What's a yuppie?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been reading the Am I a homophobe? thread, and I don’t want to hijack it any further.

Someone suggested a Volvo is a yuppie car. Or, a new Volvo is a yuppie car, with an old Volvo being a hippie car.

I read that and was about to disagree, as I have a new Volvo, and I’m not a yuppie. But then I realized that I don’t actually think I know what a yuppie is, and perhaps I AM a yuppie. I assumed I would have needed way more polo shirts and tennis sweaters to be a yuppie, but I really have no idea.

So, does one become a yuppie simply by virtue of having a yuppie car? Am I a fake yuppie? Do I need to start cultivating friendships with people named Buffy and Chip?

What sez you, SDMB?

2

Yuppie is short for a young urban professional. If you live in the city, have a college degree, and a white collar job, you most likely are a yuppie.

3

Actually, it stands for Young Upwardly-mobile Professional.

4

Hmmm, I’d always heard it as young urban professional as well. Could there be more than one definition?

5

It sounds like you’re confusing yuppies with preppies.

6

I was the one who made the volvo=yuppy reference in the interest of being funny (not that I succeeded). I was simply reaching for some yuppy stereotype (which I do not particularly believe). Thus, I would argue that owning a volvo (or any particular car) does not make one a yuppy. Moreover, I thought yuppy was sort of an 80’s term that’s kind of dated these days (I tend to think of Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties). Are there any yuppies these days?

7

When the term was first used in the 60s/70s, it was always described with the “upwardly-mobile” definition, in the sense of people who knew where they were going and didn’t mind stepping on other people to get there.

It’s possible that the definition may have changed over the years, but that is the original one.

8

I agree its kind of an 80s term. These days we have DINKs (dual-income no kids) but DINKs aren’t necessarily social climbers, they just have more disposable income since they don’t have kids, and that gives people as much reason as they need to hate them. :slight_smile: But I wouldn’t call them a cultural phenomenon the way yuppies were.

9

I always thought of it as Young, UPwardly-mobile Professional, but The Yuppie Handbook says Young Urban Professional, and Wikipedia supports both possibilities.

10

The u in yuppie implies “urban”, and I don’t really consider those living in suburban McMansions to be true yuppies. Being upper middle class and under 45 simply isn’t enough to be a yuppie, IMHO.

When I was living in Denver at the peak of that city’s affluenzia in the late 1990s/early 2000s, there was a distinct difference between the young professional urban upper middle class, and the young professional* suburban* upper middle class.

A young suburban couple with lots of disposable income throws it in a somewhat different direction than those living in the inner city. Let’s picture a happily married couple, both lawyers or working for Janus Funds or something like that, living in Highlands Ranch. What are their spending and personal habits like?

House: 4,000 square foot tract mansion on a cul-de-sac. Three bedrooms, five full bathrooms, his-and-hers walk-in closets, vaulted ceilings and Palladian windows.
Furniture: Thomasville, Ethan Allen.
Vacation: skiing, Las Vegas, Mexico, Caribbean.
Toys: “smart house” with expensive home theater system.
Dining: higher-end chains (Macaroni Grill, P.F. Chang’s, California Pizza Kitchen, etc.).
Vehicle: large American SUV.
Music: classic rock.
Clothes: higher-end mall stores.

Let’s have a look at the yuppies in the city limits … a happily married couple, both working in marketing at some company whose name ends in “ient,” which “offers robust- scalable, mission critical end-to-end e-business solutions for Global 1000 customers.”

House: 1,500 square foot loft in LoDo or an Arts and Crafts-style bungalow in a one-time middle class neighborhood. Original woodwork with built-ins, two bedrooms, one bathroom, tiny closets and $3,000 armoires.
Furniture: Restoration Hardware, Quatrine.
Vacation: Provence, Tuscany, Patagonia, Napa County, South Africa Wine Route.
Toys: Viking oven, Sub-Zero refrigerator, Miele dishwasher.
Dining: Very trendy urban restaurants with well-known chefs and servers. Really cares about who happens to be working in the kitchen, as reported in pretentious Westword restaurant reviews.
Vehicle: luxury Japanese or German SUV.
Music: smooth jazz or AAA (adult album alternative, i.e. acoustic, folk and jam rock).
Clothes: REI, EMS, Patagonia.

There’s still a few old-school 1980s Reagan/Thatcher yuppies around. They’re the originals; BMW-driving greed-driven folks who took delight in hostile takeovers, a la Wall Street. They’re idealized in stock photography of corporate types shaking hands, running through O’Hare, or with an inspired “I’m a visionary” look upwards towards the top of a shiny office tower. They’re still the ones that yammer on about “excellence,” “total quality management,” and “just-in-time delivery,” who have Successories posters on their office walls. Today’s yuppies, on the other hand, talk about “robust data warehousing solutions” and have French advertising poster reproductions in place of the old-school yupster’s inspirational handshake image.

11

Both young urban professionals and young upwardly mobile professionals are acceptable, but young urban professionals is more commonly used.

My favorite story about this: Back in 1984, TIME magazine wrote a story in which it referred to young upwardly mobile professionals as “yumpies”. Those of us who were already using the term yuppies (which had been in circulation since 1981) laughed at how wildly out of touch TIME was. At that point , we thought of yuppies (the common phrase) as young urban professionals, and yumpies, the ridiculously non-hip term used by TIME, as young upwardly mobile professionals. When I saw people referencing young upwardly mobile professionals in this thread, I immediately thought, “No, those are yumpies.”

Time, March 26, 1984: Here come the Yumpies (man, I love the internet)

Yuppie also has a specific connection to the Baby Boomer generation. Some of the radical baby boomers in the '60’s had been called yippies (from Youth International Party). When these boomers grew up, got jobs, and became more conservative and concerned about money and status, they became the yuppies. Yuppie, which was originally a neutral demographic term, became more and more negative, associated with the desire for money and material goods above all things (which fit right into '80’s culture).

Since the term was generational, it pretty much ended with the '80’s, as the boomers moved into their forties and developed other concerns and interests.

And for completeness, TIME’s obituary for yuppies (“DIED: 1991”). At least they finally got the term right. :wink:

TIME, April 18, 1991: The Birth and – Maybe – Death of Yuppiedom

ETA: I would not call either of the groups that elmwood describes “yuppies”. They don’t fit into that boomer demographic, especially not the ones working for tech companies. Those may be the newer generation of “affluent professionals”.

12

Elmwood - I love it! Great representation.

I dunno, I’m a 30-something, 20’s were a blur, upper middle class fun loving environmentalist. I like nice things be cause they last longer not because it say’s North Face or Heli Hansen on it. I ditched the Chevy Avalanche for a German engineered car. I have a jeep CJ-7 out back that can pull just about anything I want. I’ve got a boat, and a slip. We live no where near the city, and only go out to eat when we feel like it. If we dine out it’s stilled called a treat in our house. No children.

I don’t consider myself a yuppie. More of an Urban Hippie.

13

Around these parts, a “yuppie” is basically the opposite of a townie. In the town where I live, a lot of the old blue-collar population has been displaced by gentrification, and the gentrifiers (who tend to be young and tend to be white-collar workers) are disparaged as “yuppies.” In fact, you’ll sometimes see graffiti that says, “Kill the yuppies.” All of which means that I’m a potential homicide victim, even though I’m no longer so young, and not quite as childless as when I moved in.

14

gigi, I want to mildly disagree with the Subaru/yuppie connection. Some places see it almost a necessity (Buffalo, New York) to have a 4-wheel drive vehicle. In most other places, that same Subaru would be borderline yuppie, though.

15

The references cited in Dictionary.com overwhelmingly define yuppie as Young Urban Professional. One cite even indicates that yuppie ousted competition from ‘yumpie’ and ‘yap’ (young aspiring professional).

16

Thank Og! I’m a townie.

17

Have you gone back in time to the late-eighties-to-mid nineties? If not, well, I suppose things take a bit of time to propagate to the sticks.

18

At one time (1982ish) a Volvo was the yuppie car. It has been displaced by SUV and BMW. Although a Volvo wagon is still pretty yuppish.

What is a yuppie? Perhaps this joke will help illustrate what a yuppie is.

A yuppie parks his new BMW at the curb and opens the door.
As he opens the door, a large truck tears the door and his left arm off.
In shock he looks the car and cries “My BMW, my BMW.”
A good Samaritan comes to his aid, and says “Sir you have to sit down, and let me help you, you arm has been torn off.”
The yuppie looks at where his arm was and screams
“OH MY GOD, MY ROLEX!”

People that are more concerned about the label rather than the function are yuppies.

19

See, this is what I thought too.

I mean, I’m Gen-X. I’m a SLACKER!! Not a yuppie! :smiley:

Further, I have a hard time associating my safe, well built, reasonably priced Volvo with the sort of excessive consumption that one typically thinks of when one thinks yuppie.

20

So what do I call everyone in the entire damn city of Atlanta?