REMEMBERING
THE 80’s YUPPIES
SEE ALSO “SLOANE
RANGERS” in https://tweedlandthegentlemansclub.blogspot.com/2009/04/sloane-rangers.html
The first
printed appearance of the word was in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by
Dan Rottenberg. Rottenberg reported in 2015 that he didn't invent the term, he
had heard other people using it, and at the time he understood it as a rather
neutral demographic term. Nonetheless, his article did note the issues of
socioeconomic displacement which might occur as a result of the rise of this
inner-city population cohort. Joseph Epstein was credited for coining the term
in 1982, although this is contested. 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'".[7][8] East Bay Express humorist
Alice Kahn claimed to have coined the word in a 1983 column. This claim is
disputed.
The
proliferation of the word was affected by the publication of The Yuppie
Handbook in January 1983 (a tongue-in-cheek take on The Official Preppy
Handbook), followed by Senator Gary Hart's 1984 candidacy as a "yuppie
candidate" for President of the United States. The term was then used to
describe a political demographic group of socially liberal but fiscally
conservative voters favoring his candidacy. Newsweek magazine declared 1984
"The Year of the Yuppie", characterizing the salary range, occupations,
and politics of "yuppies" as "demographically hazy". The
alternative acronym yumpie, for young upwardly mobile professional, was also
current in the 1980s but failed to catch on.
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."
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 magazine proclaimed the death of the
"yuppie" in a mock obituary.
The term
has experienced a resurgence 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, cosmopolitanism, and adventurous social life – is
"Our Founding Yuppie". A recent article in Details proclaimed
"The Return of the Yuppie", stating that "the yuppie of 1986 and
the yuppie of 2006 are so similar as to be indistinguishable" and that
"the yup" is "a shape-shifter... he finds ways to reenter the
American psyche." In 2010, right-wing political commentator Victor Davis
Hanson wrote in National Review very critically of "yuppies".
Yuppie
Handbook: The State-Of-The Art Manual for Young Urban Professionals
by Marissa
Piesman, Marilee Hartley
Yuppie or
Yuppy pl. Yuppies: (hot; new name for Young Urban Professionals): A person of
either sex who meets the following criteria: 1) resides in or near one of the
major cities; 2) claims to be between the ages of 25 and 45; 3) lives on
aspirations of glory, prestige, recognition, fame, social status, power, money
or any and all combinations of the above; 4) anyone who brunches on the weekend
or works out after work. The term crosses ethnic, sexual, geographic - even
class - boundaries. Adj.: Yuppiesque, Yuppie-like, Yuppish. --- from book's
text
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