Hipsters In Popular Culture

In St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Tina Gianoulis wrote “hipsters have espoused tolerance and openness, sometimes engaging in bisexual relationships and wearing gender-bending styles” (675). For decades hipsters lived on the edge of society. They see themselves as the superior group in the category of being “cool”. They don't live out their lives to societies standards, nor do they follow the ideals and trends, but make their own. There is no concrete version of the hipster, just mostly stereotypes that may or may not be true. This group of people changed urban fashion and supported anything that was considered “cool” at that particular time. Once it was deemed too mainstream, they would move on. Mark Grief gives a sense of style
In Mark Grief's article “What Was the Hipster?” in New York Magazine asserts that “Through both phases of the contemporary hipster, and no matter where he identifies himself on the knowingness spectrum, there exists a common element essential to his identity, and that is relationship to consumption” (7). Hipsters are known for clinging to anything considered new and cool. Every hipster is different, but they all agree that anything mainstream is not cool anymore. Mark quotes the social critic Thomas Frank, saying he called this type of hipster the ”the rebel consumer” and later on defined it as, “the person who, adopting the rhetoric but not the politics of the counterculture, convinces himself that buying the right mass products individualizes him as transgressive. Purchasing the products of authority is thus reimagined as a defiance of authority” (7). Hipsters would very often violated the norms of what was socially acceptable in society. They would often engage in sex, drugs, and violence. According to James Panero in the article “Hail to the Hipsters,” hipsters are “classical capitalists” that are opposed to both big business and big government. They want to make their own rules because it's not considered “cool” to follow what somebody else