I’m taking a class this semester on 19th century American literature and our first paper was due today(will yesterday technically). We were given free reign to pick a topic, as long as it related to the class and something we had read so far. We’ve read a lot of Poe short stories and an excerpt from Walden. Since I kinda hate Thoreau, and kinda love Poe, I thought I was going to write about Poe. But I really couldn’t think of anything I wanted to write about outside of the typical symbolism/meaning in Poe papers. Surprisingly I was inspired by a comment I made in class when we were discussing Thoreau that he was the “original hipster.” So I took a risk and wrote something a little different than what I would usually write for a lit class paper. But I really had fun writing this and am happy with how it came it out. Enjoy!
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”: A Guide to Modern Hipster Conformity
Every generation produces their own underground youth culture. In the sixties there were the political and psychedelic hippies, and the seventies had the do-it-yourself punk rockers. Today, we call the young people belonging to our anti-establishment, trendy subculture the hipsters. Although there is no clear definition of what a “hipster” is, we can all easily imagine and identify the hipster style and culture. However, the hipsters are not as original as they may think. Whether hipsters are aware of it or not, many of their key ideals come from transcendentalist philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, dissatisfied with life inside of societal bounds as a young man, isolated himself in the woods for a little more than two years, recording his thoughts on his lifestyle in his book Walden. The second chapter of the book, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” outlines his philosophies on how people should live their lives and his core values and beliefs. Just as the hipsters believe today, Thoreau preaches freedom from society and conformity. However, the uniqueness he calls for is specific, creating a new and distinct kind of conformity: a trendy subculture of twenty-something’s. Therefore, Thoreau’s work produces a paradoxical societal group full of the common principles he condemned.
One of Thoreau’s major problems with mainstream society was the stress put on daily physical labor. He criticizes those who work every day like “ants,” claiming that they waste their lives instead of truly living them (Thoreau 61). The farmers, builders, miners, and other laborers work until their work becomes and controls them; “we do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us” (Thoreau 62). Thoreau believes that labor is so controlling, that “only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion” (Thoreau 61). Instead of using his hands for labor, he uses his mind. While living at Walden, he worked only six weeks out of the year to support himself, using the rest of his time for intellectual and artistic endeavors. He claims that all people should live this way, abandoning physical labor and concentrating on art, which is what he believes to be “the fairest and most memorable actions of men” (Thoreau 60). With poetry and art as the primary goal, people can live free and “deliberately,” shedding the heavy and exhausting weights of constant labor.
The modern day hipsters embrace and live Thoreau’s theory on labor and art. The hipster society is one made up of fresh college graduates refusing to enter the work force. These are the educated couch potatoes living in their parents’ basements as well as the big city struggling and starving artists. Like Thoreau suggests, the hipsters work only enough to support themselves, working part time minimum wage jobs in order to focus their time and energy on their true passions; they are the “aspiring artists who work day jobs in bars and coffee shops” (Greif 34). Every major city in America is overflowing with these hipster artists, creating an entire underground world of obscure music, poetry, paintings, sculptures, photography, and other art. Perhaps the closest to Thoreau of these trendy urban creators are the bloggers. Like Thoreau, instead of living in the so-called “real world,” they are isolated writers, publishing their thoughts, philosophies, and everyday occurrences for the world, including the mainstream society, to read. According to Thoreau, the hipsters are living life freely to its fullest extent.
However, are these young artists freer than those who sit in offices and cubicles all day? At first glance, the life of an artist seems to be freer than that of someone stuck inside the walls of an office all day. However, hipsters are still slaves to society and their work; it is just a different kind of society and a different kind of labor. The work of an artist is just as controlling and consuming as any other work, including physical labor. The hipster culture demands art, just as mainstream culture demands work. Their art is their work and without it, they no longer fit in and belong to the elite subculture of “hipsterism.” Therefore, their art becomes their life, just as the work of a laborer is his life. The art creates the hipster as the railroad rides the worker. In this way, Thoreau’s philosophy of art and labor, instead of freeing people, has only created another society of work dominated people.
Not only is Thoreau against labor, but he is also against what labor leads to: consumerism. Throughout “Where I lived, and What I Lived For,” Thoreau preaches simplicity and believes that “life is frittered away by detail” (Thoreau 61). He has no need for material things and “petty pleasures” (64). Society, according to Thoreau, is only an “unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture” and “ruined by luxury” (62). People worry too much about what they own, filling up their lives with unnecessary items instead of focusing on what is truly important. At the top of his list of unnecessary consumer commodities is fashion. He urges us to push “downward through the mud and slush of opinion” and “appearance” in order to reach truth and reality (66). Fashion is only another device society uses to control people; once we learn to look past it and to forget about it, can we see the truth of what is real in life. However, the truth Thoreau wants the people of society to find is his truth alone in order to “create his own unified vision” (Schueller 45).
The vision of truth outside of materialism and fashion Thoreau imagined can be seen in the hipster culture. The hipster society “defines itself by its rejection of consumerism” (Greif 34). They traditionally wear clothes that are seen by the mainstream society as unfashionable in order to establish themselves as separate individuals unconcerned about frivolous things such as fashion. The most well-known hipster attire includes large rimmed glasses, red and black plaid flannel, and scarves worn in various ways. (Greif 35). However, their attempts to wear what is “uncool” make them “cool” and trendy within their hipster subculture and are seen as such by the rest of society as well. They constantly change their style, yet it stays consistent amongst themselves, giving off an “air of knowing about exclusive things before anyone else” (Greif 34). Hipsters try so hard to distance themselves from common style that the subculture reaches the point of echoing the materialism and consumerism it tries to escape. The “hipster style” has become so commercialized that “Hot Topic sells thick-framed lensless eyeglasses to tweens and Nine West sells a ‘Hipster’ sandal” (Greif 34). Mary-Kate Olsen, an internationally known celebrity and now fashion designer, was seen sporting a hipster scarf as a bandanna (Greif 36).
The hipster subculture is not really about anti-consumerism but is more about “rebel consumerism”. The hipster as the rebel consumer “convinces himself that buying the right mass products individualizes him as transgressive” (Greif 36). Every hipster is continually trying to be new, fresh, and unique. They are in constant competition with each other to be more “original” just as society is in competition to always have the latest fashions. Hipsters are not outside of fashion and materialism; they just have their own version of it. Their continuous quest to be the most trendy, to wear the most unpopular clothing and therefore to be the coolest, fuels the consumerism that they preach against. Thoreau, therefore, “dismantled social hierarchies only to create his own” (Schueller 45). He does not destroy fashion and consumerism but only creates new versions of them.
While Thoreau rejects labor and consumerism, he embraces nature. He attempted to “make [his] life of equal simplicity with Nature herself” (Thoreau 60). He lived so much in and with nature that the Walden house did not have complete walls, leaving his door always open to the surrounding environment and animals that lived there (50). He enjoyed the view of the small lake outside the house “far from noise and disturbance” (59). He preaches communing with nature as well as becoming like it and a part of it. He urges society to “spend one day as deliberately as Nature” (65). Thoreau promotes a love and respect for nature, believing that nature allows people to live freer and more fulfilling lives.
The “green” movement, strongly advocated by the hipster culture is the modern equivalent of Thoreau’s love and respect for nature. On the surface, the green campaign seems to be an honest move for a cleaner earth in celebration of nature and all it has to offer. Hipsters everywhere are concerned with recycling more than just cans and bottles, reducing fuel pollution by riding bikes, reusing shopping bags and water bottles, and finding ways to reduce energy consumption (Greif 35). However, the new emphasis on being eco-friendly has become just another trend.
“Going green” has become so popular that it is a commodity itself and “desire for the commodity propels consumerism” (Winge 517). The masses run out to purchase reusable grocery bags, water bottles, “green” laundry detergent and appliances; to sell a product, a company only has to market it as environmentally friendly. High profile designers such as Giorgio Armani and Betsey Johnson are creating “ecofashions” to be worn by house-hold names like Julia Roberts and George Clooney (Winge 513). However, the fashion industry is the exact opposite of an environmentally conscious individual. The world of fashion “exists at a high cost to animals, humans and the local and global environment,” contradicting green values. Yet, these green fashions, as well as other eco-conscious products, are higher priced as society believes they have more value, not just because they help the environment but because they are “celebrity chic” and trendy (Winge 519). The ecofashion “allows the consumer to be both fashionable and environmentally conscious” (Winge 518). However, at this point, being “green” is more about fashion and keeping up with another trend than taking care of the environment. What began as a good intention, exploded into a subculture fad, leaving the original meaning behind.
Thoreau has been praised as an American hero for his philosophy, new views on society, and writing in his work Walden. The beliefs that he lays out in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” are illustrated in the modern day hipster subculture. As Thoreau urges, the hipsters reject physical labor and consumerism while embracing nature through the “green” movement. However, while Thoreau and the hipsters seem to be brave nonconformists, breaking away from society, they are only creating new rules and bounds inside a new society and culture. While claiming to be unique, hipsters conform to the specific guidelines set out for them by their forefather Thoreau. They live paradoxical lives. They are free from labor, yet are slaves to their art. While rejecting fashion, they fuel materialism and create and follow new trends. They claim to care about the environment but only because it is fashionable and commercialized. Thoreau while attempting to liberate the public from the clutches of society, only succeeds in creating his own societal definitions; definitions that hipsters conform to.
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