Word: genericism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...twentysomething attitude toward consumption in general: get more for less. While yuppies spent money to acquire the best and the rarest toys, young adults believe they can live just as well, and maybe even better, without breaking the bank. They disdain designer anything. "Just point me to the generic aisle," says Jill Mackie, 21, a journalism major at the University of Illinois. Such a no-nonsense outlook has made hay for stores like the Gap, which thrives on young people's desire for casual clothing at a casual price. Similarly, a twentysomething adult picks a Hershey's bar over Godiva...
Hornsby's lyrical performance is also somewhat weakened by an occassional inane or meaningless chorus. "It's alright, it's okay, Hey don't you worry about a thing," just doesn't pull it. On an album which so brilliantly weaves homespun tales of Southern life, the inferiority of generic pop lyrics truly stands...
...always something to be done with a Harvard education. When I go back to job hunting next week, I'm going to try to remember that. With all of these proud parents roaming around finally able to openly declare their child graduated from Harvard and not Hartford or some generic school in Massachusetts, there has to be some truth to the Harvard reputation...
ASIAN-AMERICANS are a diverse group that defies simple generalizations. Even the generic term "Asian-American" is more a demo-graphic than a cultural term, created by government agencies to generate racial statistics...
Taken together, all five books convey a deep distrust of the decade just past. The poet Robert Lowell once wrote in an ode to a friend, "Yet really we had the same life, the generic one/ our generation offered." In much the same way, these tales of the 1980s tend to merge into one generic portrait of vanity, ego and greed. Historians may come to see the '80s in a kinder and more diverse light, but the image of the decade in these books is unquestionably the prevailing one today...