What is a Hipster?

When I first started reading “Hip: The History” by John Leland in my mind I already had a preconceived notion of what hip meant to me.

You may have seen pictures of them, men and women in the 1960’s, lounging around in coffee shops, smoking, philosophizing, and reciting poetry, in a drug induced state. They wore their tight sweaters and berets as badges of honor to their superior intellect. The cooler than cool, the beatniks, the original hipsters.

After reading the first chapter in Leland’s book I started to question my original thoughts on the hipster.

I asked myself, is a hipster someone who drives a Prius and only buys organic foods from a wholesale store? Is it someone who leads the clothing trends that trick fairly intelligent people into buying parachute pants or skinny jeans, even when they know that neither will ever look good on them?

Or is it still that person in the coffee shop, no longer sitting there with a smoking stick of cancer, instead intently staring at an illuminated screen, typing away feverishly with satisfaction that their every thought will be read by fellow bloggers everywhere?

I don’t believe there is one clear definition of a Hipster. A hipster can be seen as a person that is looked up to for their sense of style or maybe even their knowledge. A hipster knows what is to be hip, and by the time the rest of us figure it out, he or she has already moved on to the next hip thing. Hip is an attitude and a way of speaking, it’s a style, it’s commercialism, and most of all it is personal.

By defining anyone today as a hipster have you just insulted them? Is it hip to be hip, or is it hip to be too cool to be hip?

I think the cartoon below may have it right, it is an escape from our own monotonous existence that makes one a hipster.