The first national attempts at describing who these new people allegedly were came from the same places that had clumsily defined Baby Boomers in the sixties. Time took a stab in July of 1990. The magazine’s cover was an image of five people staring in random directions, unified by the word “twentysomething.” The headline for the story itself was “Proceeding with Caution.” It was published before the term “Generation X” was popularized,[*] with one source dismissively labeling the demographic as the New Petulants:
