What is a Hipster?
"Damn, those some tightass jeans! How do your legs breathe?
The above was yelled at me by two men in a stopped car when I biked past them in the, admittedly, tightest pair of pants I have ever owned. However, the men in question were driving a white sedan with ads for a locksmith company painted on the doors and were hardly in a position to judge. (They also chose to insult me at a red light and we spent the next 45 seconds in uncomfortable silence, glancing furtively at each other through the rolled-up passenger window, until the light changed. It was very uncomfortable.)
So what does the circumference of my trousers say about me as a person? It says absolutely nothing about me as a person. Or at least it shouldn't. But yet I get called a Gipster (gay hipster) all the time, usually because of such trivialities as the way my pants fit. The funny thing is, no one can really agree on what that entails. So really, folks, what is a hipster?
I've previously mentioned my complicated feelings for both skinny jeans and American Apparel, so you can imagine the kind of cognitive dissonance I experienced last month when I bought the former item from the latter retailer.Was I just buying into everyone's sartorial expectations of me? So yeah, I now own a pair of pants that is so tight that you can tell time on my wang. (Or guess my religion, or read my lips. Pick your joke.) But I feel like I'm just fueling the flames of an ill-understood insult. Gays and indie-kids are both known to wear unflatteringly tight pants, and the last thing I want to do is be unflattering.
I'm usually accused of being a hipster for all kinds of nonsensical reasons. Dressing up for a cocktail party in a way that the accuser found unconventional. Listening to certain bands, even if the entire world is familiar with their music. The way I carry my bike lock. My body type. To me, throwing around the word hipster is like a group of barflies calling each other alcoholics, or a bunch of guys at a bathhouse pointing fingers at who is the most oversexed. It's usually a way for mildly unconventional people to feel like they haven't taken their aesthetic overboard by picking out someone else who has.
Today, The Onion AV Club posted this response (third one down) to a reader's letter asking "What exactly is a hipster?" They say that the term derived from a series of labels for counterculture and has only turned pejorative in recent years, and frequently as an effect of internet message boards. I personally think it is a term that has lost all meaning due to overuse.
7 Comments:
i usually react negatively if people imply that i might consider myself a hipster, but only because i'd rather be called a thug.
uhm...ever heard of the hipster handbook? worrying about hipster-ness as a condition was like so five years ago.
I've never heard of the hipster handbook, but I did read The Official Preppy Handbook in high school.
i get mad when my boyfriend calls me his "hipster boyfriend" to his friends. just because its a blanket statement and i become more of a label than a person. it also makes differences between me and his friends more of an issue.
but hipster, new gay, isnt it all the same?
ps - the hipster handbook is totally deck.
I didn't know American Apparel made skinny jeans! I want a pair...and I don't think anyone would ever consider me a hipster.
I'm not sure exactly when the term hipster came into common usage in indie rock circles as a putdown, but I've been hearing it since the early to mid 90s. It's general usage seemed to be aimed at people who were more concerned with maintaining an image of their own coolness and having a smug air of superiority about themselves. It was the same way that people threw the term 'scenester' around in a derisive fashion towards others.
It just seems to have spilled over into a much more common usage in the past few years to refer to people who fit the stereotype of wearing an identifiable indie rock uniform. So it's more common now to get called a hipster due to a more mainstream awareness of an indie subculture/fashion.
Even more annoying are people who refer to themselves as self-appointed hipsters.
I think all these terms have sort of become ridiculous and lacking any relevence. Let's just bury the word 'indie' altogether and move onto something else.
I know I'm a little late on this post, but I agree with the last comment, especially. It seems that the noun "poseur" has been transformed over the years into "hipster". It's totally silly to use such generalizations about people you don't know. Though, like most humans, I am guilty as the rest. And speaking of humans, it's only human nature to try to fit in and stand out simultaneously, people see other people wearing tight jeans, they find this attractive and go out and get a pair, but at the same time if they see someone physically inferior to their standards of appeal, they denote that person as a "hipster".
my advice: try to be a positive person. i know, it's so hard to do in a subculture world inspired by cynicism, but it'll keep one from steaming at the ears.
and oh yes, can we please do something about the word "emo" while we're at it?
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