Hipster or not (or why you shouldn’t care)
I’m giving fair warning. This post will ramble, the result of series of encounters with an theme that flowing around inside my head for some time, all centered around the term “hipster.”
The other day, at work, while conversing with a friend regarding music, he made the comment that he thought that I might be a hipster based on the music I was listening to and the fact that I had chosen to wear a bow tie that day. We’ve only known each other for only a short time, and, really, only in a professional manner.
I mean how much can you really know anyone if you’ve only seen them in work clothes. See a person when they are not restricted in what they wear or how they comb their hair, you’ll know who you’re dealing with. See a person in the shoes they wear when they are not required to be anything, and you know the person.
He had only seen me in the suits that I wear to court and the khaki’s and blazers I wore on less formal days, not in the jeans and t-shirt and Converses I liked to wear when I didn’t need to be anything else. So, his assessment of me may have been faulty from the start. It was not a whole picture, something which he recognized when I had jokingly ribbed him about.
But it hadn’t been the first time I had been called a hipster. Another friend, closer, because I had known him for years, because he had seen me at all my angles. It was when I had walked into his comic book store wearing a beanie on my head, one that I had knitted myself. I had worn it because I had made it and liked its texture and color and how it fit on my head.
My friend, he doesn’t hold back, and I can appreciate that from him, his blunt honesty. But he used the term, “hipster,” derisively, in a ugly way, like one might have treated roaches or other vermin.
I remember first chewing on the term “hipster” when I attended college. I was writing a poem, a free-form, dada-ist piece. I introduced the word as a keystone sound around which to build the poem, not really sure what the word meant or why I should have really used. At that time, there was not the image of the hipster with a set of thick rim glasses or moustache or bowtie. Just a word.
I asked my friend from work what exactly a hipster was. I find myself doing this when someone tries to pigeon hole me into some cultural cubby. It is effective means of showing those so readily to throw a stereotype on me how ignorant they really are. A co-worker of mixed Hispanic and Anglo heritage once tried to claim some behavior was characteristic of “white” people. I twisted it on her, asked her, “And how do white people act?” She couldn’t answer me.
To my office friend, I asked, “What’s the definition of hipster?” He looked it up on the internet, and I did, too. Apparently, a hipster is someone who obsessed with trends especially those that are edgy or counter-cultural. Connoted in the term is the idea that a hipster follows those trends not as a genuine interest, attraction for the trend but in pursuit of being trendy and edgy.
Okay, so then, I extrapolated that if my friend at work felt that I met the requirements of hipster through my music, it might have thought that I liked that music not out of enjoyment for the music but because the music held some merit and meaning in liking it.
I have always been into music considered to be a bit odd or edgy. It started in middle school when I first heard the haunting Sugarcubes song, birthday. My brother and his friends who hadn’t quite gained the same appreciation I had likened Bjork’s voice to a beached whale. From that point on, I dwelt in that pool of music, and, after all these years, this type of music seems normal to me.
So, to say that I like the music because I like the idea of liking the music no longer applies, if it ever did. By definition, I couldn’t be a hipster.
Everything I do, I do because I like the look, the sound, the feel of it, as it should be with all.
I wanted to start this with the question of why the term “hipster” should be derogatory. But perhaps, its derogatory connotation is merited. Only, fair being fair, we should all be clear on what the term hipster means, particularly when we use it to describe others.
My office friend recognized that perhaps hipster wasn’t the proper term for me, even if in a joking way, but that there was a genuineness in my acts and likes. I think he felt a little bad for placing me in that pit.
But then, all of this talk of hipsters and what people are and what music they like and how they dress, it all really means absolutely nothing, doesn’t gain you any merit. It is an base conversation to be had between people who are uncomfortable with themselves.
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