing was especially painful for people of a certain age.
As one fan expressed on Twitter: “I'm in mourning for Generation X today, for real.”
Perry died at just 52 years old. Which makes him the first Gen X icon to succumb to natural causes. That's an unsettling reality check to those of us who identify as Gen Xers, the 65 million people born between 1965 and 1980. We're used to death — we've lost plenty of heroes to drugs and suicide, everyone from Kurt Cobain to River Phoenix to Chris Cornell. But Perry is the first to die of something we only expect to happen to old people.
It doesn't help that Perry's death came on the heels of a pretty egregious generational slight. A CBS News story in January, which focused on millennials, included an infographic of every generation, from the silent generation (those born between 1925 and '45) to baby boomers (born between '46 and '64) to the post-millennials (born between 1997 and the present). Generation X was conspicuously absent.
“Gen X is definitely having a midlife crisis,” says Matthew Hennessey, 45, author of “Zero Hour for Gen X: How the Last Adult Generation Can Save America from Millennials.”
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