Our student body as a whole is undeniably privileged. In 2009, McGill conducted a demographic survey which revealed the general background of the student population as largely low-debt, and in high socioeconomic standing: “[McGill students’] relatively low level of debt and their parents’ relatively high educational attainment suggest that, as a group, they are from relatively privileged backgrounds. It further suggests that McGill undergraduates are not as socioeconomically diverse as undergraduates at other Canadian universities,” the survey read.

This relative affluence is bound to have an effect on the student body, and on the university’s vibe as a whole. But to link a privileged demographic with our hipster culture might seem irrelevant, or even counterintuitive. Where is the connection between a bourgeois upbringing and the often alternatively-dressed students who attend McGill?

Though now a clichéd label, ‘hipsters’ can be found in every McGill faculty, in every organization, at every samosa sale. Hell, even some of our professors are more hip than our hometown friends.

Pierre Bourdieu is a sociologist and cultural theorist who can help connect this gap. He is known for examining the relationship between taste and economic class, and for rejecting the one-dimensional notion that each class-grouping defines their taste and consumption patterns by displaying their corresponding wealth-status. Instead, Bourdieu claims, taste doesn’t directly signify our class, but rather helps us distinguish ourselves from other classes. We define ourselves through our relations toward (and against) others, through what we wear, who we listen to, where we live, and so on. Stick with me on this.

Each class, according to Bourdieu, generally defines its taste in order to echo the class above them, in an unconscious effort to ‘transcend’ into a higher class: the working class dress to emulate the middle class, the middle class dress to emulate the upper class; however, Bourdieu also presents a twist in this linear chain – the upper class (being at the top of the chain) will often cycle back to the working class for inspiration. This cyclical model could explain the dichotomy between economically privileged McGill students and their modest, scruffy, hipster aesthetic choices. In a broader sense, it also explains why dive-bar-inhabiting hipsters are also big consumers, a claim made undeniable with the presence of pricey, hip mega-stores like Urban Outfitters. Upper class youth are reappropriating working class style, and are willing to pay whatever’s necessary to do so.

Bourdieu’s notion, that taste is a method of distinction from the lower class, can also explain the ironic distancing from mainstream culture that is so common amongst hipsters.

Bourdieu’s notion, that taste is a method of distinction from the lower class, can also explain the ironic distancing from mainstream culture that is so common amongst hipsters. In dissociating themselves from mainstream (or middle class) culture though their disdain for Miley Cyrus, hipsters assert their place in the upper class. Furthermore, their contradictory ‘working class’ aesthetic choices (cheap beer, beat up t-shirts, and cigarettes) act as a novelty and an opportunity to show their ability to pull these things off. Perhaps this ability is the meaning of ‘cool.’

Yet beyond their reappropriation of working-class style, many hipsters maintain links to their upper class roots: with their appetite for trendy restaurants, Herschel backpacks, and access to quality higher education. In the case of McGill students, the latter is the most obvious example (though Herschel backpacks make a close second). Referencing Bourdieu’s idea, while the working class like ‘what tastes good,’ the upper class like ‘what’s in good taste.’ McGill hipsters, it seems, straddle both categories: indulging in the novelty of working-class style, while subtly maintaining their elite social status.

Privileged students are able to convert their economic capital into cultural capital, setting the cultural parameters for the rest of the community.

But does any of this matter? The problem, I believe, lies on an ideological level, in which money ultimately triumphs. Privileged students are able to convert their economic capital into cultural capital, setting the cultural parameters for the rest of the community. Despite hipster culture’s celebration of some aspects of the working class, it still condemns and alienates the middle class, and ultimately, although not intentionally, maintains elite upper class values and advantages. And while not every hipster at McGill is privileged, the privileged students – as the dominant class – set the cultural norms.

Bourdieu’s theories provide a coherent way to understand much of McGill’s complex cultural structure, which privileges the upper class through taste and style. But while our education may make us aware of the implications of this on an academic level, it doesn’t enable us to escape participation in the class system in our everyday lives. I still love hipster culture, perhaps because I am part of the privileged student body, with my American Apparel jeans and brand new Doc Martens. Social analysis provides a curious view, however, into the prevailing class dynamics at McGill, revealing a quiet elite, concealed beneath consignment jean jackets and dusty copies of The Communist Manifesto.

Sarah MacArthur is a U2 Cultural Studies student. She can be reached at sarah.macarthur@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Constantly feeling like an ‘other’ among my blue-eyed friends was kind of exhausting, especially in an environment that felt so much like the set of Sixteen Candles (if you’re familiar with 1980s American teen-flicks, I was given the token role of Long Duk Dong by even some of my closest friends). Let me recall my affectionate ninth-grade nickname, given to me by the cool, older boys in high school: “Chinatown.” Cheers, jerks.

When I was 17, my family moved to Toronto, and shortly after, I began my first semester at McGill. I was astounded by the multiple ethnicities surrounding me in both cities. Suddenly, with a measly half-Asian background, I actually embodied more of the ‘Western-standard’ physical body than many of my peers. And nobody seemed to give a fuck.

Why was I so frightened by being placed into just one ethnic category – specifically my Asian side? Was this a sign of my internalized racism?

It was then that I truly began to embrace my Taiwanese heritage without fear of being mocked for it (be it in ‘good fun’ or not). I could identify just as much with my burns-in-the-sun, folk-music-loving dad’s side, as with my raven-haired, Mandarin-speaking mom’s side. It felt like a perfect balance – and for a while, I lived out this delusion of accepting myself, of being completely enlightened on matters of diversity.

But an interesting thing happened to me the other night. I was out at a bar for a friend’s birthday, talking to some men I didn’t know, and didn’t intend to get to know – admittedly for my own validation. One of the men asked about my background, something I’ve experienced before; however, he acted quite surprised with my half-and-half reply. “You could be full,” he remarked, before proceeding to compliment me in that pseudo-charming way that unfamiliar people in bars do. But I had tuned him out – I was shocked that he only saw one side of my treasured dual-ethnicity. I could feel an odd sinking sensation of dissatisfaction, though I had consumed a few too many pints to rationalize why. The guy was still blabbering away about something when I turned around and walked away, sheepishly floundering by the bar for the rest of the night.

The dissatisfied feeling stuck with me for a couple of days until I was forced to confront it. Why would such a small, passing comment bother me so much? Why was I so frightened by being placed into just one ethnic category – specifically my Asian side? Was this a sign of my internalized racism? Was my self worth as a mixed-race person threatened by the idea that I couldn’t cling to the white half of my genes?

Romanticization might also moonlight as racial fetishism, in a moderate, ‘safe’ form. At least in terms of half-white mixed people, it seems that they are perceived as not ‘too ethnic,’ but just different enough to fetishize as exotic.

The Western world seems to have recently romanticized mixed-raced people, who are appearing in fashion, film, and television ever more often. But this romanticization might also moonlight as racial fetishism, in a moderate, ‘safe’ form. At least in terms of half-white mixed people, it seems that they are perceived as not ‘too ethnic,’ but just different enough to fetishize as exotic. This is problematic in its exclusion of other people of colour – not only in its fetishization of arbitrary ethnic origins, but also its ultimate coveting of whiteness as a necessary element for acceptable and attractive figures in society.

My older brother of three years looks a lot more like my blonde-haired, green-eyed dad. People compliment him for looking ‘so handsome, so white’, as if the two adjectives are synonymous. Yet I’m sure he would not receive such compliments if he were purely white (because of the lack of fetish), or purely Asian (because of non-inclusive Western beauty standards).

It is this strange phenomenon that underscores just how volatile one’s self-worth can be, based on arbitrary messages determined by the dominant narratives in society. It also exemplifies how deeply ingrained these ideologies can be, even when one thinks they’ve faced, and shed them. As a mixed-race person, I’m still struggling to accept myself, not only battling against the racism I’ve experienced, but also the self-directed racism that I perpetuate through these fetishistic, racist, internalized ideals.

Sarah MacArthur is a U2 Cultural Studies student. She can be reached at sarah.macarthur@mail.mcgill.ca.

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