The Hipster’s Handbook is a book full of magazine-style, smart-ass lists that can tell you whether or not you’re cool or, excuse me, “deck,” as one would say it if they were hip.
Words like “hipster” used in a non-sarcastic setting make me cringe. “How-to” books have the same effect, unless they are about house building or furniture varnish. I often wish the media would stop defining my generation for me, stop telling me about my personality and leave me alone about my out-of-date hair.
“I am definitely not a hipster,” I thought to myself, cracking the book open.
According to The Hipster’s Handbook, one of the first rules of being a hipster is that if you really were one, you would never ever admit it. You would probably also hate the book. Cheap trick.
According to the little blue guide, you are a hipster if you adhere to a certain set of qualities like number two: “you frequently use the term ‘postmodern’ (or its commonly used variation “PoMo”) as an adjective, noun and verb.” I’m blushing.
The one that really got to me, though, and brought to mind many friends was number four: “you have refined taste and consider yourself exceptionally cultured, but have one pop vice (ElimiDATE, Quiet Riot and Entertainment Weekly are popular ones) that helps define you as well-rounded.”
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Don’t even front y’all, this book is talking about us — kind of.
I’m impressed that The Hipster’s Handbook found some concrete specifics to nail down as elements of hipsterism, but it still fails on many accounts. It doesn’t discuss class, culture, ethnicity, region or ability at all.
Instead, it speaks to us like we’re all white — Asians are also “in” right now, according to the book — and represents homosexuality and gender bending as trends. They’ve created hipsters like the “bipster” to account for the blue-collar hipster and the WASH, a waitstaff and service hipster, but these are only two among 12.
Among the 36 images of hipsters found on the inside cover, I can identify two possible Asians and one guy who seems like he may have gotten a tan or may be Hispanic.
That’s the thing — should this book have even tried to engage in commentary on class when deciding what’s acceptable? It’s dangerous territory and I believe that’s beyond the scope of this breed of tongue-in-cheek classifications.
Let’s face it, what we’re going to get out of these kinds of books is not going to be in-depth insights or well thought-out and researched material. Books like The Hipster’s Handbook are designed for novelty purposes only and it’s too bad they don’t have warning labels to that effect.
Let’s make a stand and say we’re sick of having members of the media sell our images back to us, tied up neat-like so we don’t get confused and start thinking for ourselves. Who’s with me?
Wait, I am the media.
I for one am proud not to see any pictures of me staring out from the pages of The Hipster’s Handbook. Though sometimes the snide comments are a little too close for comfort, I still don’t think anyone at Random House could have pegged me that easily. The definitions are simply not three-dimensional.
