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.