by Molly Finkelstein // Vassar College
The first time someone called me a hipster, I was secretly pleased. Of course I denied the allegation: I would never call myself a hipster. But then again, nor would any self-respecting hipster. I’m a suburban girl from New Jersey—a major faux pas in a social state whose capital is Brooklyn. I love the mall. I watch Hilary Duff movies. I definitely cannot be a real hipster.
The true Hipster, capital H, is elusive by its very nature and thus not for purchase at your local Urban Outfitters. No one can ever know where her ankle boots came from (eBay) or how she got her asymmetrical haircut (drunk friend with scissors). A real hipster never reveals her secrets, or admits that she has any. The hipster persona has to look completely effortless or else that person is automatically a poseur.
How do I know these rules? Well, if Brooklyn is the capital of Hipsterville, then Vassar, an hour-and-a-half train ride north, is its deeply devoted servant. The old Vassar stereotypes no longer hold true—the pearls-and-gloves-clad ladies are long gone and the dirty hippies have been phased out. Now it’s the Reign of the Hipster.
I like to think the first generation of Vassar hipsters from a few years back were the real deal; the capital-H variety. The hipsterdom that is on campus now is a disease, and sometimes you don’t realize you’re infected until you find yourself in hot pants and a leotard in an upper-level history seminar. My friend got the hipster bug so bad that when she went to the health center for knee pain, the doctor wouldn’t give her an Ace bandage because he said her pants would serve the same purpose.
But something about these so-called hipsters seems to me as forced as the entry into their too-tight pants. If I can picture you carefully arranging your hair to look perfectly disheveled, the magic is gone.
I wanted to see what these hipster wannabes used to look like, so I searched a part of our school website that lets us see our peers’ senior portraits. Turns out the biggest hipsters are inevitably from Connecticut and, only a few years ago, totally preppy. Connecticut! The very antidote to hipness!
When I slip into my nostalgic awe of Gen-One Hipsters, I have to question whether they actually were the way I remember them. Or was I just an awkward freshman girl and they were cool simply by virtue of their being older? Cool because I didn’t know them when they were freshmen? Maybe they were no different than the kids I accuse of being poseurs now. But I really hope not. I’d like to have faith that the True Hipster exists. Somewhere out there in a soon-to-be gentrified borough lives someone who is so cool that she’s already moved on from the hipster fad to the Post-Hipster. And whatever that new trend is, I can’t wait to get a glimpse of Vassar’s slightly butchered version of it at my five-year reunion.
Molly Finkelstein is a senior majoring in English at Vassar College. Her pants are tight, but not that tight.
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Illustration by Sylvia Park // Parsons The New School of Design
