The Yuppie Handbook

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Yuppies

80s Yuppie
Official Preppy Handbook Online
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The Yuppie Handbook: The State-of-the-Art Manual for Young Urban Professionals Marissa Piesman, Marilee Hartley on Amazon.com.FREE. shipping on qualifying offers. A used copy of The Yuppie Handbook recently fell into my hands. The book was published in 1984 as a jokey piece of social anthropology, and it made a slew of observations about this new American species. The yuppie’s bizarre lifestyle preferences were intended to elicit populist guffaws.

Yuppie (short for 'young urban professional' or 'young upwardly-mobile professional')^[1]^[2] is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class or upper class in their 20s or 30s.^[3] It first came into use in the early 1980s.

Characteristics

Yuppies are mocked for their conspicuous personal consumption and hunger for social status among their peers. 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.'^[4] 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 also remarked that a 'bitchin’ tattoo cannot hide your inner desire to be Donald Trump.'^[5]

Author and political commentatorVictor Davis Hanson has written:

Yuppism... is not definable entirely by income or class. Rather, it is a late-20th-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.^[6]

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 was credited for coining the term in 1982,^[8] although this is contested and it is claimed that the first 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]East Bay Express humorist Alice Kahn claimed to have coined the word in a 1983 column. This claim is disputed.^[12]^[13] 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^[14]), followed by Senator Gary Hart's 1984 candidacy as a 'yuppie candidate' for President of the United States.^[3] The term was then used to describe a political demographic group of socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters favoring his candidacy.^[15]Newsweek magazine declared 1984 'The Year of the Yuppie', characterizing the salary range, occupations, and politics of yuppies as 'demographically hazy'.^[3]

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'.^[3]

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 magazine proclaimed the death of the yuppie in a mock obituary.^[16]

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 'bohemianbourgeois'.

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'.^[17] 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 '[h]e’s a shape-shifter... he finds ways to reenter the American psyche.'^[4]Victor Davis Hanson also recently wrote in National Review very critically of yuppies.^[6]

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.^[18] 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.^[19]

In Mexico, the term 'yupi' is a neologism for high class young people usually from the largest cities and known for having a modern white-collar economy. Yuppification has occurred in economic booming nations of China, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South Africa in the late 1990s and 2000s.

80s Yuppie

In popular culture

In Duck Dynasty, Phil Robertson uses the term to describe one who had adapted to the urban lifestyle, and could not hold their own if they were to have to go into survival mode. Robertson often calls his sons and daughters-in-law yuppies.^[20]
The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, a 'satire of yuppie excess'^[21]
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney^[22] (McInerney himself has been called 'the archetypal yuppie')^[23]
Family Ties, the TV show, features a young Michael J. Fox as the Republican coat-and-tie-wearing 'yuppie-in-the-making' Alex P. Keaton and his parents (played by Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney) as former hippies.^[24]
Fight Club, the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel and 1999 film adaptation, follows 'a disenchanted yuppie ... numbed by the sterile materialism of modern life.'^[25]
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.^[26]
Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz^[22] 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.^[27]^[28]^[29]^[30]^[31]^[32]^[33]
thirtysomething, U.S. TV series, seen as a representation of 'yuppie angst' and midlife crisis.^[34]
Stuff White People Like, a satirical blog that pokes fun at generalizations and yuppie culture.^[35]
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.^[36]
'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.^[37] Del's attempts at reinventing himself as a 'Yuppy' were a recurring theme over the next few seasons.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, a 1989 comedy, features neighbors Todd and Margo as the quintessential yuppies.^[38]
Married with Children, a Fox TV comedy sitcom (1987–97) featured the Bundy's neighbors: A couple led 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-neoconservativefeministbanker who loathes their blue-collar neighbors and she bullies Al Bundy, a failed shoe salesman.
Jeff Goldblum's character in the 1983 movie The Big Chill is a quintessential yuppie who sold out his 1960s hippie ideals for money.
The Last Days of Disco features male characters in the early 1980s who complain that they are referred to as yuppies.
King of the Hill features the Hill Family's next door neighbors, Kahn Souphanousinphone, Sr. and his wife, Minh. They are stereotypical yuppies based on that stereotype about Asian Americans since Khan and Minh are Laotians originally from Laos then moved to the U.S. through Anaheim, California, a known yuppie cultural center in Southern California and finally they ended up in fictional Arlen, Texas.
'Yer So Bad' song by Rock singer Tom Petty features the verse 'My sister got lucky, Married a Yuppie'
'Paranoid Android', a song from Radiohead's OK Computer album, features the lines 'The dust and the screaming/The yuppies networking'
'Ghosts of the Overdoses', a song from Damien Dempsey's 'Seize the Day' album, features the line 'From the cities, to make way for all the Yuppies'

Related terms

Reporter David Brooks characterized yuppies as bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos, in his book Bobos in Paradise - the term became somewhat popular in the 2000s.
A buppie is a black urban professional.^[39]
A huppie is a Hispanic/Latino urban professional.
DINKs (DINKY in the UK) is an acronym is for Dual Income, No Kids [Yet];^[40]^[41] at least one authority considers this to be synonymous with 'yuppie'.^[42]
A scuppie is a Socially Conscious Upwardly-Mobile Person (the term is not commonly used).^[43]^[44]
A Brazilianplayboy: while in first this term had the same usage as in English, from the 1990s to the 2010s it changed its meaning to a local version of yuppie which first appeared in Greater Rio de Janeiro. Stereotypes of the Brazilian playboys include being classist, womanizer and sexist, at least way more than their yuppie counterparts from more developed countries, which in turn is result of social anxieties of the poor and the lower middle class against the upper middle and upper classes, or being great seekers of social status and influence. They also, contrary to yuppies, do not fashionize intellectuality, and can or can not be socially liberal (social divisions between liberals and conservatives, specially in the upper classes, makes much less sense in Brazil than in the Anglosphere). In the 2000s, some lower middle and middle middle class Brazilians from Greater São Paulo formed a new urban subculture also called playboy which is little to not related to the former. Non-urban young professionals in Brazil are called by the slang agroboy.
A winder is a young individual, uninhibited with regards to its own social success,^[45] and willing to comply only to a very soft (and versatile) set of moral standards.^[46]
Yuppification often replaces the word gentrification; it is the act of making something, someone, or someplace appealing and thus marketable to yuppie tastes.^[47]
Yuppie flu was a sometimes derisive, and inaccurate, term applied to chronic fatigue syndrome.^[48]
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, reckless driving on highways and overreacting in panic.
Yuppie Puppy, derogatory term, synonymous with Malibu Barbie or Malibu Ken i.e. the vacuous overly spoiled and narcissistic offspring of the aforementioned Yuppies.
Yuppiedom, a mockery of the term 'kingdom' or a place of yuppies.
Yuppie Values, also a mocking of core beliefs, trends and behavioral traits of yuppies as more of upper-income liberalism or an evolution of 'Hippie values' about trying new or exotic things while pursuing a money-based life.

References

External links

Yuppies entry in the St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture

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http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id295.htm

1984 Topics Professional employees, City and town life Publisher New York: Pocket Books Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; internetarchivebooks; china Digitizing sponsor Internet Archive Contributor Internet Archive Language English.

'First there came the hippies, politically and culturally rebellious participants in the counterculture of the Sixties. And then there were the preppies, materialistic and upscale, obsessed with status, who believed the privileges they took for granted were due them thanks to an accident of birth. Yuppies melded what they deemed the best of both worlds -- the materialism of the preppies absent the snobbery and the self-absorbed perfectionism of the hippie without the anti-establishment mindset. The term 'Yuppie' was first used in print by Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene in a March 1983 piece on Jerry Rubin, a hippie-turned-yuppie, and was bandied about extensively in the 1984 presidential campaign in which Colorado senator Gary Hart, a contender for the Democratic nomination, seemed tailor-made to appeal to the fiscally conservative but socially liberal yuppie voter.'

'According to Newsweek, 1984 was the 'Year of the Yuppie' -- the young urban professional whose lifestyle and outlook made him/her a synecdoche of Reagan's America. Yuppies were, according to leftist Fredric Jameson, 'a new petit bourgeoisie [whose] cultural practices and values . . . have articulated a useful dominant ideological and cultural paradigm' for American society in the 1980s. Yuppies were lambasted as excessively consumptive in their pursuit of the American Dream without much regard for those left behind. The yuppie heyday was short-lived; critics gleefully described the stock market crash of October 1987 as the consequence of yuppie folly -- and the beginning of the yuppie's end. On November 11, 1987, 20,000 attended a 'Save the Yuppie' concert given (tongue in cheek) by U2 at Justin Herman Plaza in the heart of San Francisco's financial district. After the crash, a popular joke was that the difference between a pigeon and a yuppie stockbroker was that the pigeon could still make a deposit on a new Mercedes. 'Yuppie' quickly became a derogatory term, but there can be little doubt that the yuppie phenomenon had a lasting cultural impact.'
'Nearly three-fourths of yuppie households were headed by couples, and a yuppie sub-set called DINKS -- double-income, no-kids couples -- was identified. Married or not, DINKS worked long hours at professional/managerial jobs, postponed having children for the sake of their careers, and had lots of discretionary income which they used in consuming conspicuously, like good yuppies did. Yuppies often worked so hard that they had little time for sex; more than one DINK couple admitted that they had an answering machine at home just so they could talk to each other at least once a day.'

'Obsession with career was a hallmark of yuppie culture. As The Yuppie Handbook (1984) pointed out, work had to be personally meaningful, emotionally satisfying, and a vehicle for self-expression. Since staying busy was de rigueur for a yuppie, advertisers targeting them found the print media more effective than television -- a yuppie was likely to record China Beach or Moonlighting for later viewing and fast-forward through the commercials anyway. MetropolitanHome and New Yorker magazines were authentic yuppie publications. Meanwhile, upscale mail-order catalogs proliferated. Richard Thalheimer's San Francisco-based The Sharper Image earned a whopping $78 million in 1983 as the 'ultimate toy store for yuppies.' From espresso-cappucino makers and the Corby trouser press to a bathtub hydrospa and a $5,000 tanning bed, the most popular yuppie items had to be useful as well as fun to own. A definite yuppie decor developed -- postmodern art, tile bathrooms, wood floors, bare brick walls, pastel colors, glass bricks, potted plants and stainless steel Sub-Zero refrigerators were in vogue. Yuppies led the way in gentrifying urban neighborhoods, turning warehouse lofts and run-down brownstones into valuable real estate.'

'The work of talented young writers like Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis and Jill Eisenstadt created a yuppie literary explosion, McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City was a huge success in 1984 and became a hit movie starring Michael J. Fox, Phoebe Cates and Kiefer Sutherland. With witty and fast-paced writing, McInerney subtly portrayed the downside of frenetic yuppie existence through a protagonist who resorts to 'Bolivian marching powder' (cocaine) to help him keep up with a life in the fast lane. Bret Easton Ellis explored the foibles of the 'New Lost Generation' in his bestseller, Less Than Zero (1985), while Eisenstadt scored big with From Rockaway in 1987. In Diary of a Yuppie (1986), Louis Auchincloss, though not one himself, explored yuppie morality. Some critics sniped that yuppie fiction was too trendy and superficial. While skeptics agreed that McInerney and other members of the literary 'brat pack' were fresh and talented voices, they complained that these chroniclers of Eighties lifestyle fiction had very little to say of lasting worth. Yet their work endures as a window into the yuppie phenomenon.'

'It seemed that many yuppies suffered pangs of guilt for being so obsessed with status. Some were ex-hippies, and the passage from hippie to yuppie was perfectly illustrated in the film The Big Chill, whose characters mourn their compromised values and missed opportunities for love and parenthood. The reconstructed yuppie was represented by the lead character in the hit television series Northern Exposure, which premiered in 1990; Dr. Joel Fleischman reluctantly embraces the abundantly anti-materialist values held by the eccentric but happy residents of Cicely, Alaska. As the decade came to a close, the term yuppie became synonymous with greed, self-absorption and a lack of social conscience, and no one would admit to being one. But in hindsight yuppies weren't all bad. As Hendrik Hertzberg, editor of the New Republic wrote, 'The fact is that . . . yuppies have better taste than yesterday's well-off young adult Americans, are less ostentatious in their display of wealth, . . . set a far better example of healthful living, and are more tolerant.' Here's the bottom line -- today many Americans still live the yuppie lifestyle, or wish they did.'

A 1986 survey by Louis Harris and Associates found the following:

73% of Americans believed that yuppies were primarily intent on making more money; 81% of yuppies agreed that they were.

72% of the public believed that yuppies were more concerned with their own needs than with the needs of others; the same percentage of yuppies agreed.

70% of those surveyed thought yuppies bought flashy cars and clothes in order to set themselves apart from others; 81% of yuppies said this was so.

Overall, the article views Yuppies as career driven, money obsessed, materialistic and self-absorbed individuals who dominated the 1980's. In the article the author quotes an idea from the New Republic, stating the healthier lifestyle of yuppies and expresses the difference between them and today's young adult. However, in the trailer for Bright Lights, Big City we see a more extravaggant lifestyle being lead, involving drugs and alcohol.

HistoryAlthough the 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.' Joseph Epstein was credited for coining the term in 1982, although this is contested and it is claimed that the first printed appearance of the word was in a May 1980 Chicago magazine article by Dan Rottenberg. 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 (which met at Studio 54 to soft classical music) joke that Rubin had 'gone from being a yippie to being a '. The headline of Greene's story was From Yippie to Yuppie. 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 effected 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'.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'.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 magazine proclaimed the death of the yuppie in a mock obituary.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'.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 'e’s a shape-shifter. He finds ways to reenter the American psyche.' Victor Davis Hanson also recently wrote in National Review very critically of yuppies.Read more about this topic:Other articles related to ' history'.

Official Preppy Handbook Online

Famous quotes containing the word history:“. In a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone. 1929)“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt.

Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica. ”— (18911960)“Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind. ”— (19221974).