Hipster — a word vague enough to be discouraged from use in the New York Times by the paper's standards editor but sufficiently offensive to be insulting when hurled at disheveled, bespectacled English majors who don flannel shirts and tightly clinging jeans.
So is the term merely a derogatory stereotype unfairly aimed at the likes of Pitchfork.com readers, a legitimate definition of a major social group or an outdated term no longer applicable to a single subsection? As the title of a new book on the sociology of hipsters by the editors of noted literary journal n+1 asks, "What Was the Hipster?"(See review, page 5.)
"I think that hipsters, if we're talking about them as we most commonly refer to them today — skinny jeans, certain styles of hair — represent clusters of taste," Assistant Professor of Sociology Ryan Centner said. "Most live in cities, are of a certain age, usually from college to maybe their early 30s, but those clusters of taste don't signify a monolithic group that acts as one."
According to Centner, the term's definition is ephemeral and can only be pinned to a single faction for a limited period of time before being attached to another.
"For example, I wrote a paper in the early 2000s on the habitus of the hipster, but by the time I got it published, I had to change the title because that group wasn't considered hip anymore," he said. "It was basically a dot−com worker at the time — someone young, new, urban, hip, relatively moneyed — but that aesthetic wouldn't fit what's considered a hipster now."
Hipsters are considered a legitimate group to be researched and studied — to a limited degree, Centner said.
"Yes, they capture the attention of sociologists, but hipness is always reinvented," he said. "The term ‘hip' itself might go in and out of fashion, and even as that term has remained in common parlance, the definition changes."
As for how hipsters can currently be defined and whether they exist at Tufts, the some students who fit, to varying degrees, within the predetermined hipster stereotype hold varying opinions.
Sophomore Izzy Star, who does not identify as a hipster but is regarded as a hipster by her peers, cited the reluctance of many hipsters to self−identify as such as one reason for the transience and murkiness of the term's meaning.
"I think I'm like most people in that I couldn't come up with one definition of a hipster," Star said. "[But] the one thing to universally define the hipster is to be hated, so no one really identifies as a hipster, which is why they are not long for this world."
"There's been so much trouble coming up with a definition," she added, "and for other subgroups there's been a doctrine — you know, what it is to be goth and what you do to be goth."
Natalie Selzer, a junior who also does not identify as a hipster but suspects that others may consider her one, agreed that hipsters often resist being categorized as such.
"No one wants to call themselves a hipster because we think of hipsters as a−−−−−−s," she said. "And no one really wants to call people they know well a hipster, because it's a negative term. … It denotes a sort of pretension and aloofness. But then we use it to describe almost any style or activity choice that's kind of associated with it."
Another reason why people might not willingly identify as hipsters, Star said, is because self−identification is somewhat counter to the hipster attitude.
"Maybe part of being a hipster is denying you're a hipster, because that's the common thread," Star said.
Selzer, who co−manages Midnight at Tufts, a booking group that enlists relatively obscure bands to perform on campus, said that the indie−rock fans who frequent the group's concerts can't automatically be categorized as hipsters based on their appearance.
"Sure, the majority of the people that have attended recent shows have been what you might describe as hipsters, if you mean that there's a lot of flannel and skinny jeans going on," she said. "But I think … that's just because going to shows and listening to new live music is sort of a staple of that scene, so those people are inclined to go without being prompted to."
Matt Roe, a sophomore, concurred that outward appearance and musical taste do not automatically signify hipsterdom.
"A lot of people just point out someone with tight pants and say ‘that's a hipster' or because they listen to indie music, ‘that's a hipster,'" he said. "But that doesn't make them a hipster. Being a hipster entails religiously staying up with current trends and consciously rejecting what's accepted as cool."
Roe is a DJ and on the executive board of WMFO Tufts Freeform Radio, but Roe said that the perception of college radio stations as hipster territories is ill informed.
"I think that WMFO is just a group of nerds. We're not at all hipsters," Roe said. "Most of us are just into comics, computers and music. People that think the WMFO staff is full of hipsters obviously don't know what hipsters are and haven't been surrounded by them before."
Roe said that being a hipster boils down to intention rather than aesthetics.
"I wear what I wear because my mother buys it for me, not because I think it makes me cool," Roe said, "and I listen to the obscure music I listen to because I like it, not because I want to impress other people."
According to Star, formal characterizations of hipsters would exclude Tufts students.
"n+1 described it as a culture that consumes rather than creates, which doesn't describe Tufts students, because they are interested in creating more than consuming, I hope," Star said. "Things related to being a college student happen to make up what it means to be hipster because some of what it means to be either overlaps, like talking about books."
Centner had a different theory about why hipster culture tends infiltrate college campuses.
"I think it's money," he said. "Whatever hipster is at a given time becomes mainstream and becomes branded and then commercialized," he said. "So anything that's considered hipster right now is very expensive, and in order to afford that, you have to have money … and a lot of students who go to liberal arts colleges on the east coast have that.
"And it appeals to those students," he continued, "because there's something that's considered creative, edgy, lefty, that's all kind of wrapped up in the idea of hipster."
