Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Every culture operates with an internal logic, no matter how strange, well-off or down-trodden it seems to be. As an example, suburban families in upstate New York have more in common with Mexican drug cartels than you might realize: both manage to eke out a source of income and have varying forms of expression and individuality. Both have established norms in terms of gender, sexuality and familial structure. All that differs is the way they go about living their daily lives.
“Hipster” culture operates under the same assumptions. Hipsters must find a source of income. They personally express themselves by the clothes they wear. They have distinct perspectives and conceptions of modern domestic life. Sounds to me like suburbanites and drug lords.
But what does it really mean to be hipster? I’ve struggled with this concept for a long time. After a little research, I’ve come across many qualifications for “hipsterism.” Generally, they must possess some of the following: a desire to wear skinny jeans, scarves, non-prescription glasses, knit caps and dirty clothing. They might have a love for the arts, specifically paintings, poetry, fiction and any other form of expression that is difficult to articulate to those in the mainstream. They might have a love for indie music, not showering daily, vegetarianism and recycling. The general frame of mind behind the hipster, then, is rebelling against any sort of established cultural paradigm about living daily life.
At this point, though, we run into a problem. We can’t have an established definition of hipsterism; that isn’t hipster! Though, I guess the idea of having a definition, as long as hipsters themselves don’t personally identify with said definition, is okay for the purpose of those wishing to have some way of describing them.
A further issue lies in the fact that this hipster culture seems to have made its way into the mainstream, and we’ve seen this in the past with trends such as “goths” and “emos.” Any Lawrence resident can see that “hipsters” are everywhere. Is this a problem? Hipsters are supposed to run the counter-culture, or the antithesis to the established culture; if so many people are suddenly self-identifying as hipsters, doesn’t that mean that is it becoming hipster to not look and act traditionally hipster?
Running along a similar train of thought (but to a different conclusion), is it “hipster” now to self-identify as hipster? There used to be no definition of hipsterism and those living the lifestyle didn’t use this conscious self-identification. This means that those self-identifying as hipster (or, consciously using the term “hipster” to describe themselves) are now the ones out of the mainstream.
All of that aside, hipster culture is valuable for many reasons. As a group of people, we attempt to attach some sort of coherent definition to a population so that we can organize our thoughts and stereotypes about them easier; this happens with hipsters, homosexuals, surburban housewives, drug dealers, fraternity brothers, and all forms of identity among them. In the end, we can’t forget that these prejudiced attitudes are incorrect most of the time, and every single person in this world has some varying structure of identity.
Hipsters have feelings too.
— Salsbury is a senior in English, History of Art, and Global and International Studies from Chapman.
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Comments
Salsbury: Yes, hipsters are people too
Hipsters are not people, that's too mainstream.
Salsbury: Yes, hipsters are people too
I think articles like this are why people hate hipsters.
Salsbury: Yes, hipsters are people too
Hold on... I'm still confused here! What is a hipster again?
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