I'm having a bit of an identity crisis: I'm not really a hipster, and I'm not really a yuppie, though I share characteristics of both. Call me, if you will, a yupster. This happens to be one of those dichotomies that doesn't have much of a place for its hybrids though. Being some of both seems to make me a complete outsider. Unless, that is, I'm passing as one or the other in their respective venues.
This dilemma was really brought home to me today, after I ordered a soy cafe au lait at a totally hipster coffee joint. Now, I prefer coffee shops to have a nice little counter whereat one might dress up one's own coffee to one's preference, with skim or whole milk, half and half or soy milk, plus an assortment of sugars, calorie free sweeteners (preferably including a stevia product, but good luck finding that), and other coffee accoutrements. In New York though, you never know what they will or won't have, many places not having any counter at all, others sporting only half and half, soy milk, brown sugar and simple syrup, or some other such combination. At many if not most coffee establishments, you will only get sneers of disdain if you inquire about the availability of any sugar free syrups. And so, as I walked out of the cafe with my coffee, walked half a block down, stopped on someone's stairs and added a few Splenda packets from the stash I keep in my bag, and tried stirring them with one of those longer, sturdier Splenda packets before abandoning that tactic in favor of using one of the stems of my Ray Bans shades, I realized that I need to find a coffee shop at which I belong.
And the yuppie/hipster dilemma is all the more real and important even than my coffee issues to me at the present, as I have two interviews on Monday morning, one for a salaried corporate job and one for a job at Trader Joe's, two and a half hours apart from each other, between which I am hoping to have time not only for the commuting but also to change from my classy interviewing suit to my upscale casual interviewing outfit. And I still haven't decided whether or not to slip my lip ring back in between the two interviews.
In other words, who am I? Where do I belong? And where do I go from here?
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I've been wondering this same thing, especially when it comes to outside appearances vs inner values. Because now, most of the time people use their outside appearances to communicate their inner values. Dude in a suit might be the most liberal, hippie, vegan free spirited guy ever, and hipster kid.com may be an uptight Christian zealot, but most of the world would assume the opposite of both of their truths. I often feel out of place at vegan/punk gatherings, although I am the former *mostly* and really enjoy the latter. I don't have tattoos, I can't be bothered to maintain a "look", be it rockabilly chick or Manic Pixie Girl hipster.. why do they make this so hard? It's like high school has globbed out all over our entire lives, riding the wave of sustained adolescence we all find ourselves on thanks to birth control, the expectation of college, and the ability, as women, to be able to be alone for several years before *maybe* settling down.
ReplyDeleteIf you find the answers, let me know.
I think you're right on the money that our generation is "riding the wave of sustained adolescence we all find ourselves on". I think a lot of it has to do with the dichotomy we're going through because of the economy. One the one hand, we all have incredibly prosperous existences, and on the other, our generation has been sort of disenfranchised (if you will) when it comes to any sort of career track or financial stability. What we're left with is, among other things, a need to carve out personal identity and meaning, and to seek out community (in the absence of forsaken religion, which of course influences all of these needs). But for those of us who can't just jump on a train without metacognitvely judging ourselves and finding any one track lacking, what to do? Even if we founded our own group of some sort (you know, for people who keep it real) via the wonderful and numerous sources newly available due to technological advances, it would only be a (short) matter of time before the sheep flooded our pastures and made our community meaningless.
ReplyDeleteOr something.