The American Hipster Sub-Culture - Essay Sample

Introduction

The American hipster is made of skinny jeans, t-shirts with vintage logos, and chunky glasses making it a recognized figure in America. In the metropolitan areas, hipsters characterize themselves via dismissal of the mainstream. As a subculture, hipsters despise a large number of the qualities and convictions of America and consider vintage dressing to fashion just as the unconventional way of life to one of influence and riches. To many hipsters, numerous fashionable people, societies may show up another pattern among adolescents, young people. However, the historical backdrop of the gathering portrays back to the many old years of the 1900s.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Origin of American Hipster

The American hipster culture started in the early 1940s during the rise of jazz music in the United States of America. Back then, the musicians we called hepcats. The jazz musicians had a smooth and relaxed attitude that went against upright the mainstream life. Musicians that were hep or hip dwelled by the code of jazz, while musicians that were square stayed according to society's regulations. From jazz music, the ideology of hipster was born.

The Spread of Hipster Lifestyle

The hipster movement began to spread widely with the young youths being drawn more to music and fashion. Also, it took on attitudes as well as languages obtained from the culture of the jazz. Different from mother tongue of the time, hipster slang was purposely debatable. For example, when a hipster person said, "it is cool, man," he/she meant that not all is well, but it was always the way it was. By 1950s, the jazz culture started to wind down, and many features of the hepcat culture became mainstream. Thus, a new subculture had to originate: The beat generation as named by Jack Kerouac who was an anti-materialistic and anti-conformist individual. The hipster lifestyle spread among the college learners, holding copies of Kerouac's on the road, clothed in black-rimmed glasses, berets, and black turtlenecks. Women grew their hair long and put on black leotards.

The Hippies

As the beat generation began to fade, a new movement started. The new campaign focused on tearing apart the social boundaries, though it advocated freedom of expressed, love, and philosophy. The new movement obtained its name from the previous generation. As time passed by, the little hipsters of the 1970s changed into hippies.

Today's Hipsters

Today's generation of the hipster group came from the hippie movement in the same way the hippies came from the beats, and the beats came from hepcats. Despite the hipsters not having many similarities with the hipsters of the 1940s, the imitating of rebelliousness is still evident. There was an investigation carried out by sociologist known as Mark Greif in 2010 about the hipster subculture of America. Grief found out that lots of what integrated the gathering individuals did not depend on melodic taste, style, or even a specific purpose of a dispute with the standard (Greif, M., et al., 2010).

Conclusion

The vast majority of the youngsters are frequently attracted to restrict standard traditions, regardless of whether similarly, those others do. Ironically cool to the point of noncaring, just as educated people, fashionable people have kept on exemplifying a subculture, while simultaneously affecting the mainstream culture.

Work Cited

Greif, M., Ross, K., & Tortorici, D. (Eds.). (2010). What was the hipster?: A sociological investigation. New York: N+ 1 Foundation.