…I wrote one of those wacky cable news pundit-style posts??? Where I act like I’m the authority on something I know very little about, while suggesting some cockamamie scheme that is patently bunk but I keep insisting is common sense??? It’s just like TV! It hasn’t been a while? No? Really, are you sure? I think it’s been awhile…
In the ‘aughts, the diffusion of urban hip fashion switched direction. It all started in the ‘nineties when the internet hit and it became cool to be a bookish nerd with all-too clearly defined tastes. To be a High Fidelity-Williamsburg-Oakland Hipster. The articulate and critical rogue found something delightfully cute about the Victorian era while they* mashed together every style of the past forty years. This is true in the drum machine-driven folk music, the facial hair, jeans and dresses that we** adore.
The Hipster’s position was solidified under Bush, Jr. It was definitely not cool to like him, and he happened to ideally represent the All American Jock who beat the shit out of us nerds back in school. So the convenient way to rebel against this self-aggrandized popular kid was to further nerd yourself. You could truly hone in on your singular obsessions, learn all there was to know about everything, become active, and make yourself important. It’s just like joining the yearbook and the debate squad and the student government and theater and band.
At the same time, all the jocks, popular kids and soc’s were getting really into hip hop. Black was (and is) finally mainstream. Black had a brief glimpse of being the only cool way to be back in the ’seventies, and now it has really made it. From preppies who give dap to Juggalos*** who didn’t get the note not to sag their jeans and turn their caps anymore, the youths are down!
All of which means it stopped being cool to be just hip hop. The wrong people were appropriating the style for the first time since jazz cats, rock ‘n’ rollers, beats, hippies, disco freaks and post punks. No longer the interesting, pot-smoking, bohemian types were adopting slang, fashion and music. Instead it was the dull, suburban Whities who had wriggled into some token degree of Blackness.
So, big city black kids took up skateboarding. They put on skinny jeans and learned to play guitar. Kanye West, Pharrell, Mos Def, TV on the Radio led the way to aggressively adapting sci-fi, comics, video games, taste-making blogs, nerdy glasses and outmoded clothes. Now, I know there is still a good heap of inter-mingling, with skinny art school kids getting grills, and library scientists putting on Knicks jersey-dresses. Still, I think its going stronger in the other way.
*Yes, I’m using they as a gender-neutral singular. Ya got somethin ta say about it??
**Yes, we, because there’s nothing more Hipster to do than to say you’re not a Hipster (and therefore I’m not because I’m saying I am, right?).
***Yes, I did look up that spelling. On urbandictionary.com, thank you very much.
Your reward is a cute cat. Cute when she plays with a hair tie, but not so when she shits on the bed.
