When was the last time you heard the word "yuppy"? Ages ago, wasn't it?
It seems that everyone is now a yuppy, and the concept has been normalised. Hence there is no need for the word itself.
Am I a yuppy? I regret to say that I am, more or less, not by dint of choice, but because it's very difficult on a practical level to go through life avoiding yuppy cultural touchstones.
If you want to make phone calls you pretty much have to have an egregiously shiny new mobile phone.
If you want to get a cheap lunch/coffee/tea on the go, you pretty much have to go to Starbucks/Caffe Nero/Subway/pretentious sandwich outlet.
If you want to buy cheap, comfortable clothes you pretty much have to get them from Topshop/Gap/H&M.
If you want to get pissed, you pretty much have to go to a pub/bar/cocktail "lounge" that looks like a brothel done up by the Changing Rooms team in the mid-nineties.
If you want to have a cheap holiday you're looking at a "cultural" weekend away in a European capital.
If you want to read a classic novel you have to put up with cover art that looks like a soiled copy of Cosmopolitan from circa 1989.
If you want to make friends you join a gym, a dating agency, exercise class, or make do with work networks.
If you want to see live music you have to do it at a venue whose raison d'être is its sponsorship by a major lager manufacturer, or at a festival where people drink Pimms and Cava and wear fashionable high street clothing.
If you want to keep tabs on culture and in contact with all the people you care about, you have to spend inordinate amounts of time on your own, with a laptop, indulging in adrenalinized, rhizomatic activity that is the final apotheosis of yuppy work culture.
It seems that everyone is now a yuppy, and the concept has been normalised. Hence there is no need for the word itself.
Am I a yuppy? I regret to say that I am, more or less, not by dint of choice, but because it's very difficult on a practical level to go through life avoiding yuppy cultural touchstones.
If you want to make phone calls you pretty much have to have an egregiously shiny new mobile phone.
If you want to get a cheap lunch/coffee/tea on the go, you pretty much have to go to Starbucks/Caffe Nero/Subway/pretentious sandwich outlet.
If you want to buy cheap, comfortable clothes you pretty much have to get them from Topshop/Gap/H&M.
If you want to get pissed, you pretty much have to go to a pub/bar/cocktail "lounge" that looks like a brothel done up by the Changing Rooms team in the mid-nineties.
If you want to have a cheap holiday you're looking at a "cultural" weekend away in a European capital.
If you want to read a classic novel you have to put up with cover art that looks like a soiled copy of Cosmopolitan from circa 1989.
If you want to make friends you join a gym, a dating agency, exercise class, or make do with work networks.
If you want to see live music you have to do it at a venue whose raison d'être is its sponsorship by a major lager manufacturer, or at a festival where people drink Pimms and Cava and wear fashionable high street clothing.
If you want to keep tabs on culture and in contact with all the people you care about, you have to spend inordinate amounts of time on your own, with a laptop, indulging in adrenalinized, rhizomatic activity that is the final apotheosis of yuppy work culture.
1 comment:
I think you need to get yourself a Gregg's pasty for lunch, buy some sweatshop Primark wear, hit a conershop then get pissed in a park, holiday in Scotland and buy your classics from second-hand shops son.
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