What is hip?

What is hip?Tell me, tell me, if you think you know.What is hip?If you're really hip, the question, "Will it show?"You're into a hip trip.Maybe hipper than hip.What is hip?You went an' found you a guru.In an effort to find you a new you,And maybe even raise your conscious level.While you're striving to find the right road,There's one thing you should know,"What's hip today, might become passe'.

"Hipness is. What it is!Hipness is. What it is!Hipness is. What it is!Sometimes hipness is, what it ain't.

Sure this old Tower of Power tune is fantastic.. and although they are credited with this hipness I still prefer the band 9Teen's version as the hippest!
But, then again, that would be the way I look at this ultimate paragon.. or do i mean perfection?

Or are hipness and perfection in paradigmatic relation with one another?

I guess it all lies in the eyes of the perfect beholder doesn't it? Yet, we as a society have come to learn a far more scary way to look at alternatives. (or none). Lately I feel bombarded by,
"perfectionist hipness." Seemingly, what dons the cover of every magazine in the market check-out is someone telling me how I can be hip! Hip in my fashion, in my diet, my home, my spiritual focus, my parenting, my travel, and even in my retirement. Except, if you are a smarter/sleazier grocery store rag you have appealed to those that "have not" and place your focus on how the movie stars and celebrities who set the model of "hipness" are screwing up... Pointing out their cellulite, their public fighting and essentially their "normal" living. The only folks making out on that trend is the publishers of such literature... and the world rotates again capitalizing on some person's grief in order to make themselves better! Still not hip!

Why does Pottery Barn dictate how hip my home should look? (again, we all do it). Do we not have minds of our own? Why do Brad and Angelina hold the bar on adoption when it's been in vogue for hundreds of years? Why do I need to know that 40+ people such as myself are now the new 20! ( All the while expecting that although we can deprive ourselves of fun food, wine and good living will guarantee that I'm going to look fab, "hip" in my skinny jeans?) Why do I believe that my near 50 year old boyfriend wants that? And why does television not focus on fiction anymore? Why are we forced to watch people mortgage themselves out to live out these daily falsehoods.. (sorry "hipness" ), on "real TV" every night??

I think back to my childhood. I was a child of the 60's and 70's. I grew up in a very normal middle class environment. Our home did not resemble Pier 1 Imports, although it may have looked more like Sears and Roebuck. "The hip" store of my time. Which Tower of Power may have come to call "passe" in their lyrics. Is Sears still around? Anyway. I do not remember this hype.. (or maybe we can abbreviate this word to hyp ? ) I remember needing one winter coat every year. I remember getting 2 pair of shoes in September. One for school, and for Sunday. I remember one meal prepared each night for the "entire" family. There were no alternatives. I remember needing to save for what I needed.. and I remember my parents needing to do that too! I remember much of this simplistic living.. yet when I look at the word "Simple" in the titles of every magazine, yogurt container, grocery slogan, it looks a whole lot different than the "simple" ways I remember from my childhood.

The 60's to some may have been hip to those who grew up in the depression of the 30's. I am certain it is all relative somewhere I guess. ( as my Dad always says). However, it feels much different to me. We are a society much altered even from the 60's model... and yet only 40 years later. We are into alterations and improvements of everything we know: our bodies, minds, our homes, our relationships.. notice that even Christmas Trees look perfect nowadays?? We were real at one time, we have now become, "Pleasantville". Even worse then the 1950's post-war mentality of Mrs. Cleaver, nobody having sex, smoking is fine, cocktails in excess and couples staying married forever. NO...We are worse.

At least the 60's broke us out of that model with mind-altering substances you bought on the street... now, our modern day drug dealers are our physicians! We don't smoke pot or take LSD anymore to "open" the mind... We take anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds to help us "not see" anymore!

We are teaching our children that labels of all kinds are acceptable. We are teaching them that only certain labels in our jeans/genes make us "hip." Certain handbags/baggage make us even more "hip." And far worse labels of people are just as "hip/hyp." Where does it end? I oft wonder if I have the boob job I want, (opposite direction folks), will it make me more hip or not? I think the one that went bigger is now passe?! What happens when boobs are in or out again in 10 years?? How do we change, evolutionarily speaking, if we keep "removing and placing" parts that do or don't belong? At least I know the reason we are losing our back molars.. we just don't need to gnaw raw meat off of bones anymore!

I worry about our future society. I worry about the society we live in. It is a no wonder that half of the planet is medicated! They would have to be to roll with what the celebrities and publicists tell us what is "hip!" How to live in the hippest flat, have the hippest credit cards, and raise our kids in the hippest ways. "Housewives of somewhere..." I often think our kids are going to grow up loving to clone, or resorting to pot! Why does an un natural blonde hold so much power in today's world? It is a flash of "something" that grabs our attention. Isn't it? Or is it the fact we want the appeal she has? I don't know many days I think about doing it just so I can find out! Why not.. everyone else is!

I tell you this perfectionist behavior is a result of needing to control everything around us. We get the immediate things we need or want... or take.. then we forget about those who have helped us or needed us. We don't have time anymore for people or their problems because we are too busy not allowing our kids to self-soothe and entertain themselves with God's greatest toy.. imagination. We are raising people who will not learn how to invent, dream or find fun in their own way.. forget about the "Jones'"... the "Hollywoods" will be holding the bar for us to jump too. Designer birthday parties, coffee, clothing and bling are seemingly all that matters to us.

I think homogenous living might not be so hip anymore...


When we don't measure up.. we pop something! We dye our hair, buy a $500 bag, rat on our friends, covet others, or think we deserve extra "playmates! All because we are told and tell ourselves, "we deserve it." THAT seems to be hip!

I often laugh that women are still the big victims of all of this hipness! Our men complain that it takes so long to do our hair and yet the first thing they do is flip around when the girl who spends $300 at the salon comes along and bitch when we don't put the special energy in it for them. Okay, now I am really confused....

Recently, we were told by Oprah that it is okay to be fat now... we were told by her that it is a sign of something deeper.. duh? Or perhaps it is just easier for her now to say that rather, "I can only eat a certain amount of natural things in smaller portions at my age." It's a hell of a lot
easier to utter, "To hell with what messed me up to get me here, I'll just buy bigger things and do what I want." I am not sure how I feel about that anymore! The term "everything in moderation"seems to enter my mind. But we are not a society of knowing how to live moderately anymore. We are the opposite.

It's a roller coaster of emotional energy I am tired of. If you're a size 2 then you are hip this week in America. A size 2 in Haiti however has a different spin! Men are still heavy... at any age.. albeit, I will say it is hipper, for once, for younger men to be thin and buff in today's world. But as men age, they are falling victim, (worse I think), to the hip factor of what their gal-pal should look like. Standards are different. They cheat because we are told.. "Well, you didn't keep yourself up!" And simultaneously they do not want the drama of what it takes to look like our hip diva trend-setters on the West Coast !

Or has it just become "okay" to do whatever we want in life?

As an educator of young people I watch this stuff go on now. I watch the "L" go on a forehead to another 5 year old.. and I hear words like, "whatever" used. They think it is hip to be uncaring. They have learned somewhere that it is okay to criticize another for their clothing choices and lunch foods. They now know all about kids with "special needs" and use it to their advantage to be "hip" or get out of something. They wear belly shirts, earrings and have dyed hair. They know when someone is "fat" equally as well as they know when somebody else is "phat!"

We are forgetting to be a society of people who are real. I am victim of this myself at times. And it scares me when do we begin to know who we really are and what we really believe in?For years we are controlled . Our parents, the church controls us, tell us what is hip... when we are good and bad, right and wrong. Hollywood tells us. The Internet tells us, and television expounds upon this. Where do we go from here? Who is hip? and What is hyp?

"You went an' found you a guru.In an effort to find you a new you,And maybe even raise your conscious level.While you're striving to find the right road,There's one thing you should know,"What's hip today, might become passe'."

And in the words of FLoyd... "Look around.. choose your own ground..."