Blame the boomers

Dear Hipster:

Riddle me this: are Millennials hipsters or are hipsters Millennials?

— jo jo

Myopic culture pundits love to lump the two groups together, but you know the one about all squares being rectangles, but not all rectangles being squares? Sure, some Millennials are hipsters. But Millennials are also investment bankers, professional athletes, and unemployed single mothers without a high school education to fall back on. Millennials are the trust-funded future good ol’ boys blazing their way through Vanderbilt University. Millennials work at Walmarts in the Inland Empire and at independent record stores in San Francisco. Skrillex is a Millennial. So are Justin Bieber, Macklemore, and all four members of Mumford & Sons!

There were plenty of hipsters in Generation X. I mean, hello, Richard Linklater and Jared Leto! The so-called “Greatest” and “Silent” generations spawned their shares of hipsters — Ginsberg, hipster king of his day and, in true hipster fashion, called out the “Angel-headed hipsters” with a line in Howl. The Baby Boomers helped make hipsterism what it is today. Look at Paul McCartney totally rocking a mullet and mustache way before it was cool!

Beware anyone who wants to bash the Millennials and hipsters in the same breath. Their respective faults (and virtues!) may sometimes coincide, but they’re not the same.