It's been a while since I slagged on hipsters, because I've sort of given up caring. Who gives a shit about your love of New Order, your glasses frames, your parents' divorce, or your recipe for organic muesli? It's been a Real World sort of month in the Kochany household - not the show, or the Klostermanian ironic love of the show, but the actual living experience - and it's been a little tough to focus on the vagaries of urban mid-twenties neurotics.
My friend Jess was in town the other day, and we were wandering around upper-class Yorkville, looking at the over-tanned and -blonded citizens of that neighbourhood. As we walked through the perfectly maintained throngs of women, I realized the "why" of the hipster. It was like a vision, only more annoying.
If you're like me, you probably spent some time in middle school reading YA fiction and Sweet Valley High books. The SVH books are generally inoffensive rot, but they set up a dichotomy in my young, impressionable brain that there are two kinds of people in the world: the Wakefields and their friends, who were fit, blonde, wore lavalier necklaces (whatever the hell those were), had money, drove convertibles, were sexy without having actual sex, and were basically hugely desirable on all fronts...and then there was everyone else. Because they were twins, one could be street-smart, while the other was book smart. One was slightly nerdy, but they never strayed too far into the realm of actual dorkiness - they were too pretty for that.
Their world was populated by jocks, fashion fiends, plus a B-team of frizzy-haired friends, smart boys, and girls who were quietly eating disordered. The books and characters were, by their nature, one-dimensional, but the world was complete unto itself: they had after-school hangouts, disastrous house parties, and newspaper internships. Archetypes who were deemed uninteresting simply weren't written in to the books: there were precious few characters of colour, and all the girls were contractually required to either have a boyfriend or be pining over a dude who didn't want them. Riot grrls would have given Jessica Wakefield hives. Ostensibly, the twins and their friends might have been "strong female characters," but as junior romance novels tend to be, the spotlight was often tightly focused on what made women desirable to men - prettiness, an ability to hide talents or interests that might put a guy off, or, if a girl was pursuing her own interests, she would be saddled with a dud like journalist Elizabeth's dullard boyfriend Todd.
The decline of the Wakefield twins actually dovetailed with the rise of hipster culture. Oh, I'm sorry - "culture." As the blonde twins lost their juggernaut grip on the hearts and minds of middle-schoolers, there was a spike in indie culture and the DIY aesthetic. Suddenly, it wasn't just the pretty kids who were interesting. If you knew about music, or had an encyclopedic knowledge of a cool TV show like The Simpson, or had picked up a couple issues of Sassy, you could see a way out of having to be pretty to be impressive. In high school, this would translate into 'zines and mixtapes and vintage clothing sourced from the local Sally Ann, not to mention terrible bands and hideous poetry. Girl-punk and indie rock style, and the media storm it inspired, was the anti-Wakefield. I remember the Sassy cover with Courtney and Kurt, sloppily all over each other, and something in me was both repulsed and fascinated. Everything that had been bottled up in Sweet Valley came roaring to the surface.
Fifteen years later, that messiness has largely disappeared from the hipster scene, and it's as codified and antiseptic as the Wakefield's world was. Interestingly, there's a sequel of sorts to the SVH books out now: a grown-up novel set in the twin's late twenties, dealing with their sordid but I'm sure exceedingly fashionable lives. It'll be interesting to see what kind of of fan reaction the book gets, because I think most of the girls who grew up reading (and coveting) the Wakefield scene have moved on.
To wit: the gift the post-SVH hipsters have given to women and girls is that it's okay to be a little "ugly." After all, if it's a radical act to not be blonde, fit and have a heart-shaped face, almost any other beauty paradigm will do. Girls with glasses, or who wear '70s housedresses or band tee-shirts. Girls who have ardently defended their position on 1980s radio-rock. Girls who are open with their sexuality, whether they're slutty, kinky, or virginal. Women who eat meat. People who write, play in a band, or do movie recaps, or make pitchers of sangria for picnics. Girls who are mouthy and smart, and who cultivate their intellect the way Jessica Wakefield would have curated her closet. Women who know what their beauty is, and who aren't going to let a pair sixteen-year-old twins with effing lavaliere necklaces tell them what to do.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Hot Time, Summer In The City
"I am just over summer!" my friend Emily said earlier this week. Frankly, she and I were on the page there. It was at the height of one 38-degree day, when our hobbies had transformed from "reading" and "cooking" to "lying on cool tile floors" and "complaining." We also agreed that, for whatever reason, the hot months are also weirdly prone to be a season of bad news. Statistically, the crap should be spread like a thin layer over each calendar page, but it often feels like there's a steaming turd right in the middle of the egg-fryingly hot sidewalk.
Look, I'll just come right out and say it: I do not thrive in the summer months. Not only is it a time of heat, it has been, in my family, a time of shittiness. My sister's cancer diagnosis came in late June, as did my last fuck-me breakup. The emotional ripples come down the wire every damned year. Last year was a lead-up to having a tumour (and bonus ovary!) removed, and the ensuing stress and recovery from that lovely hospital trip. This year has been no different so far, with recent deaths creating new emotional craters.
Even when nobody's actively on the ward, the heat does unpleasant things. Sleep dwindles down to a scant few hours. I dislike the sunshine, because sunscreen gives people a gross body-builder's sheen and going without gives me skin damage and sunstroke-induced nausea. I hate air conditioning, because the drying coolness is a tease, and there isn't really anything pleasant about the chill. While some of my friends like the pool, I have a deeply ingrained fear of displaying my nearly-naked body to strangers. The best outfits I can come up with for beating the heat? Skimpy shorts, tube tops and long, cleavagey dresses. Nothing about those is appropriate for the office.
There are things I like about the summer time, like the usual few weeks of unemployment I get before getting a job - I love my downtime, what can I say? I like being able to walk out the door without getting all bundled up. I like the nighttimes, when people walk in the fragrance of the night blooms, sit on patios and drink beers. I love the lushness of the city, with the blooms of urban nature poking through our matted lawn and the Annex's shade trees providing us all with a bit of relief. I love the long days, even though that usually means less sleep. I love falling in love in the summer, because often, even though there's a backlog of emotions, summer is a great time to realize that you like-like someone.
And this summer hasn't been terrible. There's been a lot - more than average, I would say - of stress, in both the personal and professional spheres, but that's been offset by lots of really splendid moments (is it just me, or is the phrase "splendid moments" so Anne Shirley as to be kind of funny?). I've swam in a pool - a personal triumph regarding those body-image issues - and made tabbouleh, banana muffins and coleslaw. I've eaten lots of burgers and seen some fun movies. A friend-of-a-friend dropped off a trove of smutty books, so I've been reading a lot of sentences that refer to vaginas as flowers. I've seen some out of town friends.
In my youth, summer didn't seem like a magnet for all the bad things in the world...but it does now. I'm beginning to dread the launch of the hot season, and its thunderclap of bad news. Next year, I firmly expect that I will impale myself on a cacti, get arrested, get bitten by a large dog/small child, and hear the news that Coke Zero is linked to -nay, creates - fatness. I'd gladly take on those burdens if it means sparing my family and The Boyfriend more turmoil in the summer, because frankly, I feel like they've had all they really can take on in the last few years.
Me, I thrive in October: the leaves are still on the trees, but the air has cooled and the tights have reappeared from the back of my closet. Folks can sleep. We all know the gray horror of winter is coming - it never fails, but in October, we can secretly hope to ourselves that it might skip us this year. Winter is a shared Canadian hell, where summer is each of privately suffering in our own unique miseries. Guess which one I prefer?
Look, I'll just come right out and say it: I do not thrive in the summer months. Not only is it a time of heat, it has been, in my family, a time of shittiness. My sister's cancer diagnosis came in late June, as did my last fuck-me breakup. The emotional ripples come down the wire every damned year. Last year was a lead-up to having a tumour (and bonus ovary!) removed, and the ensuing stress and recovery from that lovely hospital trip. This year has been no different so far, with recent deaths creating new emotional craters.
Even when nobody's actively on the ward, the heat does unpleasant things. Sleep dwindles down to a scant few hours. I dislike the sunshine, because sunscreen gives people a gross body-builder's sheen and going without gives me skin damage and sunstroke-induced nausea. I hate air conditioning, because the drying coolness is a tease, and there isn't really anything pleasant about the chill. While some of my friends like the pool, I have a deeply ingrained fear of displaying my nearly-naked body to strangers. The best outfits I can come up with for beating the heat? Skimpy shorts, tube tops and long, cleavagey dresses. Nothing about those is appropriate for the office.
There are things I like about the summer time, like the usual few weeks of unemployment I get before getting a job - I love my downtime, what can I say? I like being able to walk out the door without getting all bundled up. I like the nighttimes, when people walk in the fragrance of the night blooms, sit on patios and drink beers. I love the lushness of the city, with the blooms of urban nature poking through our matted lawn and the Annex's shade trees providing us all with a bit of relief. I love the long days, even though that usually means less sleep. I love falling in love in the summer, because often, even though there's a backlog of emotions, summer is a great time to realize that you like-like someone.
And this summer hasn't been terrible. There's been a lot - more than average, I would say - of stress, in both the personal and professional spheres, but that's been offset by lots of really splendid moments (is it just me, or is the phrase "splendid moments" so Anne Shirley as to be kind of funny?). I've swam in a pool - a personal triumph regarding those body-image issues - and made tabbouleh, banana muffins and coleslaw. I've eaten lots of burgers and seen some fun movies. A friend-of-a-friend dropped off a trove of smutty books, so I've been reading a lot of sentences that refer to vaginas as flowers. I've seen some out of town friends.
In my youth, summer didn't seem like a magnet for all the bad things in the world...but it does now. I'm beginning to dread the launch of the hot season, and its thunderclap of bad news. Next year, I firmly expect that I will impale myself on a cacti, get arrested, get bitten by a large dog/small child, and hear the news that Coke Zero is linked to -nay, creates - fatness. I'd gladly take on those burdens if it means sparing my family and The Boyfriend more turmoil in the summer, because frankly, I feel like they've had all they really can take on in the last few years.
Me, I thrive in October: the leaves are still on the trees, but the air has cooled and the tights have reappeared from the back of my closet. Folks can sleep. We all know the gray horror of winter is coming - it never fails, but in October, we can secretly hope to ourselves that it might skip us this year. Winter is a shared Canadian hell, where summer is each of privately suffering in our own unique miseries. Guess which one I prefer?
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