If you can’t see them coming from a mile away, you can definitely smell them: hipsters.We all recognize the uniform: tight pants (bonus points if they’re corduroy), shoes they paid more than $100 for at Urban Outfitters (but will swear they found in a thrift store bargain bin) and an oversized sweater they probably had to run over a few times with their car to get that coveted “worn” look. Facial hair and piercings alike are accepted and encouraged regardless of gender. Accessories include fake eyeglasses, concert wristbands up to their elbows and tattoos of their favorite geometric shapes. Their music library is full of “artists you’ve never heard of” — Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens and Animal Collective. If you ask them for their mailing address, they’ll probably give you their Tumblr URL.
Maybe I am being overly critical. But let’s take into account what is at the essence of being a hipster: counter-culturalism. Doing that which is the opposite of what mainstream society is doing. My problem with hipsters is this: They are mainstream society. I can throw a Polaroid instant camera in any direction and hit someone who fits the description of a hipster. They have become ubiquitous, which contradicts the very definition of counter-culture. If you love cats and collecting vinyl records because you think it is unique, it’s not. Everybody loves cats and collecting vinyl records. Intentionally going against the grain of society does not individualize you; it just groups you with an entirely separate genre of people. By not conforming to a stereotype, you conform to the stereotype of a nonconformist, which carries connotations with it, just like any other label.
The point I am trying to make is this: College is one of the final opportunities you will have to “redefine yourself,” but don’t hate something just because it is popular, and don’t love something just because it is not. Fall in love with a movie or an artist or a pair of shoes because you like them, not because it fits other people’s preconceptions of you. You don’t have to be a hipster, an athlete, a nerd, a good kid or a bad kid. Labels are just one form of self-expression. If you fit into one, that is fine, but you don’t have to explain yourself in order to be yourself.
