Summer+AS’s+OpEd+Article



[|“Your horn rim glasses, sweater hoodies, vintage leather oxfords, authentic woven Guatemalan book bags, and your crafty hand-made wooden iPhone cases tell me that you’re nothing other than a self-affirming, self-satisfying, self-righteous douche. DEAR DIRTY HIPSTERS:”]

Putting so much effort into maintaining a dirty, grungy aesthetic when at the end of the day you have the luxury of going home to the suburbs and chilling under the lamp that your mom brought home from the mission trip to Africa.

Criticizing corporate clothing and materialism yet in the same moment you sport $90 Urban Outfitter combat boots and $300 Ray-Bans.

Hating everything in the mainstream because somewhere along the road to elitism you learned that a band that only has 16 likes on Facebook is superior to Beyonce.

Disapproving of rap because of your view that “it’s just angry black men being sexist,” while promoting your indie love songs that are somehow appropriate because they’re preppy white boys with accents singing about a cute girl they saw in a café.

Ignoring Kanye West’s raps about race and class and dismissing him as a rich fool while bowing down to Macklemore’s tokenization of the gay community.

Acting like you full-heartedly stand with equality although you never seem to stand up for it when you’re the one privileging off of other people’s exploitation.

Speaking like Marx is your grandfather but not knowing how to spell “bourgeois” when the Urban Outfitters application asks you to describe your lifestyle.

Talking in fabrications that always sound something like, “I’m not racist, BUT..” “My best friend is black, I can’t be racist,” “I can dress up as a Native American for Halloween because my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was a Cherokee.” Making racist jokes in an attempt to be ironic. Delegitimizing someone else’s struggles to relate it back to your own life. Exotifying your black and brown friends to act as though you’re not preoccupied with their color when really, the way you treat them is the epitome of being preoccupied with race.

Trying so hard to maintain the façade of a culturally open-minded attitude when it tends to always result in a sick, offensive appropriation of someone else’s culture.

Wearing a keffiyeh on your neck with a Starbucks at hand, being completely oblivious to the resistance and struggle that that scarf symbolizes, while at the same time, supporting a company that funds the occupation and continues the oppression that your scarf is supposed to resist.

Identifying yourself as a feminist but only applying it to your life when you’re the one being discriminated against. Not wanting to be called a slut, but totally being okay with calling other girls sluts when they don’t have the same lifestyle as you. Telling Muslim women to remove their hijab because it’s “oppressive.” Acting as though you want to dismantle the patriarchy but living your life maintaining it.

Saying you’re not sexist but in the same breath saying women are treated as equals. Believing that the only way to be sexist is by explicitly acting like it. Hiding behind your sexist thinking by saying “it was just a joke!” “don’t over-react!” “GEE! You’re so sensitive!”

“When I walk down the street to see another one of you: crank up your dub-step, sip on your raspberry seltzer water, I’ll call you a douche, you’ll call me a reverse racist, and hopefully you’ll cry hipster tears of sorrow sauntering towards the next removable trend so when the suburbs call you can answer properly. Just as long as it’s still affirmed with your individuality.”

“Because being cool or not being cool, is almost as cool as being yourself.”