Originally published in Brittany Julious' "Antic" literary magazine -

There’s a lot of talk about hipsters these days. Well, there are stages of the talk about hipsters.

First, there’s the recognition of something being too out of your reach, too involved in some other kind of pop culture that you don’t personally understand, but you notice it.

Then there is the full-fledged understanding of it. You can point it out a mile away, and you may even look down at yourself and see accidental traces of it in your clothes, your shoes, the way you accessorize.

Then there’s either the rejection or the acceptance of hipster culture. You can choose to go all the way with it and become it, or you can go against it individually. Though, I would argue, no young person really escapes hipster culture completely these days. And that is my point.

It’s a generational thing. In my eyes, “hipster” is so vague a term it doesn’t really matter what it means. But I tried looking it up on Urban Dictionary anyway. One definition told me, “You, for reading ironic, pseudo-intellectual dictionary entries on the word ‘hipster.’” And that’s why it’s hard to define. It is irony. Generational irony.

You see, my generation – the college kids, the grad school kids, and the post-school kids – are in a state of regression. In fact, this movement is a revival of regression – a celebration of it.

Think about it: We buy and wear t-shirts with Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Strawberry Shortcake, Spiderman, and Rainbow Brite on them. Or, we suddenly start listening to the music of our grade school days, like Biggie, New Kids on the Block, Brandy and Monica, Boyz II Men, or Robyn. And then we actually contemplate buying tickets to the Spice Girls reunion tour when they come to town, almost ten years after they were last relevant. We play video games – not that new violent car chase shit, but the simple old school ones, like Super Mario Bros. We wear backpacks again, with Lisa Frank designs. Or we wear bright neons and pastels and sparkly, shiny things. The things your 7-year-old self would’ve picked out for your now 20-something self.

All of this 90s nostalgia in a group of people just about to embark on adult lives in the 21st century…Most believe this is all done out of irony. But I believe it’s a way of reliving our pre-high school days without really acknowledging it outright. A way of remaining young forever in a generation moving into post-school adulthood, and pretending we live during a time of the Clinton administration and the booming economy of the late 90s. A way of going back to easier times, when shit was less fucked up. Or at least, when we were too young and detached from the world to realize how fucked up it was, or would eventually be.