Sunday, November 04, 2007

There are no "hipster statesmen."

Drezner might be 100% right about the phenomenon he describes, but the word "hipster" here is misused. A hipster lives in the world of irony, and as such hates sincerity, not global warming. Hipsters look with scorn upon student activists, politicians, and, of course, those bastard trust-fund-having, Williamsburg-colonizing hipsters. Al Gore's sanctimonious An Inconvenient Truth is quite possibly the least hipster cinematic production of all time. So much so that if pressed to define "hipster," I would point to that movie and say, "Something not like that."

That said--and this is the real point of this post--if "hipster" is being used in "Newsweek," maybe the phenomenon is finally over and the women of New York will at last trade the leggings in for the long-abandoned pants.

7 comments:

Miss Self-Important said...

Noooo. I love leggings. Long live hipsters!

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Under skirts/dresses/long shirts or as pants? The former is great, the latter is gym wear at best.

Miss Self-Important said...

The former, as a warmer and more comfortable substitute for itchy, runny, constantly sliding nylons. Hopefully a permanent replacement.

Cool Cal said...

If we want to define "hipster" by one who is hyper-aware of irony, then I agree that the theory of Global Warming would be abhorrent, considering most of those who claim its faith are hyper-idealistic. When you combine a razor sharp sense of irony about man's real place in the world combined with a desire to relentlessly improve and reinvent one's aesthetic according to self-centered desire, you have a keen and modern sensibility that simply does not have room for hysterical notions of atavistic pastoral.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Miss S-I: Agreed.

Peter: Agreed.

Anonymous said...

Hipsters - Hmm, Phoebe is sort of hip name. But you have to credit your parents for that choice and parents, by definition, are never hip.

Anonymous said...

Longing for the atavistic pastoral can be hip - It all depends on how you got the longing and why. The context is key - Buddhism is not hip, but if someone was raised as a Buddhist in SE Asia and then fell away from it, that would be different.