Tolerating difference

I am writing in response to Stephen Wu’s column titled “A hipster manifesto.” First, I applaud his effort towards understanding the meaning of the word “hipster.” It seems as if everyone has his or her own interpretation of the word’s meaning, and no two people, even perhaps within the hipster community­—if indeed it has a concrete existence—can come to any sort of consensus in defining this word. But it seems that Wu believes his arduous journey from the Oxford English Dictionary to Urban Outfitters, of all places, provides him with the necessary justifications for his claim that “the hipster soul is void and empty.”

I don’t claim to be a hipster. My reasoning for this is quite simple: As mentioned before, I don’t understand the colloquial use of the term, and, perhaps more importantly, I don’t believe the definition is important. I, however, do believe that many like Wu construct misguided and perhaps ironic generalizations of the people who they claim are hipsters.

Wu speaks of the ironic hipster as one who “apparently takes great pains to do nothing and seemingly care for nothing.” He extends this idea to make the rather bold claim that hipsters contribute very little, if anything, to the progression of society. But the evidence upon which Wu draws this conclusion, which in his column amounts to the pains of squeezing into tiny clothes and reading a couple of outdated essays, is not only as innovative as drinking coffee on a Monday morning, but more importantly reveals the prevailing and misguided notion that being different is somehow wrong and, in a sense, not useful to society. This, I would say, is ironic.

It is worth mentioning that associating tight clothes with hipsters is irrelevant and should be disregarded—after all, are we to assume the vast majority of today’s women who wear tight pants should also be considered hipsters? To say women contribute nothing to society is quite ridiculous, so clearly the tight clothing issue shouldn’t have contributed to the formulation of Wu’s argument. Unfortunately, his devotion of an entire paragraph of his column to this issue only highlights his personal bias against that which doesn’t suit him—or in other words, that which is different. As for the outdated Mailer article, other than stating that the conclusion of the article conveniently matches his own conclusion, Wu mentions no basis for representing hipsters as non-progressive peoples. Similarly, his claim that “The Catcher in the Rye” is likely to be a modern hipster’s manifesto not only has no basis­, but is again quite ironic. Try Googling “Catcher in the Rye hipster”—the first words you will see are “Stuff Hipsters Hate.”

So my advice to Wu is to actually communicate with these curious creatures. Perhaps it would be useful to understand who really is this double-layered store clerk at Urban Outfitters—does he have opinions on important matters? Maybe this idea of being nonchalant is misrepresenting the person who is trying to be different. Surely these people, like all people, care about something. The choice to be different is meaningful, whether or not that choice exhibits itself as a form of apathy. We must all communicate and respect the choices made by others, even when expressed in a different way than we are used to. Indeed, this is how society progresses.

The author is a senior in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences majoring in chemical engineering.