Yuppie

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Yuppie (short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional")^[1] is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class in their twenties or thirties.^[2] It first came into use in the early-1980s and largely faded from American popular culture in the late-1980s, due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession. However it has been used in the 2000s and 2010s in places such as in National Review, The Weekly Standard, and Details.^[3]^[4]^[5]

[edit] Characteristics

Yuppies are made fun of for their conspicuous personal consumption and obsession over social status among their peers, which is seen as vain and materialistic. Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, author of Luxury Fever, has remarked, "When people were denouncing yuppies, they had considerably lower incomes than yuppies, so the things yuppies spent their money on seemed frivolous and unnecessary from their vantage point."^[3] Pro-skateboarder and businessman Tony Hawk has said that yuppies give "us visions of bright V-neck sweaters with collars underneath, and all that was vile in the eighties", and he has remarked as well as that a "bitchin' tattoo can't hide your inner desire to be Donald Trump."^[6]

Author and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson has written:

Yuppism... is not definable entirely by income or class. Rather, it is a late-twentieth-century cultural phenomenon of self-absorbed young professionals, earning good pay, enjoying the cultural attractions of sophisticated urban life and thought, and generally out of touch with, indeed antithetical to, most of the challenges and concerns of a far less well-off and more parochial Middle America. For the yuppie male a well-paying job in law, finance, academia, or consulting in a cultural hub, hip fashion, cool appearance, studied poise, elite education, proper recreation and fitness, and general proximity to liberal-thinking elites, especially of the more rarefied sort in the arts, are the mark of a real man.^[4]

A contradictory stereotype exists about yuppies are either more liberal than the blue-collar and more conservative than the urban poor. Yuppies greatly influenced both the Democratic and Republican parties, they usually register with a political party en masse when it is considered in style to affiliate with a certain political party (i.e. Republicans in the mid 1980's or late 1990's and Democrats in the early 1990's or late 2000's) and whoever president does successful in instituting economic policies, like Ronald Reagan in the 1980's and Bill Clinton in the 1990's, that benefited the yuppie and upper-middle class.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] History

Although the term yuppies had not appeared until the early 1980s, there was discussion about young urban professionals as early as 1968.

Critics believe that the demand for "instant executives" has led some young climbers to confuse change with growth. One New York consultant comments, "Many executives in their 20s and 30s have been so busy job-hopping that they've never developed their skills. They're apt to suffer a sudden loss of career impetus and go into a power stall."^[7]

Joseph Epstein is credited for coining the term in 1982.^[8] It is also said that an early printed appearance of the word was in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg.^[9] The term gained currency in the United States in 1983 when syndicated newspaper columnist Bob Greene published a story about a business networking group founded in 1982 by the former radical leader Jerry Rubin, formerly of the Youth International Party (whose members were called yippies); Greene said he had heard people at the networking group (which met at Studio 54 to soft classical music) joke that Rubin had "gone from being a yippie to being a yuppie". The headline of Greene's story was From Yippie to Yuppie.^[10]^[11] The proliferation of the word was effected by the publication of The Yuppie Handbook in January 1983 (a tongue-in-cheek take on The Official Preppy Handbook^[12]), followed by Senator Gary Hart's 1984 candidacy as a "yuppie candidate" for President of the United States.^[2] The term was then used to describe a political demographic group of socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters favoring his candidacy.^[13] Newsweek magazine declared 1984 "The Year of the Yuppie", characterizing the salary range, occupations, and politics of yuppies as "demographically hazy".^[2]

In a 1985 issue of The Wall Street Journal, Theressa Kersten at SRI International described a "yuppie backlash" by people who fit the demographic profile yet express resentment of the label: "You're talking about a class of people who put off having families so they can make payments on the SAABs ... To be a Yuppie is to be a loathsome undesirable creature". Leo Shapiro, a market researcher in Chicago, responded, "Stereotyping always winds up being derogatory. It doesn't matter whether you are trying to advertise to farmers, Hispanics or Yuppies, no one likes to be neatly lumped into some group".^[2]

Later, the word lost most of its political connotations and, particularly after the 1987 stock market crash, gained the negative socio-economic connotations that it sports today. On April 8, 1991, TIME proclaimed the death of the yuppie in a mock obituary.^[14]

In the 1990s, most yuppies made a transition to the middle class but they maintain an upper-middle level lifestyle, as they age well to their 30's and 40's the "yuppie" generation often got married and settled down to have children. The economic boom at the time have transformed some yuppies or higher-income couples into Bobos or the "bohemian bourgeois".^{[citation needed]}

The term has experienced a resurgance in usage during the 2000s and 2010s. In October 2000, David Brooks remarked in a Weekly Standard article that Benjamin Franklin- due to his extreme wealth, cosmopolitianism, and adventurous social life- is "Our Founding Yuppie".^[5] A recent article in Details proclaimed "The Return of the Yuppie", stating that "[t]he yuppie of 1986 and the yuppie of 2006 are so similar as to be indistinguishable" and "[h]e's a shape-shifter... he finds ways to reenter the American psyche."^[3] Victor Davis Hanson also recently wrote in National Review very critically of yuppies.^[4]

There has been publicized talk of the "Second Generation yuppie", affluent children grown to young adulthood entering the white collar workforce in the 2000s. However, due to the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, speculation that yuppies would finally vanish as a subculture has shown their volatile status or they will become part of American history of pop culture alike the cowboy, pioneer, hippie and GI soldier.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Usage outside of the United States

A September 2010 article in The Standard described the items on a typical Hong Kong resident's "yuppie wish list" based on a survey of 28 to 35 year olds. About 58% wanted to own their own home, 40% wanted to professionally invest, and 28% wanted to become a boss.^[15] A September 2010 article in the New York Times defined as a hallmark of Russian yuppie life adoption of yoga and other elements of Indian culture such as their clothes, food, and furniture.^[16] The rise of the yuppie can be observed in developed nations such as Japan where the sarariman (Salary Man) took prominence in the 1980s and '90s, and upper-middle classes in white-collar careers throughout the western world.^{[citation needed]} In Latin America, the term "yupi" is a neologism for residents of metropolitan Mexico City in Mexico and for Chileans when the country Chile experienced an economic boom in the 1990s to generate "yuppiedom" in South America.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Notable cultural depictions of yuppies

The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, a "satire of yuppie excess"^[17]
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney^[18] (McInerney himself has been called "the archetypal yuppie")^[19]
Family Ties, the TV show, features a young Michael J. Fox as the Republican and 'yuppie-in-the-making' Alex P. Keaton in tie with his parents who used to be hippies.^[20]
Fight Club, the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel and 1999 film adaptation, follows "a disenchanted yuppie ... numbed by the sterile materialism of modern life."^[21]
In John Carpenter's They Live, a pair of working class protagonists come into possession of sunglasses that reveal yuppies as predatory aliens.
Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace, a short story about a young Republican after enjoying life after prep school with a group of punk rockers.^[22]
Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz^[18] describes a later (early 1990s) evolution of the Yuppie, in which the upper tier made considerably more than the lower, supporting tier, the "slaves" of the title, who were trapped by rents and insufficient salaries into a struggle merely to stay afloat in Manhattan.
American Psycho, the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel and 2000 film about yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman.^[23]^[24]^[25]^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29]
thirtysomething, U.S. TV series, seen as a representation of "yuppie angst"^[30]
Stuff White People Like, a satirical blog that pokes fun at generalizations and yuppie culture.^[31]
Wall Street, the 1987 film about stock traders, has been described as "encapsulation of 80s yuppie greed culture", particularly Bud Fox, Charlie Sheen's naive 20-something character.^[32]
"Yuppy Love", a 1989 Only Fools and Horses episode based on Gordon Gekko from Wall Street, in which Del Boy reinvents himself as a yuppy and hangs out in trendy wine bars.^[33]
Christmas Vacation, a 1989 comedy, features neighbors Todd and Margo as the quintessential yuppies ^[34]
Married with Children a FOX comedy sitcom (1987–97) featured the Bundy's neighbors: A couple lead by twice married Marcy D'Arcy (her two husbands Steve Rhodes and Jefferson D'Arcy, are upwardly mobile men she's attracted to), a bipolar paleoliberal-neoconservative feminist banker who loathes their blue-collar neighbors and she bullies Al Bundy, a failed shoe salesman.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Related terms

Reporter David Brooks characterized yuppies as bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos, in his book Bobos in Paradise, a.k.a. Trustifarians.
A buppie is a black urban professional.^[35]
DINKs (DINKY in the UK) is an acronym is for Dual Income, No Kids [Yet];^[36]^[37] at least one authority considers this to be synonymous with "yuppie".^[38]
Guppie is a gay urban professional.^[35]
A scuppie is a Socially Conscious Upwardly-Mobile Person^[39]^[40]
A winder is a young individual, uninhibited with regards to its own social success^[41], and willing to comply only to a very soft (and versatile) set of moral standards^[42].
Yuppification often replaces the word gentrification; it is the act of making something, someone, or someplace appealing and thus marketable to yuppie tastes.^[43]
Yuppie flu was a sometimes derisive, and inaccurate, term applied to chronic fatigue syndrome.^[44]
Yuppie food stamp is a slang term in the United States for a $20 bill, because ATMs there typically dispense only $20 bills.
Puppie is a poor urban professional (a.k.a. welfie and cheapie).
YURP is a term describing the diverse group of young professionals who are dedicated to rebuilding New Orleans, and many low-income locals accuse them of "carpetbaggery".
Yuppie Angst is when a yuppie experiences stress in pursuing a busy work schedule, anxiety attacks over minor fears or challenges, wreckless driving on highways and overreacting in panic.
Yuppiedom, a mockery of the term "kingdom" or a place of yuppies.