And we’re back with another monthly installment of my series on Pluto generations! In case you missed the previous ones, check out Intro to Pluto, Part 1: Pluto in Cancer, and Part 2: Pluto in Leo.
Welcome to Part 3, in which we finally give Gen X its due by splitting this often neglected middle child generation into the two cohorts that it actually is: Pluto in Virgo and Pluto in Libra.
This month we will look at Pluto in Virgo, those free-range cool kids born in the heyday of the swinging 60s, while next month will focus on Pluto in Libra, those of us born when disco was king.
Pluto was in Virgo from approximately 1956-19721, a span that includes folks normally identified as younger Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers. However, I think a separate Pluto grouping makes more sense.
Much of the cultural and political change that defined the Pluto in Leo Boomers in the late 1960s happened when the Pluto in Leo folks were young adults. Pluto in Virgos, even the oldest of them, would have been young teenagers then, putting them into a very different experiential category.
This cohort is also distinct from the later Pluto in Libra generation (born approximately 1971-1984), which overlaps with the group demographers typically define as Gen X. This discrepancy may be one of the reasons that Gen X is a bit squishy as a demographic cohort — there are actually two cohorts, each quite different in their orientation and in the ways that Pluto has played out in their lives.
Also notable is that Uranus was also in Virgo during part of the Pluto in Virgo era, from 1962-1969, when it conjoined with Pluto several times. This configuration is a signature of upheaval and social change, but in an intellectual and adaptable earth sign which focused people’s idealism and protest on meaningful, visible change.
Mercury Rules
An earth sign ruled by cerebral Mercury, Virgo is oriented towards gathering information and data for useful purposes. Always practical, as all earth signs are, Virgo is prudent, helpful, modest, and not inclined towards drama (as Leo and Libra, the adjacent signs and generations, definitely are).
It’s interesting to me that many in this demographic grew up at a time when unstructured free time was the norm for children. They were left to their own devices, in communities largely considered safe for children to roam, where they invented games and activities of their own. This scenario is both very mercurial (Mercury rules games, children, friends, siblings, and the local neighborhood) and also very Virgo, as it happened out of necessity (there was nothing else to do) and as an adaptive response.
This let’s-figure-something-out approach is something people from this generation have in common, a low-key problem-solving orientation that sets them apart from other Pluto cohorts (see: Pluto in Virgo former President Obama vs. all the other older drama queen Pluto in Leo politicians).
The (Practical) Feminine Mystique
Another societal thing that happened during this generation’s formative years was a large movement of women entering the workforce, following on the heels of the growing women’s movement (The Feminine Mystique was published in 1963). This is quite literally a manifestation of Virgo: a feminine sign whose symbol is the virgin, essentially a young woman, orientated towards practical work. Women at work: get it?
I’m reminded of Laverne & Shirley, that inimitable kerchiefed duo, which I watched as a kid in the 80s whenever I was home sick. While the show aired from 1976-1983 (Pluto in Libra), it was set in the late 1950s (Pluto in Virgo) in the fictitious Shotz Brewery, where Laverne and Shirley worked as bottle-cappers.
Earth Day is Everyday
Beyond the social and protest movements of the Pluto in Virgo years, perhaps the most notable legacy of that period is the modern environmental movement, which sprang into public consciousness with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962.
Carson’s work, which documented the dire environmental effects of the indiscriminate use of pesticides, ushered in the environmental movement, including the establishment of Earth Day in 1970. This movement, of course, continues today with renewed vigor, interestingly, as Pluto now trines Virgo from Capricorn, as we try afresh to make practical headway against climate change and environmental destruction.
Work Isn’t Always the Answer
As we’ve touched on in our earlier Pluto discussions, Pluto distorts, corrupts, and takes things too far in whatever sign it passes through. This happens both at the time of its transit through a given sign and later on, when the generation born then comes of age during a different Pluto era.
Accordingly, one of this generation’s shadow sides is Virgo’s focus on productive work, which Pluto exaggerates and distorts. People from this cohort are famous for being workaholics, for erasing the boundaries between work and life that had existed in previous eras and that younger generations are working to restore (hello, the great resigners of Pluto in Scorpio and Sagittarius).
9 to 5, that surprisingly prescient female-empowerment comedy with Dolly Parton’s infectious title song, premiered in 1980, when the Pluto in Virgo generation was just heading off to work. (Note that Parton, though a Pluto in Leo, has Virgo rising, which put Pluto transiting through her first house in her early creative years.)
The message of the movie is upbeat and even utopian, with our working gal heroines defeating sexism and harassment in the workplace and ushering in a progressive era of shared jobs and on-site child care.
However, the idea of work as the focal point of life celebrated in the movie captures the cultural changes that would eventually set the stage for the inexorable creep of workism in our late-stage capitalist culture. (PSA to the Pluto in Virgos out there: vacation is okay, even good for you! Try it! :)
Cool Cucumbers
Celebrities from the Pluto in Virgo cohort strike me as sharing a sort of sleeper cool. Remember that the idea of “cool” is thought to derive from Black jazz artists in the 1940s (many of whom hailed from the earlier Pluto in Gemini cohort, another cerebral Mercury-ruled group) describing the new, restrained style of jazz music that reflected a sense of control and self-possession.
Here’s a short sampling of some of our Pluto in Virgo celebrities — see what I mean?
Laurence Fishburn, Meg Ryan, Cate Blanchett, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Eddie Murphy, Ethan Hawke, Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Will Smith, George Clooney, Keanu Reeves, Hugh Jackman, Tom Cruise, Steve Buscemi, Val Kilmer, Nicholas Cage, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr, David Duchovny, Christian Slater, Wesley Snipes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Bean, Uma Thurman, Michael J. Fox, Laura Dern, Patricia Arquette, Naomi Watts, Helena Bonham Carter, Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Connelly, Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas, Mike Myers, Lisa Bonet, Carrie Fisher, Whitney Houston, Jet Li, Ice Cube, Björk, Luke Perry (and basically the whole cast of 90210), and, of course, Madonna.
Speaking of Madonna, who literally wrote a song about her generation’s Pluto placement, here she is embodying this Pluto archetype (albeit throwing in a leonine homage to her Leo sun). Stay cool, Pluto in Virgos!
If you’re looking at a birth date on either edge of this range, be sure to double check Pluto’s placement using an ephemeris or by generating a chart, since Pluto can move back and forth a bit between signs when changing from one to the next.