Hipster, so hipster as to be anti-hipster

What is the hipster phenomenon?

To understand this, we need to go back to the 40s, the period in which this term was born. In those years in the United States, the fashion of imitating the lifestyle of African-American jazz musicians and beboppers was born among many white boys. Hipsters were born. In 1977 Frank Tirro wrote about them: “For the hipster, Charlie Parker was the role model. The hipster is an underground man, he is during the Second World War what Dadaism was for the first time. He is amoral, anarchic, kind and civilized to the point of being decadent. "

The hipster today

Recognizing a hipster on the street is certainly not difficult. Skinny jeans with a “high water” turn-up, a checkered shirt like a “grandfather in the fields” and a long beard like a “prophet on the run” are the features that stand out. Hipster is also a concentrate of contradictions. Communicates with latest generation devices. But it can be found at the bar while listening the music from a vinyl with a portable turntable from the 70s. It feeds on organic products at zero km. But it uses smartphones built by children exploited on the other side of the world, like all of us.

Some hipsters are so hipsters that they take offense at being called hipsters

I would not define hipsters as Dadaists, but simply as people who seek their own identity in a world that tends to flatten individuals. This also happened for the punk and dark movements in the 80s. When social tensions become ideas shared by a group, it is inevitable that a sort of uniform is created. So the punks had ripped jeans, the goths wore black and now the hipsters wear their grandfather's lapels and clothes. The problem is that society has learned not to fight against these groups head-on, but in a more subtle way. The act of rebellion becomes fashion and the challenge to the values ​​of society loses its raison d'être. Maybe that's why some hipsters don't want to be called hipsters.