My understanding of YUPPIE: I first heard the term in 1981, pertaining to Young Urban Professionals.
They're generally depicted as white men and women with more disposable income than the rest of society, living in quaint gentrified apartments, condos or old homes in the city. They generally run the gamut from middle-class wage earners (e.g., teachers) to rich stockbrokers. Depending on your perspective, their tastes are refined or pretentious, whether you're talking about the restaurants they visit, the films they see or the books they read. They work out at the gym, dress stylishly, eat the right foods, et cetera. Some of the older ones are recovering hippies who got tired of slumming (e.g., Al Gore). Others are disaffected children of unrepentant hippies or disaffected children of suburbanites and rural dwellers. Variations of the term include Guppie (gay urban professional) and Buppie (black urban professional). Yuppies can be married, partnered or single; parents or non parents. The popular perception seems to be, however, that most of them are childless by choice with more money to spare and therefore, selfish. Politically, they cover the narrow spectrum between Republican and Democrat with a few libertarians and limousine liberals thrown in for good measure. The crash of '86, AIDS, the dot.com collapse of 2001, and decreased earning power due to six-figure student loans that must be paid back, are just a few historical forces that have rendered the term "yuppie" meaningless to me. As for the shoppers Dyna referred to in food coops like the Wedge and North Country Co-op (to bring this all back to Minneapolis and local issues), most of the ones I know who go there are concerned about eating food that's not tainted with pesticides, hormones and whatnot. A lot of my hippie cohorts from the seventies shamed to the point where I finally started shopping these places (both my parents hated to cook, so when I grew up I cooked nothing but steak and french fries (or spaghetti and french fries) much to the horror of my friends. But now that my pals have children to support they're shopping at the big box stores (more affordable despite all the drawbacks). As for single, childless and selfish me, I'm more into eye candy these days than nutrition (though I've pretty much gone vegetarian and only eat fries two or three times a month), and that pretty much determines where I get my groceries, though I mostly go back and forth between Linden Hills Co-op and Cubs on East Lake (I have wildly eclectic tastes when it comes to check out clerks). Anyway, in my experience, YUPPIE has been used pejoratively by working class folks I've known, served and worked with who need to vent their anger and frustration at corporate capitalism without being accused of class warfare or radicalism.------------------------------------Peter Schmitz CARAG TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
