Hipsters Are Not Cute

They are wrapped in the clothes of another era, somewhere in the mid to late 1980's, but it’s not the era that has me staring creepily from across the street, it goes beyond that. These colors and the fits of the clothes are deservedly forgotten, buried for years in the clearance racks of countless Goodwills. The clothes are worn, ill fitting, and awe-strikingly ugly.

I look at the women and wonder, are they mentally unstable, foreign perhaps? With all three dressed so similar, the look must be intentional. Everything about the clothes and the way they are draped lifelessly over the bodies of these women is off putting. The high waist-ed shorts, loose fitting t-shirts, the stubby cowboy boots, beaten and folded from years in an unhappy bin. One of the women is wearing glasses, with huge brown frames that appear to have no lenses in them.

In some ways their style is refreshing, a look that says "I'm not trying and I don't give a shit." What makes me pause is that they obviously do care. The intent is clearly to project the look of mothballs, thrift store ghosts, late 80's junkie librarians- they are three young women out on the town dressed in garbage. I process what I have seen and I pack it away, in a shelf reserved for the odd and inane.

Years pass, possibly two, maybe three, and the look I witnessed that fateful night in the Mission has spread through urban landscapes like a zombie apocalypse. Every train I take, every bar I enter, I find young women dressed in ugly, ill fitting garbage. The look has spread to all the usual crevices of our culture as the casts of sitcoms and overly praised HBO shows about young people in New York City wander the screen in loose blouses with folded shorts and faded tights.

The ugliness of it all should be interesting but it's not, it just sort of wears on you and makes you dread what will be next. Must we be so post modern? Must we recycle over and over again until we become a parody of a parody? Just because something is from the past does not mean it is good. *

I sit on my uncomfortable couch near the closet filled with my own collection of vintage shirts and jackets and realize I have no right to protest, no leg to stand on. I am getting older and the bitterness and lack of understanding of what is 'hip' is slowly settling in, without the wisdom that would allow me to transcend it.

And the hipsters dress in garbage outside on the street.

07-13-13

* The Black Plague, Spanish Inquisition, etc.