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Hipsters in the Context of Subcultural Theory
Abstract:
Mainstream society has become aware of the symbols and values of hipsterism, which
consist of an amalgam of vintage and cutting-edge elements, stripped of their original meanings
and instead used to produce uniqueness distinct from dominant culture. In addition to exploring
the symbols and styles of hipsters, this paper will explore arguments as to whether or not
hipsterism is indeed a subculture.
Introduction to Hipsterism:
How did the hipsters burn their tongues? They drank coffee before it was cool.
As this joke suggests, journalists, television writers, and marketers love to make fun of
hipster culture. Mainstream society has become aware of the symbols and values of hipsterism
and simultaneously commercializes and denounces it. Hipster style, activities, consumer
behavior, and lifestyle beliefs distinguish its subcultural participants from the dominant culture.
The distinctive hipster style consists of a concurrently vintage and cutting edge fashion
sense that recycles trends and items of apparel from various decades and ethnic groups and strips
them of their old meanings. Skinny jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, ironic thrift store t-shirts,
messenger bags, flannel, buffalo plaid, trucker hats, V-necks, neon, wayfarers, old-school vans,
and Chuck Taylor All-Stars are redefined by the modern hipster. Although "they don't want to be
defined by any category," (Leonard) hipsters blend distinct fads in a discernible subcultural
pattern. Through "artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras," (Haddow) they
set themselves apart from the largely trend-following mainstream population. The hipsters'
adoption of the keffiyeh as a fashion accessory, rather than as an expression of Palestinian
solidarity, illustrates how hipsters strip meaningful cultural objects of significance, and instead
blending them into a style. "Aesthetics are assimilated—cannibalized—into a repertoire of
meaninglessness" (Lorentzen) that the subculture can draw from in piecing together its unique
style. The aesthetic created is unpredictable, as hipsters draw inspiration from thrift stores, their
grandparents' attics, past fads, world cultures, and trends of extinct subcultures. The wide variety
of influences generates several different types of hipster style: "the natural hipsters, the punk
hipsters, and the thrift store hipsters" (“How To Be a Modern Day Hipster”). Natural hipsters
typically wear light colors, denim, and uncolored hairstyles. They utilize stylistic traits from the
subculture, such as t-shirts sporting ironic sayings and thick-rimmed glasses, but in an earthy,
untainted manner. Punk hipsters are those who have bleached or dyed hair, metal accessories,
tights under cut-off shorts, and vintage band tees. Unlike punks, however, punk hipsters wear
this style with a hint of irony. The band shirt may be from a band like Simon & Garfunkel, or a
trucker hat may be added to maintain the hipster blending of fashion styles. Thrift-store hipsters
add to the mix a combination of 80s and 90s styles, thick sweaters, cardigans, and floral prints.
Typical hipster activities are an amalgam of the new and the old. They recycle vintage
hobbies while also participating in the newest technologies and searching for up-and-coming
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music. Hipsters find refuge in not only a range of pre-modern hobbies, like poetry, craft foods,
knitting, and painting, but also in tumblr and blogging. Vintage electronics, such as record
players, 8-tracks, and Walkmans, fixed-gear bicycles, and moleskin journals all invoke memories
of an earlier time. Hipsters use these retro items in conjunction with their modern technologies.
For example, a hipster might write a paper on his typewriter or listen to a song that is on his iPod
on his record player instead. Typically music is very important to hipsters. They generally listen
to a wide variety of genres, especially those that are the most obscure. Indie bands and concerts
are especially popular, but hipsters are primarily interested in uncovering obscure bands. In
addition to consuming obscure music, a hipster is an individual that consumes "in all the right
ways, whether it be eating the right food [or] wearing the right clothes" (Lee). Hipsters can also
be defined by their consumer behavior. Parliament cigarettes and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer have
become symbols of hipsterism. Smoking and drinking are also activities that facilitate the
formation of a community, as people gather together and share ideas and interests over a smoke
or can. Just like fashion style though, hipsters took these former "symbols and icons of working
or revolutionary classes" (Haddow) and changed or took away their meaning.
In stripping items of their old meaning, hipsters exhibit both an apathy towards cultural
norms and a need for uniqueness. Hipsters are knowingly inauthentic for the sake of being
different. They are 'faux apathetic' in that they appear uncaring towards mainstream culture, but
really they are passionately eco-friendly, typically liberal, and anti-consumerist. One hipster said
"I shop at the places I shop...because I don't want to contribute to new things being made"
(Leonard). Hipster style is often created from searching through thrift stores or accumulating
hand-me-downs from family members, which naturally creates a blending of style elements.
Some hipster culture lends itself easily towards being green, such as shopping at thrift stores,
urban gardening, and bicycling. Many hipsters are also vegetarians, or at least concern
themselves with eating locally or organically. Through avoiding current trends and chain-store
shopping, hipsters are "immersing themselves in the aesthetic of the working class" (Haddow)
while of course blending this aesthetic and making it uniquely their own.
A central feature of hipsterism is apriorism, or always remaining ahead of the times and
knowing what the next 'cool' thing will be. Apriorism "is this instinctive knowledge where you
evaluate something before it exists" (Lee) and it is a major form of subcultural capital for
hipsters, who constantly strive to be unique and different. Trying to set themselves apart from the
mainstream requires a skillful eye for both new items to adopt and old trends to adapt to a
modern lifestyle. Once mainstream culture discovers a style or trend, hipsters no longer embrace
it; they "cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose
relevance" (Haddow). A primary goal of hipsters is to be different. The need for uniqueness in
combination with an anti-consumerist attitude result in the resistance of massification. Hipsters
resent trends and constantly attempt to distance themselves from mainstream culture by
discovering new and creative ways to combine elements from the past and the present.
Demography and History of Hipsterism:
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Demographically, hipsters are extremely diverse. The subculture is "externally
ambiguous, with no defining agenda or socioeconomic class" (Mitaru). Because there is no
political program or significant class-based rebellion, anyone can become a member. The
emphasis on being unique constructs a community of tolerance, with equal opportunity for
people of various backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexual orientations to participate. Generally
though, hipsters are young, college-age through early 30s, white, and highly educated.
The subculture arose in 1999, "enjoyed a robust first phase until 2003, and then seemed
about to dissipate...only to undergo a reorganization and creeping spread from 2004" (Grief). In
2003, the media began to assimilate some hipster culture into mainstream culture, evidenced by
such publications as "The Hipster Handbook" and "A Field Guide to the Urban Hipster".
However, instead of being incorporated back into dominant culture, the subculture evolved. The
United States invaded Iraq in 2003, which dramatically shifted the country's mood towards
nationalistic aggression. Therefore, "the wife-beater-wearer's machismo no longer felt
subversive" (Grief). The shift in mood combined with the mainstream discovery of hipster style
to create a newer model of hipsterism. This "hipsterism was developed from a sense
that...decisions [were] made about their lives by conspiracies of power" and therefore the
subcultural reaction was to "insist, purely symbolically, on forms of knowledge that they
possessed before anyone else" (Grief). The media attention meant that anything that hipsters
found and made cool would soon become a cultural trend. Hipsters were able to harness the
power of this attention by making apriorism a central activity and ideal of the subculture.
Hipsters in the Context of Subcultural Theory:
According to Leonard, "you can classify someone as a hipster by the way they dress, the
people they hang out with, or the attitude they take toward life.” Therefore, both BCCS and
postmodern subculture theories can categorize hipsters as a distinct subculture, with its own
style, rituals, values, and sense of membership. The unique style and fashion of hipsters sets it
apart from mainstream culture. They assimilate a broad variety of vintage, retro, and ethnic
elements into a distinctive fashion. Futhermore, hipsters attribute different meanings to these
elements. For example, in the keffiyeh, mainstream media sees a symbol of Palestinian solidary
while hipsters see a fashion accessory. It is not that they are unaware of its alternative meaning,
but rather they choose to attribute their own meaning onto the object. Their interest in indie
music and other musical genres and bands undiscovered by the mainstream also set them apart
from dominant culture. In the creation of this style, they "produce an organised group-identity in
the form and shape of a coherent and distinctive way of 'being in the world'" (Jansson).
Hipsters have values and goals that are also distinctive. Influenced by anti-consumerism
and anti-massification, hipsters value individuality and going against mainstream ideals. The
"new criteria of status which define as meritorious the characteristics they do possess" include
apriorism and engaging in alternative fashion choices and hobbies. In BCCS theory, making
"nonconformity with the expectations of the outsiders a positive criterion of status" (Jannson).
Hipsters not only fulfill this criterion, but they also embody it to the extent that nonconformity
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with mainstream is the dominant focus of the subculture. Hipsters set themselves apart from
mainstream in such a way that they can clearly distinguish between those who belong in the ingroup and posers. The commercialization of hipster culture has created large numbers of
hangers-on in the hipster trend. Original subculture members can tell authentic hipsters from
these outsiders through subcultural capital, which is "capital that insiders use to both distinguish
themselves from outsiders and internally differentiate themselves from others in the scene"
(Jannson). This capital, consistent with the emphasis on apriorism, is not only comprised of the
general style and activities of hipsters but also of knowing the next yet-undiscovered bands and
fashions before they become cool. For Hebdige, a subculture's power is derived from "their
capacity to symbolize Otherness" (Jannson), and hipsters certainly do, as a central focus of the
subculture is remaining distinct from the mainstream.
Many journalists and sociologists argue that hipsterism is not a distinct subculture. In
fact, even hipsters are reluctant to identify as such. While it could be that hipsters' emphasis on
uniqueness forces them to deny belonging to any groups, the denial of the existence of the
subculture by its potential members fuels the argument against the subculturalism of hipsterdom.
Both the BCCS and Marxist theories assume that subcultures are class-based.
Participation in subcultures is seen as the result of the struggle against hegemony, and
subcultures represent the solutions that the working class creates to symbolically resist the
dominant classes. As noted earlier, hipsters encompass all social class. However, they do rebel
against dominant culture in their expressions of individual uniqueness and focus on apriorism.
So, while hipsterism does not represent a class conflict as early theorists would require, it is the
symbolic representation of a struggle against broader mass culture.
The commercialization of hipster culture could be seen as a sign that hipsters are not a
subculture, but instead are a consumer group or fashion trend, "using their capital to purchase
empty rebellion" (Haddow). Stores like American Apparel, Urban Outfitters, and Hot Topic sell
the neon V-necks, thick glasses, and ironic slogan t-shirts that represent hipster style. For the
CCCS, once a style is commoditized, a subculture is no longer authentic. However, the
postmodern view allows for subcultures to be "complicit in the (niche) marketing of their own
identities" (Jannson). The commodification of hipster style actually means that hipsters are a
subculture. As their style choices continue to evolve through resistance to mainstream trends,
marketers follow their choices and market them back to both the subculture and to members of
the dominant culture.
Mainstream media reports and spreads these new hipster trends. Because hipsters embody
the struggle against massification and commodification, the fact that they are so represented in
media and stores globally indicates that the subculture is failing. Hipsterism has become
mainstream, so for hipsters that should mean the death of the subculture. Once something
becomes mainstream, it also becomes passé. Hipsterism has become normalized, and hipsters no
longer appear unique. Thornton believes, however, that subcultures are in fact created through
such representations in the media, rather than destroyed by them (Jannson). Subcultures are
defined by marginalization from dominant culture, and although marketers have adapted hipster
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styles, the media still represents hipsters as an inferior and distinct group. They appear in
opposition to dominant cultural norms and values, and in this way remain subcultural.
Through its symbolic styles, activities, and values, hipsterism represents a struggle
against massification and consumerism. These elements distinguish hipsters from dominant
culture and although its acceptance of all social classes, its commercialization, and its
representation in mainstream media may seem to classify them as a part of dominant culture, the
distinct underlying style and value system clearly set it apart as an oppositional subculture.
Word count: 2,199
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