"Native Appropriations" by Jen Mussari 2010
Since it’s e-publication early in the year, the illustration "Native Appropriations" by female artist Jen Mussari has inspired heated e-discussions about the recent trend in so-called "hipster" fashion to don a headdress (www.jenmussari.com). Articulations of the controversy surrounding this tendency can be found within comment wars on less commonly known blogs, but also in articles featured on more heavily consulted sources in the Feminist blogosphere such as Bitch Magazine’s blog and Native Appropriations. Adrienne K., creator of Native Appropriations, calls it “iconic,” acknowledging its central role in stimulating debates about the appropriateness of the recent trend of young members in a subculture outsiders call “hipster” to incorporate features of Native American dress into their wardrobes. Alarmingly, I have not yet found a commentary online that critiques or even analyzes the visual content of Mussari's piece. In the following blogquisition, I will offer such an analysis in addition to my own, preliminary understanding of the headdress phenomenon. I explore popular ideas of what constitutes a "hipster" and how ideas of "hipster" have changed over time to contextualize my analysis. Then, I will posit that any analysis of the use of the "hipster headdress" that lacks a consideration of the a broader tendency to incorporate imagery of the “indigenous" and "wild" as well as electric-bright day-glo colors in the fashioning of hipster aesthetic selves in the past few years runs the risk of missing important insights we could garner about the particular socioeconomic context of these changes. Even if offensive to many, unpacking the phenomenon of "hipster headdress" reveals that though it may seem "strange," it arguably isn't random.
"Hipster" Aesthetics: who cares and why?
The word "hipster" was coined to refer to members of an emergent jazz subculture in the 1940's. In later nineties and early 21st century, the word has been used to describe young adults with an interest in "non-mainstream" fashion, art, music, and film. Though writers have been commenting on contemporary hipster subcultures since early in the new millennium, discussions of hipster aesthetics have recently boomed-- becoming increasingly present online, in print, and in conversation over the past two years. What was once a topic of coffee-table kitsch lit (see Lanham 2003), and rare, informal conversation (who is a hipster? what does that mean? why do we care?) is now part of popular discourse.
Reasons for this interest relate to the controversial, "strange," and often androgynous nature of hipster aesthetic preferences and their increasing presence in more “mainstream” trends. In 2008, an article in Forbes magazine slates hipsters as “walking dollar bills,” defined not by “one idea or purpose” but by their consumption. It's author, Lauren Sherman, argues that unlike their more “mainstream” competitors, “hipster-centric” clothing and car companies such as Urban Outfitters and Mini reported record results during the first year of the recession. According to Sherman, the spending power of this demographic is not necessarily related to their own financial capital, but their access to that of their parents. This trope is a common critique of the hipster, found even on Fox News' blog, where contributor Steven Crowder calls hipsters “trust-fund jackasses” (2010). However, as hipsters are often young, their aesthetic tastes could be critical as they “grow up” and “buy” throughout their lifetimes. Buyers, manufacturers, and advertising executives surely took note of this booming and arguably powerful demographic.
Two years later, it is nearly impossible to go into a clothing store geared at 15-30 year-olds without finding articles of clothing inspired by what could be labeled “hipster” fashion-- skinny jeans, deep v-neck t-shirts, spandex, and hoodies in electric colors, tailored flannel, large and often fake thick rimmed glasses, all-things-owl, headbands to be worn across the forehead, and (of course) feathers. Self-proclaimed music nerds like myself cannot watch major television networks without taking note of the systematic use of both popular and obscure “hipster” and indie bands in car commercials over the past 8 years. While navigating posts in online journals, social networks and blogs 5 years ago it was common to find excited and surprised exclamations that lesser known bands were “actually on a car commercial! Can you believe it?” Now, the experience is so commonplace that music scene veterans hardly even mention it in conversation. In 2010, Honda aired a commercial for the Jazz that relied upon its viewers’ basic knowledge of “the hipster” but also upon an acceptance of hipster bashing-- a practice attractive to the anti-hipster crowd, humorous to many interested in pop-culture satire, and even satisfactory to communities that themselves fit the hipster-bill.
Reasons for this interest relate to the controversial, "strange," and often androgynous nature of hipster aesthetic preferences and their increasing presence in more “mainstream” trends. In 2008, an article in Forbes magazine slates hipsters as “walking dollar bills,” defined not by “one idea or purpose” but by their consumption. It's author, Lauren Sherman, argues that unlike their more “mainstream” competitors, “hipster-centric” clothing and car companies such as Urban Outfitters and Mini reported record results during the first year of the recession. According to Sherman, the spending power of this demographic is not necessarily related to their own financial capital, but their access to that of their parents. This trope is a common critique of the hipster, found even on Fox News' blog, where contributor Steven Crowder calls hipsters “trust-fund jackasses” (2010). However, as hipsters are often young, their aesthetic tastes could be critical as they “grow up” and “buy” throughout their lifetimes. Buyers, manufacturers, and advertising executives surely took note of this booming and arguably powerful demographic.
Two years later, it is nearly impossible to go into a clothing store geared at 15-30 year-olds without finding articles of clothing inspired by what could be labeled “hipster” fashion-- skinny jeans, deep v-neck t-shirts, spandex, and hoodies in electric colors, tailored flannel, large and often fake thick rimmed glasses, all-things-owl, headbands to be worn across the forehead, and (of course) feathers. Self-proclaimed music nerds like myself cannot watch major television networks without taking note of the systematic use of both popular and obscure “hipster” and indie bands in car commercials over the past 8 years. While navigating posts in online journals, social networks and blogs 5 years ago it was common to find excited and surprised exclamations that lesser known bands were “actually on a car commercial! Can you believe it?” Now, the experience is so commonplace that music scene veterans hardly even mention it in conversation. In 2010, Honda aired a commercial for the Jazz that relied upon its viewers’ basic knowledge of “the hipster” but also upon an acceptance of hipster bashing-- a practice attractive to the anti-hipster crowd, humorous to many interested in pop-culture satire, and even satisfactory to communities that themselves fit the hipster-bill.
Honda’s advertisement, "How Much Hipster Can You Pack in a Jazz," was inspired by a popular online blog, “Look at This F****** Hipster,” that ridicules hipsters and trends in hipster aesthetics. Hipster bashing seems as hip in the current moment as being a hipster. As both the hipster aesthetic and anti-hipster discourse have been mobilized by advertising regimes and the media, the number of people who could be called “hipster” have seemingly only grown in number. This is perhaps equally due to the wide array of things added to the imagined markers of "hipsterdom" on a seemingly daily basis.
Hipsters as a third fashion gender?
A common consensus among is that hipster fashion has become and continues to become "more androgynous" over time. I remember in high school when men wore tighter pants they themselves called them "girl's jeans," and now the name of these pants and their location in stores has become untethered to one gender. Now skinny jeans, not girl's jeans, can be found on bothKatrina on lesbian identified pop-culture and politics blog "Autostraddle" comments that due to hipsterdom's largely androgynous aesthetic, she "can wear a tie, use the word “girlfriend” non-platonically, and still be actively pursued by men." Rather than complaining about this ambiguation, she appreciates the legitimacy that hipsterdom has garnered for more androgynous or "queered" stylings that members of her imagined community have "already known to be sexy."
Mainstream backlash against "hipster"males in conversation and online is closely linked to the adoption of "effeminate" clothing. In Time Out New York's “Why the Hipster Must Die,” Christian Lorentzen argues that hipsters "devour gay style." There is even a blog entitled "Hipster or Gay" that features photographs of "hipster males" and asks the viewers to vote on whether the men are "gay" or merely "hipsters." Less ironic blogs and websites betray a true frustration at the inability within hipster subcultures to be able to distinguish clearly between straight and gay members of the community. This in and of itself seems like a somewhat subversive interruption-- why is it that that even so-called progressives feel uncomfortable when not able to hypothesize the sexuality (or gender) of others through their clothing?
Mainstream backlash against "hipster"males in conversation and online is closely linked to the adoption of "effeminate" clothing. In Time Out New York's “Why the Hipster Must Die,” Christian Lorentzen argues that hipsters "devour gay style." There is even a blog entitled "Hipster or Gay" that features photographs of "hipster males" and asks the viewers to vote on whether the men are "gay" or merely "hipsters." Less ironic blogs and websites betray a true frustration at the inability within hipster subcultures to be able to distinguish clearly between straight and gay members of the community. This in and of itself seems like a somewhat subversive interruption-- why is it that that even so-called progressives feel uncomfortable when not able to hypothesize the sexuality (or gender) of others through their clothing?
The Contemporary Hipster (2000-2010)
In order to understand where the hipster headdress fits in more broadly into hipster-centric aesthetics, it is necessary to give a brief overview of changes in contemporary hipster aesthetics. The problem here lies in the fact that what and who is "hipster" changes depending on who you're talking to and when. In sketching the following popular and general ideas about hipster-aesthetics (also undeniably informed by my own cultural experiences), I in no way intend to insinuate that "hispter" has one clear definition to any community or even innate meaning.
The first time I heard the word "hipster" was at a concert in Tampa, Florida. In my own social circles, it was not used as an insult until after the publication of The Hipster Handbook in 2003. In this sarcastic "field guide," writers and journalists Robert Lanham and Bret Nicely explore the "exclusive" and "ironic" tastes of various types of hipsters (2003). Though they talk about different species of modern hipsters, they outline broader "clues one is a hipster" that resonate with other articles and videos online. According to the authors you may be a hipster if you: have a liberal arts education, use the word "post-modern or pomo," wear messenger bag, wear thick rimmed glasses or trucker hats, are politically liberal or radical, have unkempt looking hair, or own vinyl records. Even in this quippy coffee table publication, it is easy to see that the word "hipster"describes more than just aesthetic characteristics or tastes.
When I asked friends and ex-colleagues from various locations in the United States about what it means to be "be a hipster" in 2010, I received many answers that had little or nothing to do with fashion: having an interest in social theory (especially queer theory), wearing neon colored clothing, eating vegetarian/vegan diets, riding a bicycle (preferably a fixed gear), frequenting thrift stores, buying locally produced goods, listening to public radio, and drinking either Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer or expensive micro-brews were common responses. Cowboy or plaid button up shirts have been and remain a staple. From 2006 to 2008 it seems that many "hipsters" (in conversation with U.S. progressive culture) started to become more interested in everything "green," though this interest has largely taken a backseat to a more general obsession with bike culture and its aesthetics (arguably hipster bike culture originally had a relationship to environmental concerns). In my community, there is a felt if not spoken bike hierarchy: fixed gears are "cooler" than road bikes, and have been for some time despite significant changes in the way they are styled. This has been met with sufficient backlash from the "anti-hipster hipsters." Additionally, many who could fall within mainstream ideas of what "a hipster" looks like sport expensive messenger bags originally intended for use by professional bike messengers. Hipsters are both praised or critiqued as professional "appropriators" of gay, queer, androgynous, punk, indie, indigenous, and "green" styles, but also cyclist and bike messenger aesthetics.
A spread in the November 2009 issue of Paste Magazine features photographs of dominant trends within so-called hipster subcultures. The final hipster archetype of our times, which Paste calls the "Metanerd" is wearing skinny jeans, a t-shift with an "ironic" Native American kitsch t-shirt, and (notably) a bright headband worn across her forehead. Looking at it myself, I noticed that I could spend a half an hour in my room and conjure a near-duplicate of this outfit. This is something I should, according to popular hipster bashing discourse, be ashamed of, though I had no intention of opening myself up to being called "the h word" when I obtained any of those items.
The Context of the "Hipster Headdress"
Talking to friends and reading blogs online, I have noticed there is a feeling that there is a "new" hipster on the scene, one that perhaps transitioned to young adulthood between 2007 and present. They are still generally thought of as middle class, white, into alternative music, and educated in fine or liberal arts, but the way they dress has changed. Bright, neon colors, feathers, "indigenous" prints, and across-the-forehead headbands are common place to see on the street, at concerts, and at music festivals. One can purchase an elastic headband in pretty much every color imaginable at a American Apparel-- a retail store seen by many as a key "hipster" retailer. The use of neon colors has even extended to fixed gear bike aesthetics-- they become lighter and brighter every year as their handle bars become shorter.
One can even easily purchase one of three different "hipster headdresses" at Urban Outfitters:
It is not a random phenomena, but rather fits more largely into a growing trend to rework representations of "wild" and "indigenous" into the hipster wardrobe, in our current epoch already replete with neon and metallic fabrics. Many I have spoken to consider it to be an extension or mutation of the across-the-forehead "hipster headband," now sometimes worn with a feather sticking out of it.
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| a less subtle illustration of these intersections |
I have head this style referred to as "day-glo Aztec" and "neon nomad." Rodeo shirts have been traded for moccasins. Many "cowboys" have come electric "Indians." When thought of in the context of more general shifts in "hipster" aesthetics-- which also include Aztec prints, Amazonian body paint, Aboriginal imagery, and simultaneously neon colors-- the use of a headdress makes more sense even if if some find it appalling.
In the past two years, individuals who could easily be labeled "hipster" have started to wear headdresses-- it's true. By discussing the general aesthetic context in which this change occurred, I did not intend to dismiss the concerns of those who find these trends offensive, but to reduce the puzzlement about the "strange case of the hipster headdress". This "new" fashion trend has been met by harsh critique in conversation and in online text.
Of the many bloggers critiquing the hipster headdress, Adrienne K. at Native Appropriations is the most prolific. Adrienne is a doctoral student studying education at Harvard University. In her first post, she reveals that a trip to Urban Outfitters inspired its creation: "It's no secret that many hipsters have an obsession with all things Native...but I was a little surprised at how many examples I found."
Adrienne K. has been tracking the phenomenon since early this year and has posted reviews of other websites that catalogue and probe the growing trend. Her criticisms resonate with many like-minded critics of the trend. In "But Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress?" she equates the use of headdresses as fashion to "wearing blackface." Additionally, she argues that the use of headdresses by hipster aesthetes "promote stereotyping of native cultures," casts Native Americans as monocultural and stuck in time and therefore obscures current challenges they face, ignores the spiritual significance of headdresses and the fact that they are intended for use by men exclusively, and minimizes the historical and current subordination of Native Americans.
Other bloggers and readers have responded, arguing that everything now-a-days seems like cultural appropriation. Notably, wearing a headdress is "appropriating" an entire object, rather than just incorporating "Native" or "global" prints into one's wardrobe. Headdresses are not worn to, for example, replace wearing a hat when it's cold. How and when, then, is it "okay" to incorporate aesthetics that are linked with Native American heritage or depictions of Native American heritage into one's fashion choices (if at all)?
To this concern, Adrienne K. offers guidelines:
"If you choose to wear something Native, buy it from a Native. There are federal laws that protect Native artists and craftspeople who make genuine jewelry, art, etc. (see info here about The Indian Arts and Crafts Act). Anything you buy should have a label that says "Indian made" or "Native made". Talk to the artist. find out where they're from. Be diligent. Don't go out in a full "costume". It's ok to have on some beaded earrings or a turquoise ring, but don't march down the street wearing a feather, with loaded on jewelry, and a ribbon shirt. Ask yourself: if you ran into a Native person, would you feel embarrassed or feel the need to justify yourself?"
Many bloggers, including Adrienne K., employ Mussari's print in the articulation of their critiques. "Native Appropriations" has been posted and re-posted dozens of times by bloggers interested in why hipsters are wearing headdresses and whether or not we should be troubled by it. I have not yet read a critique of the piece itself, but rather debates about its message-- that it's not okay for hipsters to "thoughtlessly" or otherwise adorn themselves with headdresses.
The text in Musarri's piece reads, "No, it's cool. It's not like your ancestors killed them ALL or anything." I appreciate Mussari's perspective, and that she is sharing it with the e-world, but two things about her text trouble me. The first idea we can read into her piece is that that "hipsters" simply aren't aware of the tragic history of relations between Native Americans and European/American colonial and genocidal forces in the United States. I'm not convinced that's the case, but think her general frustration with the headdress is imporant and valid, if over the top. The second concern I have is one I share with Native American identified blogger angiereedgarner (posted on Mussari's blog); clearly it isn't true that "ALL" members of Native American communities were killed. Whoops.
Additionally, each time I view the image I become increasingly uncomfortable with the way the women in her illustration are depicted. These "hipsters" are represented as emaciated, laughing, scantly clad, hedonistic, and potentially drunk. One is holding a red plastic cup commonly found beside a keg at house parties. The same young woman's breast appears to be nearly slipping out of her shirt. Mussari's underlying concerns about power, race, and appropriation seem timely and important, but I am left wondering if it is really necessary to objectify young women in order to critique (what many view as) their objectification and essentialization of the indigenous. In Mussari's blog, she offers an explanation of her piece in which she asks "But really, who doesn't love making fun of hipsters?" Here, Mussari (unlike Adrienne K.) makes it clear that ridiculing hipsters (in this case particularly young, white, female hipsters) was one of her main intentions.
Fated to Pretend: the "neon Indian" and recession in the United States
I am not here to defend the hipster headdress. Apologia is not my goal, but rather as an anthropologist" I wish to offer a contextual analysis. Contextual analyses clearly do not preclude critique, but do help us get a more nuanced understanding of any given "problem."
"Hip" or not, offensive or not, the hipster headdress is not a random or meaningless occurrence. It is part of a larger trend from 2008-present to increasingly incorporate objects, patterns, images, paints and fabrics with a relationship to the imagined "indigenous" into dress, performance, songs, band names and even digital media. Many bloggers describe being baffled by why "hipsters" have decided to wear them. However, to those more familiar with "hipster" subculture, it seems like they haven't even begun to look within so-called "hipster" publications, media, music videos, song lyric content, etc, to answer that question for themselves. Perhaps they don't find it relevant to their critiques, but I would argue that a more rigorous look at the "why" "when" and "how" of any given phenomenon is central to understanding and/or critiquing it. The men and women sporting headdresses are not illustrations, after all, they are human beings who live in particular historical and cultural moments. This lack of attention to the trend's place within larger aesthetic shifts in the subculture hinders a more holistic understanding of it, and the socioeconomic context in which it has proliferated.
The first event a that immediately came to mind when reading about the "strange case of the hipster headdress" was the 2008 release Brooklyn band MGMT's debut full-length Oracular Spectacular. On the cover, in concert, and in the music videos of popular songs on the album, band members Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden appear wearing neon "warpaint" and eclectic, bright appropriations of Amazonian, Aboriginal, and Native American "garb."
Recognizing this prompted me to review their music videos, and made it all the more clear that the headdress emerged as a fashion choice in the context of a general shift among a certain demographic to rework and wear clothing in some way tied to notions of the "indigenous" or "wild." In each of their videos, the band members and others featured are dressed in this "neon nomad" style. The videos are "set" in the jungle, on the beach, or in forests. In some, it is possible to spot the occasional headdress (also see "Electric Feel"). These outfits, over time, have become more and more common to see at shows, on the streets, and at music festivals. There is even a band called "Neon Indian," that released its first album in 2009 on the heels of this emergent aesthetic trend. Additionally musical artists well-known to "hipster" aesthetes such as Natasha Khan from band Bat for Lashes, songwriter Devendra Banhart, and Juliette Lewis of Juliette Lewis and the Licks have appeared on stage or in album art wearing "Native" headdresses, headbands, and feathers.
Why is it that the emergence of this trend began in 2008? I would argue that it has a relationship to the entrance of the U.S. into an economic recession at the end of 2007, when many of these older teenagers and twenty-somethings were graduating from college or high school and trying to make sense of what their "adult" lives were going to look like. As previously noted, "hipsters" are generally thought of as "middle class" and at least "educated" in the liberal or fine arts-- what happens when these "creative" and "experimental" young adults enter the job market during a recession, in which jobs in the liberal and fine arts are scarce? When they find that they are over-trained and underemployed just as they are starting to rely less on their parents' finances, but have perhaps already cultivated an aesthetic in which consumption is quasi-central?
A close "read" of the lyrics and video of the MGMT song "Time to Pretend" suggests that these fashion choices are not merely aesthetic (are they ever?), but related to an ethos. In the first image we see of the artists in the video, they are standing around a fire dressed in the outfits featured on the album's covers. They are among others dressed similarly and holding bows and arrows, which are also on fire. Throughout the video images of the new neon "native" abound: neon spears, bright body paint, riding a wave of neon paint in shorts and a "loin cloth," dancing around bonfires in unison, ruins with the backdrop of an electrically painted day-glo sky, headdresses with paint brushes in them, etc. It would take two more blog entries to describe each and every example, but I do suggest all interested readers check out the video below:
I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life.
The lyrics to the song suggest malaise and discontent with the options for "modern living" presented to its authors. Many bloggers on songmeanings.net are in general agreement that the songs is about a particular moment, the "crossroads of life...between high school and college" (Lisbontheboy). The singers say that being at these "crossroads" in the current moment is "overwhelming" and ask what they are to do, "get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?" Instead, they suggest that their decision is to "live fast and die young," but also recognize that decision as a poor and depressing alternative to the impossibility of finding a simultaneously meaningful and lucrative existence within the current socioeconomic climate. In the last stanza, they worry that in doing so, they "will choke on [their] own vomit and that will be the end." These sentiments of resistance, alienation, and anxiety are not new, but rather have arguably always played a key role in the social commentary "hip" or "counter-culture" musicians weave into their songs. In the MGMT video they burn money, and push it into a "ritual" fire. In the chorus of the song, the authors repeat that they feel "fated to pretend."
Perhaps by making this statement they are conceding that the dream of many a "hipster" to be an artist, novelist, professional musician, graphic or clothing designer will have to instead take the form of lifestyle management at the moment. There simply aren't many new job opportunities in the arts at the time. As Lee Konstantinou argues, "some would-be hipsters will find salvation in grad school, some will make their way into elite law schools, some will rediscover their inner management consultant, but not all of them will, not enough." Those that don't "make it" will be fated to pretend, expressing their artistic dreams instead in the forms of personal aesthetics. How does the incorporation or appropriation of "indigenous," "wild," and "native" imagery into hipster aesthetics relate to these concerns? To me, it seems like an articulation of an imagined and romanticized "other" to the alienating, coercive, and constraining conditions many living in urban and suburban, highly corporate U.S. society during a recession face. Let's not forget that the "hippies" lobbied a similar critique, and also incorporated "native" dress into their sartorial repertoire.
I will end this post by saying that though I have never worn a headdress (and, unless I become an actor overnight, can say with 99.99999% certaintly that I never will), I do understand how this disillusionment feels. I migrated back to the United States from Europe (where I was gainfully employed) in late 2008 to be closer to an terminally ill relative. I found it impossible, with a liberal arts degree and a graduate teaching certification to find a job that paid me more than $800 dollars a month. I worked as a teacher at a special needs charter school, but because there was a hiring freeze in my county the administration could not pay me as a teacher or even offer me benefits. Instead, I was a "paraprofessional," on the books as working 39 hours a week when I truly worked at least 45-50, with a University of Cambridge certification in language education. I made less than I would have working at a local bar, but found it more meaningful to my life and aspirations. I lived in a closet (literally.), and thus barely wanted to be at home. I often drove to see my parents on the weekend, and during the week, after work, I drew, played music, went out dancing, and traveled to see bands I liked. My lifestyle (other than the time spent with my family) was far more frivolous than it had ever been, or ever will be. I am sure I have danced to MGMT songs with friends at undeniably self-important and "lame" indie nights, and (yes, I'll admit it) enjoyed myself. I stopped reading political and social theory for months at a time, or attending the meetings of civic organizations. I remember attending a "Lost Boys" themed party. Many in attendance thought it was a great theme, and put a lot of effort into outfits that ended up looking at lot like the MGMT style. These activities were a welcome distraction from the harsh reality of my life in that moment. Now I am back in grad school, and honestly somewhat worried that on the other end of this PhD there won't be an abundance of quality jobs-- but I'm hopeful, and working as hard as I can in order to make sure that when there is one I will be a competitive candidate.
