This is my cranky column, and if you don’t want to read unimportant generalizations and irrational conclusions you should go to the next page.
I’m tired of seeing men who walk around in unbuttoned and un-tucked dress shirts coupled with waistcoats from some thrift store suit (or maybe it’s from Urban Outfitters and was made to look thrift shoppy). I’m tired of seeing their sloppily unshorn faces coupled with bow ties and high top tennis shoes.
Yes, I’m “hating” on the “hipster” male.
The other day I saw the Facebook profile of a man with a newborn son. This guy was obviously of the hispster persuasion.
He had his child wearing a mustache themed onesie as he held him. The man happened to be wearing a bowtie with an un-ironed dress shirt.
It’s like the guy woke up and threw on some shirt he never washed after having been worn to his co-worker’s wedding, where he drank and danced and got really sweaty.
Maybe you are thinking he’s just a sloppy person. Possible, but unlikely considering he had styled his hair and was wearing a particularly delicate-looking silk bow tie.
He meant to wear his sloppy shirt, because it’s ironic. It’s surprising to see a grown man wearing a crazy-colored tie with a crumpled cotton shirt. It’s the kind of thing we expect from ten-year-old boys with absentee mothers.
What I find more abhorrent is the fact that he’s passing this strange obsession with passively bucking the status quo onto his child. In a year, that small boy will be wearing a floral print, flat-billed baseball cap and European-style knickers.
By the time he’s in grade school he will have been so brainwashed to this style of “mess meets maintenance” dress that he will be teased mercilessly by the boys wearing Nike basketball shoes, Levis and solid-colored T-shirts.
Once this happens the child can go one of two ways.
He will either rebel against society, forever becoming the artistic outcast of his peers. Yes, maybe he will attend CalArts and become a famed muralist or animator, but more than likely he will join the ranks of barely employed persons in the falsely revitalized downtowns of Bakersfield, Fresno or Modesto.
Or he will rebel against mom and dad and their luscious floral print shirts, ill-fitting slacks, knit caps and androgynous hairstyles.
This would essentially make him the Alex P. Keaton of the 21st Century.
If you are not familiar with the 80s sitcom “Family Ties” here’s a brief:
The show follows the Keatons, a family from suburban Columbus, Ohio. The parents, Elyse and Steve, are former flower children that now express their opinions by trying to raise up good-natured, empathetic, socially-conscious children.
They end up with a beauty-obsessed daughter named Mallory, Reagan-supporting neo-conservative son named Alex and a daughter who is too young to really pay attention to as an integral cast member.
The children of the modern-day hipster family, led by the hipster father will inevitably end up with children of the same demeanor and opinions as Alex Keaton.
While his parents are drinking free-trade coffee and perusing trendy thrift stores for discount waistcoats and scarves, he will be playing basketball with the straight-laced Mormon kids at his high school.
While his parents are listening to some Euro Jazz-House compilation he will be bouncing along to the sounds of George Straight and Lynryd Skynyrd.
And should he find love, he will bring home a wide-eyed, clean-cut girl from the Southern Baptist university he chose to attend in defiance.
Oh, and he will be an engineer driving a conventional champagne colored Chevy SUV and obsessing over his lawn and garage, while wearing Levis, a navy blue T-shirt and Court Classics.
So, I guess when it’s all said and done, the hispster can do what he wants because the social order will be set right with the rebellion of his progeny.
There, I feel much better now. And thank you for reading.
Frank • Sep 29, 2013 at 5:47 pm
good stuff