Author: Richie DeMaria
My editors asked me to write an opinion piece on hipsters. They basically wrote out the word “hipster” and said, “Go.”Great! Hipsters! What could be easier? Everyone has an opinion about them – an extremely negative opinion. I can think of no subset of people so widely scorned, except maybe juggalos or white supremacists. Scum of the earth, really, or as Adbusters says, “the dead end of western civilization.”
Before we go on, let’s be precise about whom we hate here. The hipster is too cool (and smug and cynical and disaffected and ironic) for everyone else, that jerk. The hipster wears tight clothes, keffiyehs, flannel, V-necks and wayfarer sunglasses. The hipster drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The hipster regards New York’s Williamsburg as Mecca. The hipster listens to such and such music and holds such and such contrarian opinions and probably laughs at our very philistinic existence – these hipsters just won’t let us be!
Okay, what else? They all have potbellies. Didn’t you hear? Hipster males, the New York Times famously proclaimed in the Aug. 12 Style article “It’s Hip To Be Round,” have made the potbelly their new “uniform,” perhaps “reacting in opposition to a president who […] hits the gym every morning.” Now wait a darn second. I thought Obama was the hipster president?
So they’ve gained weight – they’re still easy to find and hate. Just look for the trademark fashion indicators I noted above. But wait! Isn’t everyone wearing wayfarer sunglasses, especially of the neon variety? I think I’ve seen homeless people in flannel. V-necks – well, there was that one Girl Talk show not long ago where every person in sight had some sort of American Apparel item on, such as a shiny pair of leggings or a bright sweatband. Since so many people shop there, it can’t be the refuge of the hip either, can it? And Girl Talk, well, isn’t he the patron saint of dorm room parties now?
At least we can count on other music because hipsters love terrible music and tell everyone about it – like those weirdos Animal Collective. But they’re kind of big now, right? Or that dastardly No Age, they’re headliners of the Eagle Rock Music Fest and the FYF Fest, and they were on an (corporately-owned, might I add!) Urban Outfitters compilation.
So there seems to be a problem here. Those hipsters, well . . . which one are they? They look a little like everyone else at times, or vice versa. It is starting to seem that these supposed indicators of hipness can be easily purchased. Is indie just a marketing term and hipness just what you consume? Is independence still independence if it’s massified?
Let’s not go there – because I very much believe in my own uniqueness, the very kind those pernicious hipsters hate on, and I wear it as a badge. Just look at my Facebook profile lists and last.fm tastes. I am not a hipster, by the way, nor do I know anyone who claims to be one, but they’re out there.
There are other indicators, believe me. Like the male hipster who is waifishly thin and listens to fey freakfolk and nu disco and expresses his gender rather suspiciously, hint hint. To quote Urban Dictionary, some synonyms might include “gay,” “manorexic” and “metrosexual.”
But wait, woah, some of my best friends are gay and wear tight clothing – does that make them hipsters? Also, isn’t that just kind of mean-spirited, even maybe homophobic? Well, it’s the internet, and all kinds of anonymous jerks who take free reign to spread hate speech and do not express the opinions of the public at large!
. . . They do, though. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that hipster hate is a gendered reaction to the male hipster’s thin physique, music tastes, posture and parental dependence.
I’m going to drop this charade for these last few paragraphs. Let’s review: We hate hipsters because they’re sort of queer, in all senses of the word. We hate them because of the music they listen to. We hate the self-applauding irony, the vanity, the inherited wealth and entitlement, the affects and the delusion of superiority. We hate them because we don’t know them and they probably hate us.
As far as I can tell, a hipster is whoever you want him or her to be. A hipster is whatever the deadline demands. A hipster is a catchall target for prejudices and annoyances, an “other” impossible to define, but whoever he or she is, he or she certainly isn’t you.
There’s a little, two-foot tall hipster in all of us – that indulgent pursuit of happiness and coolness, that image-building and idealism. The “hipster” has been mainstreamed and maybe wasn’t all that different to begin with. So enough with the meaningless hate. Direct it towards something different – like white supremacists.
Richie DeMaria is a senior ECLS major. He can be reached at rdemaria@oxy.edu.
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