Brilliant! I love an enthusiast.
So-called “hipsters” were already “a thing” for a good fifty years before that book was even published.
Grace Elizabeth Hale, to the rescue!
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Awesome, thanks! I actually read her book on whiteness in “the South,” thought it was fantastic.
I make use of the big pockets on the military pants because I’m always carrying something bigger than a wallet. My penchant for spilling things made it necessary for everything to be black, and over the years I realized that it’s one less decision I have to make in the morning when I open the closet.
People think I’m dark and spiritual when in fact I’m incredibly lazy and don’t talk to strangers.
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Those guys totally sold out.
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Or you are not a “Non Conformist” but just into a small subculture.
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Sounds perfect! Being a trailblazer is merely the flip side of non/conformity. It’s not “your own” counterculture if other people follow it. Going it alone is great, because the acceptance of being “hip” is the beginning of somebodys group identification. This is exactly how to avoid being commodified and co-opted.
I think that what people are seeing here is the difference between the revolutionary and the reactionary. Rebellion, like conformity, never goes anywhere because it derives its structure from other people and the past. It is, by definition, relative and reactionary - one cannot simply “rebel”, the rebellion needs to be against something. Whereas revolution is creative, positing something new which might be obvious to the person who does it. But unfortunately, even most marginals measure their “success” by adoption and influence, and so in hoping for their better way to catch on only end up breeding conformity.
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Years ago I read a passage in a work of fiction (Victorian era story) that has stayed with me: the argument was that back when most women could only afford one traveling outfit and it needed to stay respectable-looking, navy blue was actually a better choice than black because it’s also dark but it doesn’t fade as much so it ages better and thus lasts longer.
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True. And on another historical note, ninjas more often wore dark blue and gray because it actually conceals better in the dark.
But all of this started when I used to work at a shoeshine stand, so that was the most common dye I used. Now I have a sizeable wardrobe and am set in my ways.
Or, to take up less time, “Hey, man, I don’t dig your scene. Stop forcing your ‘norms’ on me.” 
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Some of those groups were non-conformists, some weren’t. When I was young, hippie non-conformists all had to wear blue jeans and tie dye.
How are people supposed to dress with mass-produced clothing, short of sewing their own?
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When Tim & Eric were on Marc Maron’s WTF they basically had the same problem of EVERYTHING being hipster now, so you can’t really dress up like a wierdo for a skit.
When was a mass youth movement ever about non-conformity?
When were blanket cultural statements ever about accuracy?
I read it for my comps and it was great. I’ve only skimmed this one, but she argues that white middle class fascination with establishing an outsider status has been a serious distraction from the real problems faced by people who are actually victims of real kinds of discrimination. I think you’ll enjoy!
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I can’t exactly disagree, but it’s an obvious argument to make, since creating classes of person implies that arbitrary discrimination is built into the culture in the first place!
I think he’s got something of a point, though. Have you read Jon Savages book, Teenage? He argues that what we think of as youth culture was part and parcel the creation of the concept of a teenager, which is in part a marketing demographic. I don’t think that means we can’t find spaces of non-conformity and rebellion with those spaces (well, okay, I’m not longer a “young person”, but you get my meaning), which can lead to particular strains of revolution, but the whole set of concepts are more complicated with notions of consumer capitalism…
I think this goes back to our other disagreement, though.
Hale’s arguments, you mean?
I don’t know that culture has to have these arbitrary discrimination, but more that this is something that has historically happened - that’s sort of the role of the historian, right? To actually look at the past and see what has transpired and why, via various sources. That doesn’t mean culture is uniform or always about the distribution of power, just that in the case that Hale is examining, it was.
