On Hipsters

Recently, I’ve thought a lot about hipsters…the word itself, what and who it represents, as well as the people in my life who are part of the hipster scene.  I’m ambivalent towards these scene-making creatures of the city, which is strange since most people are polarized by them.  Either their clothing and lifestyle choices strike you as pretentious and repel you, or everything about them (i.e. music, values, culture) turns you on and you secretly wish you could hang out with them, wish that you were them. 

Funny thing about hipsters: most of them reject the term, at least in relation to themselves, and usually the ones that hate being called hipsters are the worst culprits, the ones that epitomize everything it is to be a hipster.  If the whole point of being a hipster is to avoid what’s mainstream and refuse to be boxed into a category, then to accept the title of “hipster” would be counter-intuitive.  It would mark them as one of many, when they strive to be original, and you can’t be original while simultaneously being part of the hipster scene, where everyone is practically identical.  It just doesn’t work, so it becomes imperative to reject the title.  This, of course, is futile and ridiculous.

First, I’d like to go into what a hipster actually is, for the few of you still living under rocks that don’t know.  The definition listed here on Urban Dictionary pretty much nails it.  In short, you’re a hipster if you are an independent thinking liberal with an appreciation for art, music, creativity, and intelligence.  Your style is edgy/bohemian which means you dress in vintage or thrift store inspired fashions (inspired being the key word here), and your wardrobe also include tight-fitting jeans, retro sneakers, and probably a pair of thick rimmed glasses. Your hair is messy, shaggy, or cut asymmetrically.  You only purchase things from local retailers (i.e. mom and pop stores). You’re probably a vegan, or at least a vegetarian.  And you probably ride a bike, because you’re all about anything that will help the environment.

All that sounds fairly good and well-meaning.  I mean, the fashion bit might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but what could be wrong with appreciating art and music?  Why wouldn’t you want to help the local retailers or save the environment?  And yet, hipster has become a derogatory term.  If someone calls you a hipster, it’s probably not a good thing.  Despite the fact that I, myself, fall prey to many of the above mentioned qualities of a hipster, I can completely understand why they get hated on so much.  Not because, as the urban dictionary implies, I’m some jock/fraternity or playboy bunny/sorority type that can’t keep up with the culture (because I’m not, and I can).  And not because I think they are pretentious assholes (admittedly some are, but many and more actually do possess greater talent, values and culture than the population at large).  My reasons stem less from hate, than from annoyance, because most of the hipsters I know are hypocrites. 

I’d like to get into how they are hypocritical, but in order to do that I need to borrow a phrase from one of my most favorite movies: Almost Famous.  The rock critic in the film (and in real life), Lester Bangs, complains that the music scene has developed into an “industry of cool.”  He was referring to the bands of the early seventies, but the term applies even more so today.  A lot of hipsters aren’t born that way, they make themselves such, even while not fully understanding or representing what it really is to be a hipster.  They do it because they like the fashion, or because it’s what all the other cool kids are doing.  They just want to be part of the scene, so they’re not really hipsters as much as they are scene-sters. 

But what’s more, even those who truly do believe in the lifestyle become victims of the industry of cool.  They appreciate art and music, true, but is it mind-blowing art or stellar music? Nope.  Not always.  Mostly they support their crappy art student roommates or their friend’s shitty bands.  Forget the brilliant 60 year old painter whose oil landscape paintings look too corporate or aren’t edgy enough, never mind that he’s just as much a starving artist as their art school friend.  What about the phenomenal lead singer, who just so happens to sing in a cover band and work a corporate day job to help make ends meet?  Does his original band not count because he sings for and takes money from the frat boys and military types who flock to his cover-band shows?  It should count, but it doesn’t to hipsters.

And this extends to the whole “shop local” movement.  Sure, let’s ban Target and Starbucks.  Instead, thrift the things you need, grow your own vegetables, and buy coffee from the mom and pop organic coffee shop down the street.  Screw the Ruby Tuesday’s and Macy’s of the world.  Who needs them when you can shop at unique boutiques downtown and eat lunch at the locally-owned vegan-friendly sushi restaurant.  I’m all for these things, actually, but only when the sentiment is applied to everything, not just a select group.  Hipsters tend to go to the over-priced farmer’s markets because it’s trendy and support the cafes, restaurants and boutiques their friends own.  They don’t support the kitschy BBQ joint locally owned but frequented by rednecks.  They could care less about the local preppy dress shop all the sorority girls love.  Those places aren’t cool, so those places don’t get supported.

And don’t even get me started on music snobs.  I remember distinctly when I was a sophomore in college in one of my creative non-fiction classes, there was a friendly enough guy (bearded, another hipster trademark) who wrote a paper on his love-hate relationship with the fact that little known bands that he adored, like My Morning Jacket at the time, eventually make their way to mainstream audiences.  He of course loved the band because they were, and still are, extremely awesome.  He loved them so much that he wanted to keep their awesomeness a secret, a selfish sentiment, and he knew it.  That’s of course why he was writing the paper.  He knew about this band before everyone else, and consequently it made him feel vastly superior to all the sheep sitting in their dorm rooms listening to Dave Matthews.   He realized this made him come off as a jerk, but he couldn’t help it…it was truly how he felt. 

The problem for my creative writing friend, and other early adopters of cool bands, is that once the masses finally catch on to the band you’ve been listening to all these years, the band suddenly seems less cool, so you therefore have to scour the dark recesses of the internet to find the next best thing.  And frankly, this is a shitty way to think.  Just because the world knows about My Morning Jacket now, it doesn’t mean they are any less cool than when they first started.  Abandoning a band because they’ve become famous and mainstream doesn’t make you cool, it makes you flaky and disloyal. 

(Let us pause for one second to commend the hipsters on their ability to launch bands into super stardom. A lot of indie bands suck (which might be why they're on an independent label in the first place), but sometimes they don't suck.  Sometimes they rule.  And sometimes, it's when the hipsters ban together and christen a band as "cool" that the band obtains a large crowd following and consequently goes on to get signed by a major label.  Major labels can also suck, but they have the ability to get music out to the masses, which is what musicians strive for.  And if indie bands never made it big, the world at large would never know anything other than Katy Perry or Justin Bieber.  So what I'm saying is...if hipsters can make that happen, we might need to thank them for it.)

But hipsters don't stop at music snobbery.  They can be a snob about things (like iPhones), places (like art galleries), and fashion trends (like skinny jeans).  But much like the music, once everyone else starts buying those things, visiting those places and wearing those fashions, they’ll have moved on to the next best thing.  Hipsters have every right in the world to move on to new things, it’s the snobbery that bothers me.  Just because someone shops at Wal-Mart because they’re pinching pennies, just because someone wears J.C. Penny sweater-sets, and just because they go to dance clubs (not bars) or god forbid go see cover bands instead of original music, it doesn’t give hipsters the right to outcaste these people, or treat them as less-than. 

Because really, they aren’t less-than.  When it comes to originality, these people are more original than some hipsters will ever be.  They might be consumers of the mass-produced, but at least they aren’t consistently trying to keep up with what’s cool and what’s not.  They honestly don’t care.   They know who they are and what they like and aren’t doing things out of some sad need to be trendy or superior. 

This rant is getting long, so I swear I’m nearly done.  My last point is to mention a wonderfully unique movie called Ghost World.  The lead character is a girl named Enid who quite beautifully represents everything hipster, but who is an outcaste in her high school and decidedly un-cool.  That movie came out in 2001, but was based on a comic book from 1997, and it just goes to show how swiftly the world has changed since then.  A little more than 10 years later, we have a film called 21 Jump Street, a remake of the TV series from the late 80’s, which portrays the new social hierarchy in schools today. The hipsters have become the popular kids, while the jocks and the cheerleaders have become the un-cool kids. 

Quite the role reversal, and it just proves my point.  Enid was the hipster prototype, the original kid who liked nerdy things and who, despite what her classmates thought, was in actuality the coolest kid at her school.  However, hipsters today, like in Jump Street, are so ubiquitous they’ve become unoriginal.  They are the norm, the bullies, and despite their loathe of it, completely and utterly mainstream.

On Cat Marnell

For those of you who haven't heard of the soon-to-be infamous Cat Marnell, she was a writer and the beauty and health editor at XOJane.com, until recently, when she was unceremoniously let go because of her very public, mildly disturbing drug addiction.  She's since been picked up to write for Vice.com, a much better fit for the tragic beauty.

As much as I love reading her work, there is almost always a few niggling feelings sprinkled in with that love that I'm not sure how to articulate.  Jealousy?  Repulsion?  Frustration?  I don't know.  It's this ambivalence of feelings I have that makes her memorable.  She is certainly one of a kind. 

When I say the word Love in reference to Cat, I'm certainly not referring to the girl herself.  It's her work I'm infatuated with, not the person.  Cat the girl (and she's still a girl, always will be, how could the author of a column entitled Amphetamine Logic ever be called a woman?) is, well, unlovable.  I don't mean to say that other people can't fall for this vicious vixen, surely some have.  What I mean is that she does not tolerate the love of others.  She is confused by it, probably because she so desperately wants it, but once she has it she doesn't have the slightest idea of what to do with it.  

I'm reminded of a new song by a similarly warp-minded lady, the incomparable Fiona Apple, called Left Alone.  There is a recurring line in this song that begs the question, "How can I ask anyone to love me, when all I do is beg to be left alone."  This hits Miss Marnell's proverbial nail on the head.  She is incapable of love, because all she has ever known is solitude (to quote another awesome artist, or band rather -- Tame Impala -- I steal the aptly titled name of one of their more popular songs: Solitude is Bliss).  

I've got the feeling that this need to be alone stems from Cat's upbringing in a large house with wealthy parents who were far too busy leading their own lives to worry their pretty little heads with actually raising their daughter, who consequently had to fend for herself.  This is no secret really, I'm not discovering some unknown truth about Cat.  She's knows this better than most, especially since her father was a psychiatrist.  But what's curious to me about her neuroses is that what started out as a source of pain and sadness, this constantly being left alone, eventually morphed into a coping mechanism, to the point that, since it's all she's ever known, solitude has become a sort of comfort zone for her.  It's where she feels safest.

But me?  I'm no fan of solitude.  I'm okay with it, it can even be nice sometimes, but in the end I very much like human interaction: laughing with my friends, sleeping next to a warm body at night, even just being in the same room as someone while not talking...me reading a book and whoever else doing their thing, playing guitar, maybe.  But then again, I come from a small loving home, with parents who were, without fail, always home (one bed-ridden, the other necessarily around to take care of the bed-ridden one).  I, too, spent a lot of my childhood having to fend for myself, but unlike Cat, it wasn't because my parents didn't want to be there for me, it was because they couldn't.  Admittedly a slight difference, but an important one.

Where were we?  Oh yes, on my mixed-up feelings towards Cat Marnell.  Well, the next feeling to discuss, I believe, is Jealousy.  It's a nasty emotion...one that no one ever really wants to have but one we're all guilty of having, whether we want to admit it or not.  Let's talk surface level first.  Cat, on the surface, is quite the beauty.  Beachy bleach-blond hair, big doll-like green eyes made almost comically large by the absurd amount of black eyeliner she draws around them, and either blood red or heavily glossed full lips nearly always turned up in a smile that never touches her eyes.  Her face alone is many men's wet dream, done up in such a way, messily...carelessly, to suggest she hasn't really tried that hard, but really it's very calculated and affected.  When it comes to beauty, Cat without a doubt knows what she's doing.  

Moving away from the face, towards the body, you'll find that Cat is surfer girl tan from head to toe.  It's not a real tan, rather an assortment of lotions that create the illusion of a tan, but no one who didn't know her would ever know the difference.  She's of average height, but below average weight.  Cat would no doubt have a truly lovely figure, curves in all the right places, if only she'd allow it.  She doesn't.  While her prescription drug use may have initially started because her dad thought it would help control her ADD, it continued because of the side effects those drugs had, the main, I think, being that they made her skinny.  Don't get me wrong, Cat has a slight frame naturally, so she was already skinny, but girls growing up like we did with Kate Moss as a role model can never really be skinny enough.  Cat's a self-called rib counter.  She weighs herself obsessively and is overjoyed when the numbers are in the double digits.  

If you were to go up to Cat, close enough to hug her (ha! as if she'd ever allow it), you'd find she smells of suntan lotion and vanilla - year round - and not because of the SPF factor but because of the aroma and consequent vibes that the smell of suntan lotion elicits.  Are we seeing a trend here?  A girl with tangled,wavy beach hair, blond and tan and smelling like summer?  It's funny she's attracted to the look and smells of a surfer girl, typically strong/outdoorsy healthy people, when in reality she rarely gets a chance to step foot on a beach.  Most of her time is spent in The City (you know the one), holed up in some dark room on multiple kinds of prescription pills, watching her graffiti artist friends beautifully deface some random object.  The girl is vampire, a night owl, who stays up all night on speed and sleeps away her sunny days.  Oh Cat...such a beautiful contradiction. 

So am I jealous of her?  Looks-wise?  Not really, although I do admire her large doll eyes and superbly animated expressions.  I like food entirely too much to deny myself the pleasure of eating, and the use of pills to suppress her hunger is also not an option for me as I can't even stand the jittery effects of Claritin, much less drugs far stronger than that.  Besides, I like my curves, and I'm pretty sure my guy does too, so why would I want to skinny to the point that they didn't exist?  No, I'm not jealous--at all--of the way Cat looks, or her high profile New York derelict lifestyle.  What I am jealous of, I suppose, would be her career.  

Being from a wealthy family affords you a good start in life, although I'm not daft enough to think her parents have anything to do with where she's landed herself today, as a writer for Vice.  She obviously has drive and ambition if she's worked her way up the slippery totem pole of beauty magazines.  And living in New York isn't always the breeze that it's made out to be in film and books, so to survive and make a living there is commendable.  When Cat is sober enough to write coherently, she produces the most insightful and honest pieces I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and coming from an aspiring writer, that sure as hell is something to be jealous about.  Yeah, her subject matter isn't always easy to digest, but that's what makes her interesting.  It's what makes her Cat Marnell, a personality she's cleverly crafted and embodies wholeheartedly.  She's quite brilliant, if I'm being honest, and she's lucky to be making a living doing the thing she loves most, something I certainly can't claim for myself working an 8-5 corporate desk job that sucks the creativity out of my soul.

So if I admire her work so much, how then could I be repulsed by her?  That's easy.  The Repulsion I feel towards her comes from knowing a few drug addicts personally and seeing how swiftly drugs ruined, or very nearly ruined, their lives.  I hate how she glamorizes her addictions, not because I'm against drug-use (I've done my fair share), but because the picture she paints is of a sparkling destruction, a diamond coated descent into madness, all cotton-candy skies covered in graffiti, but that's not really how it is.  I mean, for her  it is...she comes and goes to the hottest clubs, is the recipient of all-expenses paid vacations, wears the most beautiful designer clothing, and is gifted the newest, most exclusive beauty products.  She may be a mere shell of herself while being at these places and doing these things, but she lives a life of dilapidated luxury nonetheless.   

Real drug addicts, the ones I've known, live in trailers on the outskirts of town and wear the same ratty clothing for days on end.  The coolest places the get to go are backwoods bars or prison.  They are scab covered and hollow faced and stuttering, not beautiful or glamorous in the least.  They are the mothers of children whose diapers forget to get changed for days on end.  They are the guys who half-ass work bullshit menial jobs just to have enough money for their next fix, which is invariably never enough, so they end up stealing from their friends and loved ones.  I've seen people I know lose custody of their children, or watched as their families go bankrupt trying to support them even while knowing they are a lost cause.  A lucky few have made it out of the dark abyss, but not enough.  It's repulsive to realize that people like Cat, who flaunt and make light of their drug addictions, will never truly experience the loss and misery of less fortunate addicts.  What makes it worse, people like Cat (the rich, famous & notorious) are the inspiration for people to take up drug habits, presenting it as this candy coated dream world, when in actuality it is anything but.

Speaking of the rich, famous and notorious, the main cause of my Frustration towards Cat Marnell is that she herself has fallen victim to a destructive lifestyle because of her obsession with, and idolization of, tragic It Girls of the past and present.  When you think of Cat, the first person that comes to mind is Edie Sedgwick, the socialite factory girl and Andy Warhol's muse.  This comparison comes about primarily because Edie was a beautiful, enigmatic girl with a whole slew of mental baggage whose tragically short life was spent drugged up and immersed in the coolest of New York scenes.  Cat is drawn to her, no doubt because of  their similarity in looks and lifestyles, but more than anything I think Cat is attracted to her tragedy.  

Cat's idols include Edie Sedgwick, Marilyn Monroe, Kate Moss, Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, all of which are tragic starlets with destructive lifestyles, a few of which died young.  I can't say for sure, as I don't know Cat personally, but I get the feeling that she, too, wants to die young and fabulous, and is leading her drug-fueled firework of a life to that end.  I think she wants the infamy...to be known as the brilliantly talented writer who fell down the rabbit hole of addiction and never found her way back out.  Better to be remembered as the girl with all the potential whose life ended too soon for it to be realized, than to grow old only to find that she never quite reached the level of success she wanted.  Her whole drug thing is acceptable to many right now, because she's still young and beautiful.  But what happens when she grows old and is still a slave to speed?  She doesn't want that, and honestly, who would?  So, rather than give up her beloved drugs and derelict lifestyle now, while she still has time to get clean and lead a healthy, semi-normal life, she instead hurls herself head first, at full speed, towards her destruction.

I'm frustrated with her because she doesn't need to die young in order to be remembered as a talented and beautiful writer, an icon.  She already is, and with time, it can only get better.  I wish she realized so many things about herself that I see, that everyone else sees, but that she is somehow blind to.  She doesn't need to be tragic in order to be famous, skinny to be beautiful, or on drugs to be creative.  She just needs to trust that she was born with everything she needs to be successful and happy in life, despite - and in spite of - her less than stellar upbringing.  

And really, I'm being a bit selfish when I ask her to forego this apparent death-wish she has, because I'm a writer's writer: I love to read and be inspired by other people's work.  And Cat's work?  Better than most.  I guess I just hope she's around to keep blowing my mind with her brilliant insanity for years to come.