Defining the American Hipster
Hipsters…you could be one and not even know it…or maybe you just look like one and you don’t realize it.
Many people agree that the term “hipster” is a hard one to define. In fact the grammarian of the New York Times even protested the use of the word in articles because “he objected that it wasn’t clear enough to know what the word means”.
As I have researched the origin of the word and the culture it has created I have discovered that many people are not only confused, but often carry a mild disdain for those whom the word seems to depict. So in order to see past my own bias and stereotypes about hipsters I consulted the writing of the two men who seem to have the authority on the subject: Mark Greif, author of, What was the Hipster?, and Robert Lanham, who wrote The Hipster Handbook.
Perhaps with the help of these two writers, Urban Dictionary, and a number of news articles we will be able to see past the stereotypes of our culture and discover what truly defines the American Hipster and what may not necessarily define it.
In order to truly grasp what a hipster is we must first make our way past the common misperceptions that have developed over the years and get back to what the American Hipster really is, or rather what he was.
The term hipster is one that originated in the 1940s and was originally used to describe “hip” African-American jazz aficionados who were characterized by some or all of the following: drug use, a relaxed attitude, a sarcastic humor, self-imposed poverty, and sexual promiscuity.
According to Mark Greif, just a decade later “the hipster had evolved in a white sub-cultural figure…explicitly defined by the desire of a white avant-garde to disaffiliate itself from whiteness, and achieve the ‘cool’ knowledge and exoticized energy, lust, and violence of black Americans”.
Fast forward about forty years after the original hipster counter-culture movement and a similar “White Hipster” movement re-emerges in response to World Trade Organization protests and is very anti-capitalist and characterized by youth rebellion.
Just 4 years later it seems as though the “White Hipster” has gone green. The “Green Hipster” appears to be quite the environmentalist and has traded in his moustache for a beard, his SUV for a fixed-gear bike, and his boot-cut jeans and flannel for a deep v-neck t-shirt and a pair of skinny jeans.
Now that we know historically what the term hipster has been used to describe it would seem as though we are ready to define it.
However, simply knowing the history of a people or culture does not mean that you understand what it is that truly defines that group of people. It becomes especially difficult to define an entire culture when there are a wide variety of prejudices or generalizations that have come to determine the way we view the people of that culture. Before we can understand what a hipster is we must first understand what a hipster is not.
With that being said, not every person wearing Chuck Taylor’s, skinny jeans, and a v-neck is necessarily a hipster, just as not every person wearing a suit is a businessman.
A hipster is also not simply defined by their appreciation of indie rock, progressive politics, or their use of the slang “PoMo” to abbreviate Post-modern, though in The Hipster Handbook, Robert Lanham, does list all of those things as clues indicating that you could in fact be a hipster.
Neither is a hipster always environmentally friendly, anti-capitalist, or vegan. Although often they are all of those things.
So what is a hipster…really?
According to Robert Lanham, the hipster lifestyle is centered on three core themes: “a particular aesthetic linked to consumerism”, “the hodgepodge blending of elements from popular culture to create sensibility”, and “a cynical detachment and critique of mass culture”.
At last we can see that, as Urban Dictionary states, “Hipsterism is really a state of mind” and although it is often intertwined with distinct fashion trends, these are more an outward manifestation of a counter-cultural attitude that seeks to come out from under mainstream consumerism.
Thomas Frank, a social critic of the nineties, described this counter-cultural type as, “The Rebel Consumer”. This type appears to be quite syncretistic, taking ideals and trends from various cultures and pioneering a distinct cultural trend or ideal quite unlike them all.
This strong desire to breakaway from the mainstream develops the Hipster’s “cynical detachment and critique of mass culture” often resulting in a judgmental attitude towards those who appear to fit into the mold of popular culture. It is due to this quality of the American Hipster that many carry a mild contempt and disdain towards Hipsters, and why the word itself holds a derogatory meaning among those it refers to.
In short the American Hipster is a youth subculture that is not so much an anti-consumer movement as much as it is a “rebel consumer movement”, breaking away from the trends of mass culture and pursuing ideals and trends that are progressive and “edgy” by taking aspects of various other American sub-cultures and creating a new sub-culture entirely, often resulting in a “cynical detachment” from the mainstream culture. This new sub-culture is often characterized by certain fashion trends that tend to be androgynous and are suited to fit both males and females. Hipsters also tend to “value independent thinking, counter-cultural ideals, progressive politics, art appreciation” and environmentalism.
I believe we have succeeded in rising above what Mark Greif describes as “a key myth” behind the American Hipster, which is that it lacks a definition, which we have just given it.
