March 18, 2002

Riding the Demographic Wave Ashore

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

   It used to be that a man had seven ages. Or so thought Jaques, the
melancholy misanthrope in Shakespeare's "As You Like It." You probably
remember his speech, the one that begins "All the world's a
stage. . . . " According to Jaques, a man's seven ages were puking
infant, whining schoolboy, sighing lover, bearded soldier,
round-bellied justice, slippered pantaloon and mere
oblivion. Demographically speaking, those seven ages have now been
whittled down to three: too young to have a credit-card, the prime of
high consumption, which ends abruptly at 34, or maybe 49, and mere
oblivion. Jaques is now a media buyer, and he knows just what he's
looking for.

I remember being 12, 18, 34, and all the ages in between. I'm 49 now,
and just coming in sight of the demographic cuspidor where the giants
of advertising will deposit me and the rest of my generation when we
turn 50. We'll be at the peak of our powers, mentally, emotionally,
economically, even, many of us, physically-- no longer whining, puking
or sighing. But "mature" is a word that's acquired a new meaning in
the culture that advertising represents. It's lost any implication of
mastery or fulfillment, any sense of duration, accomplishment or
aspiration. The word now derives its primary meaning from
capitalism. In a mature market all hope of further growth is extinct,
all potential maxed out. In an Xbox universe, maturity is death.

In media markets, the hottest demographic of all is males from 12 to
34. The whole world of advertising is canted in their direction,
geared toward cashing in on the fickleness, the loucheness, the long
spending life of the young, unattached male, who is also the least
responsive of customers. On the surface it seems ridiculous to think
that a 12-year-old and a 34-year-old could actually share enough
interests to form a distinct, marketable demographic. But just ask any
woman. The ideal of manhood pulled a boy forward into early maturity
in Shakespeare's time, and the ideal of boyhood appears to hold a man
back in our own.

I'd urge those boy-men to ride this demographic wave, if there were
any profit in it, any advantage to them. But there isn't. They see
versions of their desires and insecurities refracted all around them,
in what we loosely call our culture. The images they see of themselves
obscure the reality, which is always more inchoate, less simplistic,
harder to make sense of, but much more interesting. The commercial
fictions that endlessly depict the freedom and the irreverence and the
gratification of young males actually imprison them without their
knowing it.

Those who ride any demographic wave long enough eventually crash
ashore, as beached, if not as solitary, as Tom Hanks was in
"Castaway." The young males of today will get their first membership
requests from the AARP soon enough. Mine hasn't arrived yet, but I
know it's out there somewhere.

In a couple of months, I'll be stepping out of the media-advertising
limelight, coming to the end of my 18- to-49 tenure. I'm ready to be
demoted as a consumer. If only that meant that the junk mail and the
spam were coming to an end as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/18/opinion/_18MON3.html