White,Male,and Bartending in Detroit: Masculinity Work in a Hipster Scene

Abstract

The hipster scene in Detroit, Michigan, is explored via participant observation and in-depth interviews. Participants used hipster norms as a resource for masculinity dilemmas, including a lack of white- or blue-collar jobs and stable female partners. The analysis examines how these men successfully enacted their progressive values in some arenas (read: gender) but not in others (race relations). More specifically, their emphasis on the creative class, the bicycle as an attainable status symbol, and “bro-mances” served as masculinity balms. These strategies are examples of how homophobia and violence are not always the response to “threatened” masculinity. At the same time, participants enacted a definition of community and specific spatial practices that resulted in a subculture with a white majority within a city with a black majority. This work demonstrates how ethnography is a powerful tool for studying the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in subcultures.

Keywords

hipster subcultures masculinity race class Detroit

What do we know about hipsters? Arsel and Thompson (2011) provide a history of the term “hipster,” tracing it all the way back to “hep cat” jazz musicians in the 1930s. Schiermer (2014) describes modern hipsters as “young, white and middle class, typically between 20 and 35 years old. They contribute to the ‘gentrification’ of former ‘popular,’ working-class, ethnic or ‘exotic’ neighbourhoods in the big Western cities” (170) by supporting pricey coffee shops and trendy bars. Indeed, much of the academic research on hipsters has focused on them as a consumer segment (i.e., Arsel and Thompson 2011; Rademacher and Casey 2019). This work focuses on what hipsters wear, what they buy, and how they are marketed to despite the negative connotation of “hipster.” Other academic work has tried to define hipsters by examining how they are discussed online (Maly and Varis 2016) or by journalists and the popular press (Schiermer 2014).

Much of the work on hipsters seems to have a methodological bias: because hipsterdom is assumed to be only about style, the analysis focuses on fashion, markers of taste, and cultural commentary. But in this work I argue that there is much more to hipsters than merely style. In fact, the hipsters I spent time with in Detroit, MI, developed an immersive, exclusive way of life. One notable exception to academic studies that focus on the fashion of hipsters is Lloyd’s (2006) book on neo-bohemians in Chicago. His in-depth study explored why artists and hipsters were drawn to the Wicker Park neighborhood, how the neighborhood changed over time, and the lure and downsides of a bohemian lifestyle. This study expands on his foundation by providing new insights into how gender and race are constructed in the hipster subculture. Specifically, I will argue that the men I studied used hipsterdom as a masculinity balm. Hipsterdom was embraced because it solved an increasingly common masculinity dilemma: the inability to secure a white- or blue-collar job that enables middle-class consumption levels. At the same time, they enacted specific practices to create and maintain a subculture with a white majority in a city with a black majority.

This project thus documents the identity work of white, middle-class men who have not secured jobs that meet the norms of hegemonic masculinity. These men have embraced subcultural possibilities for cultivating narratives and practices of a more meaningful existence. I will examine how hipster norms, such as aspiring to the creative class, using the bicycle as a status symbol, and embracing bro-mances as a source of stability, are used for masculine identity work. Then, I will consider the racialized limits of their subcultural project by examining how they construct and maintain a mainly white group in a city with a black majority. The article concludes by considering the agency and middle-class resources that are mostly unacknowledged by these men but that provide an economic cushion. But first, I turn to a brief review of subcultural studies and how they have considered gender and race.

Subcultural Studies

First studied by the Chicago School, Cohen ([1955] 2005) popularized the term “subcultures” and conceptualized them as a means of rational problem solving for particular groups. He argued that if an individual was faced with a problem that called for a solution that was socially unacceptable, and the problem was serious enough, she or he would opt into a subculture that sanctioned the necessary behavior. For instance, women who danced with strangers for pay in the city were indulging in behavior that would be unacceptable in their hometowns—while escaping a lack of marriage partners and job opportunities in the process (Cressy [1932] 2005). Subcultures continue to command scholarly attention because they offer their members alternative forms of existence that counter dominant ways of being, thus evoking mainstream responses ranging from outrage to envy (Blackman 2005). As a result, the shape of society is clarified in the struggle between insurgent and counter-insurgent groups. In this way, subcultural members are simultaneously “inside” and “outside”—they are embedded in local and national cultures they cannot ignore, but they also create specialized mores and commonsense notions of the world that depart from broader norms.

The Birmingham School ushered in the second phase of subcultural study with its 1964 founding. They also saw subcultures as attractive for members because they addressed real problems. However, they argued that subcultures offered “magical solutions” for economic issues too complex to actually be solved by a subculture (Cohen 1972, cited by Hall and Jefferson 2006, ix). Unlike the ethnographic work of the Chicago School, members of the Birmingham School tended to focus on aesthetic and political issues surrounding subcultural style and its media representations. This was an important new direction in subcultural studies because it focused on the political—and symbolically mediated—nature of consumption and fashion. Moreover, members of the Birmingham School tended to view subcultures as a means of working-class resistance to mainstream cultural hegemony. Hebdige’s ([1979] 2005) study of the creatively defiant urban “punks” is the quintessential example of this work. He argued that the 1970s-era punks were engaging in a “semiotic warfare” that involved subverting the symbolic meaning of mainstream clothing and style (2005, 126, quoting Eco 1972). Significantly for the current analysis, however, Hebdige’s emphasis on “reading” symbols and their codes led him to purposefully avoid ethnographic methods and instead present semiotic interpretations with little reference to the thoughts or feelings of subcultural members themselves.

The third phase of subcultural study, the Post-Subcultural phase, critiqued the Birmingham School’s romanticization of subcultural activity as inherently resistant, and its assumption that generative hegemonic norms exist (Weinzierl and Muggleton 2003). Instead, Post-Subcultural studies understood both “mainstream” cultures and subcultures as fluid, complex, and interdependent phenomena. They rejected the belief that subcultural affiliation was determined only by one’s class. In this school of thought, individuals can choose to drop in and out of a variety of subcultures through their consumption choices, and signal their often temporary, simultaneous, and competing affiliations with multiple subcultures through the display of artifacts and the proper bodily comportment. Subcultural membership is, in theory, open to anyone who can perform the preferred mannerism, demeanor, and consumption patterns. Unlike Hebdige’s conception of subcultural style as a means of resisting mainstream norms, Post-Subcultural theorists focus on the intersubjective meanings of style as developed among the members of a subculture. Thornton’s (1996) analysis of United Kingdom club culture is an exemplar of this approach because she utilized Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital to argue that members of the urban club scene used subcultural (i.e., relatively autonomous) capital to make distinctions and create hierarchies of meaning within that scene.

This study contributes to the long line of subcultural studies by illuminating how masculinity and race are enacted in a current subculture. One of the earliest critiques of the Birmingham School was that the vast majority of their subcultural analyses focused on men without focusing on their gender (McRobbie and Garber [1977] 2005). At first, calls for more sophisticated attention to gender were answered with studies of women (i.e., McRobbie [1985] 2005). More recent work focused on how subcultures can be rich sites for masculinity work. For instance, Beal’s work on skateboarders showed how subcultures can create room for alternative masculinities, while still embracing “patriarchal relations” (1996, 212) that exclude women. Similarly, Thorpe’s (2010) work on elite snowboarders found that “women as objects of ridicule, humiliation, and abuse helps strengthen fraternal bonds and reinforce male domination” (188). Outside the arena of sports, Cohen’s (2018) recent study of youth gangs in North Thailand showed how male gang members used ritualized violence in order to gain subcultural capital. The problematic nature of the masculinities enabled and constructed in these subcultures fits the theory that men whose privilege has been threatened will react with sexism, racism, and homophobia (Anderson 2009). Reflecting back on the germinal Resistance Through Rituals and subcultural studies in general, Hall and Jefferson (2006) argue that “the effects of de-industrialization, casualization and job insecurity on young working class men, in the context of shifting gender and race relations, has been little short of disastrous, as study after study reveals. . . . The response to all this on the part of many white males is likely to be a defensive accentuation of the worst, most regressive traits of traditional masculinity and a complex and contradictory racism” (xxvii-xxviii).

Despite that acknowledgment of racism as one possible reaction to masculinity dilemmas, subcultural studies have also been critiqued for an insufficient attention to race. Jensen (2018) notes that the Birmingham School’s focus on class led them to treat gender, race, and other facets of identity as secondary concerns. He then argues that Post-Subcultural Studies went too far in the other direction; instead of class reductionism, they treated subcultural members as free agents and ignored or downplayed structural inequality altogether. Scholars such as Hollingworth (2015) have convincingly argued that this is a mistake because “subcultural capital is always already classed, raced and gendered, meaning not everyone can perform it” (1244) and we must explore “how class, race and gender are produced, resisted and transformed in and through these groups” (1251). This study attempts to do so by, for example, examining how the hipster subculture constructed and maintained a white majority in a city with a black majority.

Overall, this study contributes to the literature on subcultural masculinities by examining a middle-class, liberal subculture that claims to reject sexism, racism, and homophobia.¹ The men I interviewed were especially illuminating because they failed to meet multiple norms of hegemonic masculinity. Connell (1995) coined the term “hegemonic masculinity” to specify the type of masculinity most responsible for the continuation of patriarchy in contemporary culture. This concept is important for understanding the identity work in this project because the men I interviewed might conventionally exist—at other historical moments, and in other cultural scenes—at the top of the racial, class, and gender hierarchies. However, they failed to meet hegemonic norms in at least three ways. First, they did not have white- or blue-collar jobs, but instead tended to work in the service industry. Work has been constructed as a crucial aspect of white American masculinity that gives life meaning (Ashcraft and Flores 2000). Ideally, white middle-class men are expected to find a career that fulfills and challenges them as individuals and provides enough income to meet rising standards of consumption (Buzzanell and Turner 2003). As bartenders, waiters, or other service workers, they did not draw on their work as a primary identity resource. One participant was unemployed, so paid labor was not an identity option for him at all. Second, and perhaps relatedly, the men I studied were not husbands, fathers, or in long-term romantic relationships with women. They could not be patriarchs, at least in the conventional sense, without a family to preside over. And, third, the men I interviewed did not display homophobia, and some celebrated their homosexuality. At particular times in American history, the performance of homophobia has been a crucial facet of masculinity because it supposedly demonstrated heterosexuality (Anderson 2009). Both the gay and straight men that I interviewed rejected this norm, which is surprising. As noted above, one may have predicted an increase in homophobia as a way to bolster their “insufficient” masculine status, but instead they performed acts traditionally marked as inappropriate for straight men.

This study therefore examines how a traditionally privileged group of white, middle-class men responds to a masculinity dilemma rooted in a lack of economic resources. It is important to understand the daily lives of these men because they demonstrate a response to a dilemma that is increasingly common in post-industrial American society. Although official unemployment is low, the percentage of men who have dropped out of the labor force has increased (Winship 2017), and “the largest and fastest-growing sector of the economy is in low-paid, ‘service class’ jobs” (Ivanova 2018). Working retail, brewing coffee, and bartending are all jobs that are often treated as though they are only temporary positions for a contingent workforce composed of marginal groups such as teenagers and college students (Klein 2002). Labor organizing has been minimal in this sphere because of strong corporate resistance, and the fact that workers themselves may not want to admit that their career is truly in the service sector. However, the men I interviewed have found a “solution”—at least for the time being—for coping with the problem of being unable to meet white, middle-class American consumption norms.

Methods

This study was part of a larger year-long project that examined hipsterdom in Detroit, Michigan, Brooklyn, New York, and online using in-depth interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis. I started by analyzing Vice magazine, Pitchfork.com, and HipsterRunoff.com to distill the most prominent themes in the national hipster scene. These texts sensitized me to particular issues as I began my fieldwork in Detroit. I also interviewed eight individuals in New York City as a means to understand the general phenomenon of hipsterdom. The core of this particular project, however, focuses on interviews and fieldwork conducted with young white men in Detroit. I focused my recruitment on individuals who were raised in a suburb but chose to move to Detroit. This research was greatly enabled, and partially inspired, by my friendship with “Albert” (pronounced al-bear).² Albert and I attended high school together in a suburb thirty minutes from Detroit. After I formally started my research in Detroit, Albert served as a key informant and gatekeeper into his community. I ultimately conduced twenty-one interviews. This was made up of twelve male and nine female interviewees, with an average age of 25.7 years (youngest = 21, oldest = 33). Fifteen identified as white or Caucasian. Two of the twenty-one respondents only provided their ethnicity (“Irish, English, Scottish, German, Ukrainian, and Cherokee” and “Mixed European”). One respondent identified as Caucasian/Hispanic, and another identified as black. Two interviewees chose not to answer.

Scott (2017) uses hipster as an umbrella term that could include fashionistas, trendoids, the creative class, neo-bohemians, bobos, cultural entrepreneurs, and cultural intermediaries. Similarly, my intention in using the term is not to define whether or not interviewees were “actually” hipsters, but to add to the academic literature on this “broad subgroup within the new petite bourgeoisie—those creating cultural micro-enterprises” (Scott 2017, 62). I argue that hipster is the best term, out of the many that are available, because it was the only term that was consistently brought up to refer to the group of people I interviewed in Detroit. This observation was validated through the interview process, as many interviewees told me that they had been called hipsters. I oriented myself to studying interviewees’ relationship with hipsterdom, whatever it may have been. Many interviewees did report subcultural membership, but rejected the hipster label. They did not coalesce around a subcultural term, but oriented themselves to a consistent set of shared meanings that differed from what they saw as mainstream norms. In addition, they engaged in recurring spatial practices that created strong in-group/out-group distinctions (discussed in the analysis below). Although I am imposing the term hipster as a means of conceptual clarity because interviewees avoided subcultural labels, rejecting labels is actually in line with hipster values that laud individuality and authenticity (Maly and Varis 2016). Indeed, this study shows that orientation to a subcultural label is no longer necessary for the successful construction of an exclusive subcultural affiliation.

In this project, I focused on the twelve white male interviewees. Of those twelve, four had attended some college, six had a Bachelor’s degree, two were currently working on an advanced degree, and one had attained a law degree. One was unemployed, six worked in a restaurant or bar, one worked in a library, one was in graduate school, one was a lawyer, and two described themselves as semi-employed because they worked as freelancers in creative industries (sound/studio engineering and film/video work). I decided to exclude the lawyer from this project because I wanted to examine the construction of masculinity for men unable to meet middle-class consumption norms. None of the interviewees disclosed receiving financial support from their families beyond paying for their education, and often expressed appreciation for the low cost of living in Detroit.

Interviewing was an important methodology for this project because I was interested in how individuals discursively constructed their identities. Interviews, and the narratives that arose in the process, were important for examining how people presented themselves through talk (Kuhn 2006). Furthermore, interviewing allowed me to ask participants about topics that were not otherwise observable (Lindlof and Taylor 2002), such as their work aspirations and future plans. The average interview length was 48 minutes (shortest = 25, longest = 91). In addition, participant observation in Detroit occurred during three visits that lasted a total of thirty days. During this period, I attempted to do whatever my participants were doing. Albert let me stay at his house, so I was able to be on roughly the same sleeping schedule as my participants. I took scratch notes in the field that resulted in 104 pages of typed, double-spaced field notes. Participant observation was an important complement to the interviews not only because it provided a deeper understanding of the scene but because it made visible contradictions between stated desires and actual practices.

Ultimately, this study aims to document the lives of particular men at a particular moment in time. How do these men discursively negotiate the tensions they experience between mainstream cultural expectations for well-paying jobs and conspicuous consumption, and the actual opportunities for relative dignity and coherence made available by their affiliation with a contemporary hipster subculture? How do they talk about their goals, and where do they see themselves in the future? What are the processes by which they create and maintain a mostly white subculture in a mostly black city?

Masculinity Work(s)

Living in the Subcultural Moment but Dreaming of the Creative Class

My interviewees followed the hipster tendency to discuss the future in vague terms, or to shun talking about the future all together. For instance, after I asked Scott if he planned to settle in Detroit, he explained, “I have no idea. I mean, I really, my plans for the future are vague at best. And really like, I kind of like it that way.” Similarly, Greg told me, “I’m woefully plan-less.” When I asked Jimmy how important his future work goals were to his everyday life, he replied straightforwardly, “I don’t have future work goals.” He did tell me that he would like to start some sort of business with a friend someday, but he had also come to peace with the fact that might not happen, and he believed he could continue to live happily as a bartender and support possible future children if he budgeted his expenses carefully. Overall, Jimmy presented himself as unconcerned with what might happen in the future and open to a variety of possibilities. He thought, for example, that he would make a “good father,” but doubted he would find someone to settle down with. Bartending was not his ideal career, but it would do; he would like to start a business, but only if he found a close friend as a partner, and so on.

Albert answered questions about his future in a similarly fuzzy way, but also expressed more anxiety about the possibility that he may not achieve his goals. When I asked Albert what he saw himself doing in 10 years, he started by stating, “Well, I never, ever think about that.” But he quickly divulged that he did have clear desires for his future life, but was afraid that they may not come to fruition:

Albert:

I know what I want to be doing in 10 years. I know what is likely to be happening in 10 years.

Author:

Are those two things different?

Albert:

They are different.

Author:

Ok. What would you wanna be doing?

Albert:

I wanna make this record label thing work. I know that it’s really hard to make money selling records and putting records out. But I wanna do that, I wanna work at the [local venue] every day and sell art and music and have a record store. I want to do that. That’s what I want to do. And I know what is likely, and I’ll probably be bartending at some bar in Detroit. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to be a cliché.

Albert clearly wanted to secure, or create, a career that would be personally meaningful to him, but he was also realistic about the obstacles in his way.

When I asked these men about their ideal careers, many revealed that they were very purposefully working to be part of what Florida (2002) calls the creative class. He defines the creative class to include, “people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or new creative content” (2002, 8). For Florida, the creative class signals American society’s shift away from manufacturing and offers workers the opportunity to find meaning in their jobs. In his view, we are entering an exciting, brave new world of entrepreneurialism where those with the education and skills to generate and market new ideas will succeed in the marketplace and find personal fulfillment. Scott’s study of “hipster capitalism” likewise found that “hipsters also profess interests in entrepreneurship and the conversion of cool into commerce. Here the hipster shifts from the world of consumption to the sphere of production” (2017, 62). My work supports these findings, as the men I spoke with oriented to similar ideas of entrepreneurialism and creativity.

Albert, Greg, Brian, Scott, and Zach all told me that they work on their creative endeavors almost daily, regardless of whether or not they constitute a source of income. Scott told me that his future work goals were a “very important” part of his everyday life. He clarified:

Even though a few questions back, I was pretty vague about future work goals [laugh] and keeping it pretty open. But no, they are, there are very, very important ones. You know, namely like in music. I mean, it’s kind of hard to like pin down, but it’s definitely in like keeping things progressing with my music and, you know, with my recording career, and so yeah, everyday there’s usually something towards that.

As a member of multiple bands and with experience as a sound engineer, Scott’s goals were both vague and completely targeted toward creative production. Likewise, Brian stated that “I really want at some point to make music my life” and he tried to “work towards that every day.” Albert explained that the competing demands of working on his musical pursuits and earning money structured his day: “I have my day so split in half. Everything in the beginning of my day I’m like chipping at like, ‘that’s what I want my life to be. I want that.’ And the last half of my day is like, ‘oh, this is my waiter gig.’”

Careers in the creative class seemed to be so appealing for these men because they would no longer require that they divide their energies in this way. Jobs in the creative class promise fulfillment through work, which is understandably attractive in a society that pressures men to invest heavily in their careers. Jordan talked about his decision to pursue art as a calling that he could not deny: “What I thought when I started going to school: if you’re going to school you have to get a degree that’s gonna make you some money, right? But it was beyond me to not be an artist.” Careers such as artist, record producer, or venue owner seemed to offer hipsters the holy grail of fulfillment: they could pursue a passion, spend time with friends, and earn an income. As Zach put it, “we’re trying to make our hobbies into our work goals.” Rather than attempt to get hired into the creative class, these men were trying to build a creative center that might spawn such occupational roles. This goal is well in line with the entrepreneurial drive associated with American masculinity, but instead of letting their personal lives be colonized by the corporate values of efficiency and profit, they made their personal interests fair game for independent ventures. Indeed, Brake ([1980] 2013, 86) found that the “fusion of the distinctions between work and leisure” was one way that middle-class subcultures differed from their working-class counterparts. The latter understood that unsatisfying work was necessary to fund their leisure, whereas the former tended to collapse work and play in their everyday life. Likewise, I found very little differentiation between friends, collaborators, and business partners.

While many hipsters aspired to be employed in the creative sector, most were still working low-paying jobs in the service sector. One of the ways that they managed this masculinity dilemma was by drawing on standards from the hipster scene that valued objects and knowledge that were more readily attainable. For instance, well-known markers of hipsterdom include collecting vinyl records, fetishizing old technologies (i.e., Polaroid cameras, cassettes), celebrating facial hair (especially full beards or ironic mustaches), and displaying knowledge of obscure music, all of which are inexpensive compared to the middle-class accruements of a large home and car. Next, I turn to one artifact that is lauded in both hipsterdom at large and in the Detroit subculture: the bicycle.

The Bicycle as an Attainable Status Symbol

Although hipsterdom is a notoriously fickle scene, with a rapidly changing standard of appropriate clothing and musical choices, the bicycle has been a relatively stable signifier of coolness. Fixed-gear bicycles, which are bicycles with a single gear that is locked in place, are particularly associated with hipsterdom, and are especially easy to build and repair (Goodman 2010). The hipsters in Detroit generally identified bicycling as their ideal form of transportation. When I asked Jake what he does on days he doesn’t have to work, he told me with a laugh, “I read and I ride my bike . . . is that all I do?” Brian explained that Albert had made him a bike and joked, “So now I’m a total hipster because I got a fixie.” Some interviewees emphasized that they especially enjoyed riding bikes because it went against the urban-cultural norm. Indeed, there are few things more anti-establishment, at least on a representational level, than rejecting automobile ownership in the Motor City. As Jordan told me with a laugh, “No one would ever have made a bike lane [in Detroit]; it would’ve impeded . . . the auto industry! They would’ve been like shot and thrown in the river!” Despite the city’s long lasting and well-known embrace of the car and the “Big Three” automobile manufacturers, or because of it, interviewees warmly expressed their preference for riding bikes, both as a means of transportation and of fun.

Importantly, however, embracing a subcultural norm that values bikes as more desirable than cars was also useful for individuals who could not afford to buy a car or invest in its appearance. Albert succinctly summed it up thusly: “My car was taken and I don’t have any money and bikes are cool. They’re free. And it’s great. Life moves by ya a little bit slower, and it’s fun.” Biking provided a way for him to get around after having two cars stolen and one impounded by the city; car ownership and recovery simply became prohibitively expensive. Albert learned to build bicycles himself and sold them to his friends. He thus turned a “necessity into virtue” (Bourdieu 1984, 175) by becoming a local bike expert.

Jimmy, who owned a car that had been broken into and damaged several times, kept his car as a means to commute to his job in the suburbs, but took much more pride in his bicycle:

I might get grouped into that [being called a hipster because of his colorful bike], but that’s just having something nice. My car looks like shit. It’s got no hubcaps, the window is broken out. It’s a tool to get around, but my bike is kind of fancy. It’s easier to put my bike inside at the end of the night and not have to worry about it getting guffed up.

Valuing his bicycle more than his car provided Jimmy with a feeling of control because he could secure a bike more easily than a car in a city where car theft was common. Investing in his bicycle was also more affordable than investing in a car, and Jimmy took pride in having constructed and painted his bike himself. Its orange frame and deep blue rims were an expression of his personal taste, not a standardized product that he simply purchased. In this way, hipsterdom’s rejection of mainstream standards and disdain for large corporations was perfectly in line with some of the interviewees’ inability to purchase new cars or keep them safe from damage. Bicycles were both “cool” and affordable. There was definitely an emerging bike culture in Detroit, and bicycles displayed their owners’ taste and handiwork. This finding supports Thornton’s (1996) research on subcultural capital, in which she argues that subcultural members create distinctions that are displayed for the benefit of other members. Because hipsters do not have the resources to acquire all the symbols of middle-class cultural capital, subcultural capital is particularly important. The next section turns to male friendships as another source of the stability that has traditionally been associated with family and a middle-class lifestyle.

Bro-mances: A New Source of Stability

The most enduring relationships for my interviewees were between pairs of men. In fact, the only participants who were living with a romantic partner were homosexual. As I conducted fieldwork, I realized that I had started thinking of some of my respondents as homosocial pairs. In fact, my respondents would warmly joke with each other about “bro-mances,” at once mocking jock culture by using the word “bro” and acknowledging close male friendships. These men would hug, share clothes, cook together, and even share a bed after particularly late nights of drinking. Far from hiding their affection, the straight men I interviewed seemed to flaunt their comfort with each other as proof of their comfort with homosexuality.

Albert and Jimmy, for example, had lived together for about a decade. Their romantic partners, jobs, housing location, and additional roommates had changed regularly, but their relationship remained stable. They never spoke of each other as partners—neither identified as homosexual—but they traveled together, lived together, and started bands together. In fact, Jimmy identified Albert as the reason he originally moved to Detroit:

Albert and I ended up taking that trip and traveling and we were basically homeless when we got back and all of our stuff was in an attic, so one of the kids wanted to move out when we got back and Albert and I both moved in there and became part of the household . . . it wasn’t really planned that we were going to move to Detroit when we got back. We were just so sick of—not really sick of being with each other, but we came back and Albert was here for a while and I actually left again and went out with my friends. I didn’t really have plans at all. I didn’t have a job to come back to. I had a girlfriend but she didn’t care that I was traveling . . . I got back and started working again and I was like “Oh, I guess I’m staying in Detroit.”

In the absence of steady jobs and live-in girlfriends, Albert and Jimmy provided a safety net for each other.

Similarly, Greg simply said “no” and chuckled when asked if work opportunities influenced his decision to move to Detroit. He was “semi-employed” with “employment here and there.” When I asked how he chose which neighborhood to live in, he explained that “the big influence was that uh, Adam was living there.” Greg and Adam went to elementary school together in a suburb and had replicated a similar proximity in the city. “We grew up living essentially a block over from each other. And now, we’re living a block over from each other here. We do music together and things like that.” Although they did not live together, their relationship was central to Greg’s decision to move to Detroit. Likewise, Brian and Zach grew up together in a suburb and were now roommates and bandmates in Detroit. Zach explained that he moved to Detroit “because my friends already lived here.” Brian stated that Zach was “my roommate, [my] best friend, [who] taught me how to play guitar.” In fact, Brian let Zach live with him rent-free in exchange for his sweat-equity in Brian’s home. Brian had taken advantage of the flooded housing market by buying a building in Detroit. It was not designed to be a home, but was instead a single-story A-frame structure that had been used as a metal shop and storage facility. It had no bedrooms, kitchen, shower, insulation, or even running water. Regardless, Brian and Zach moved into the structure and slowly converted it into a suitable home.

Brian and Zach continued to work on the building over a period of years, and endured living conditions that must have seemed shockingly crude in comparison to the homes they were accustomed to growing up in an affluent suburb. Indeed, Brian described it as a “pretty destitute situation” and told me with a laugh that “I never really expected myself to be living like this.” He also, however, expressed pride in this situation:

We went through our first winter with no heat. No running water for the first few months we were living in there and like, you strip it all down and learn how to live without any of that stuff. It makes everything else seem so much easier. Like we have a shower now and it feels like so extravagant.

He appreciated the opportunity to abstain from middle-class standards, and lower his expectations to a more attainable and carefree level. This intense experience Brian and Zach shared was positive because, in Brian’s words, it made them “a lot tougher people.”

Brian was also securing a key marker of middle-class masculinity: owning his own home. Notably, he was literally “making a home” not with a female romantic partner, but with a male best friend. This friend did not contribute economically, and was in fact unemployed, but his time, friendship, and hard work were enough for Brian. Brian was performing one version of white, middle-class masculinity and its norms associated with independence when he bought the building and became a homeowner, but he was also drawing upon subcultural norms that celebrated a “raw” aesthetic and male friendship. His masculinity was thus in line with societal narratives about manliness that have lauded self-sufficiency since at least the Victorian period (Bederman 1995), yet he also challenged the norm that white, middle-class men should reside in the suburbs and head a nuclear family. He was thus neither wholly resistant nor compliant in relation to norms of hegemonic masculinity.

Intimate male friendships have a precedent in American culture. As Rotundo (1993) explained in his history of American masculinity, white men in the nineteenth century often developed intimate relationships with other men before marriage. These men would write each other long letters, share their deepest dreams and fears, and share a bed. Some of these friendships were even marked by the use of pet names and tender embraces throughout the night. Although it may be hard for us to view these actions as indicative of straight male friendships today, it was common for siblings, friends, and even roommates to share beds. This was not problematic because homosexuality was not conceived of as a possible identity position. It was considered a sinful act, but not yet a social or political identity. “In the absence of a deep cultural anxiety about homosexuality, men did not have to worry about the meaning of those [intimate] moments of contact” (Rotundo 1993, 85). These close male relationships allowed men to “try out” an intimate relationship with another person before committing to a life-long marriage.

The male friendships that my participants invested in undoubtedly fulfilled some of the same goals as their nineteenth-century counterparts: they offered companionship and could act as a substitution for enduring heterosexual relationships. However, homosexuality is a viable subject position for these men. Their comfort with intimate contact with other men comes not from the impossibility of homosexuality as an option but from constructing it as an acceptable option, at least in theory or for other individuals. Being labeled as gay is only problematic if one views homosexuality as socially unacceptable or if it damages the possibility of heterosexual relations. By arguing that homosexuality is not problematic, through a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, hipsters take the sting out of “gay” as a possible insult. These men took the stance that they were so comfortable with their sexuality that they could engage in behavior that appeared homosexual without losing their status as heterosexual. Indeed, when I asked about their sexual orientation, some took the time to explain that they were not committed to a heterosexual identity. Most explicitly, Nathan explained:

I’m straight, but I wouldn’t want to put too fine a point on it. And I would probably identify as queer in the sense of queer sympathetic. I was a member of the queer union at [undergraduate institution]. . . . That was a time in which you could sort of, you didn’t have to be sexual, or gay or straight. You could be queer. Sort of identify with a kind of boundary-questioning lifestyle, an openness, right?, that is sympatric and empathetic to all sorts of ways of being. Right. That would be the long answer of being straight. I like girls! They’re nice.

Nathan’s answer clearly positioned himself as heterosexual, yet also presented himself as comfortable with various sexualities and boundary-questioning activities. This stance, which constructed heterosexual men as entirely comfortable with homosexuality, allowed hipster men to reap the benefits of intimate heterosexual friendships without the fear of losing their status as straight. This rhetorical move is surprisingly positive and pro-social since previous studies have shown how men deprived of masculine status have reacted with sexism, homophobia, and even violence (i.e., Tian and Deng 2017).

The Whiteness of the Hipster Community

Although the previous section has emphasized the freedom and positive potential of rejecting customary masculinity standards, this section will examine the racialized limits of their subcultural project. When I asked interviewees what they liked most about living in Detroit, they surprised me by gushing about how much they loved being a part of a strong community. “Community” is not a word that is usually used in reference to Detroit, as a lack of community is often blamed for problems such as abandonment, crime, and failing schools. However, I was told again and again that Detroit had an ideal community life because Detroit was like “a small town in a city” (Elle). Laura explained, “I like most that I’m close to all my best friends. And I guess the community down here. It’s really close knit.” Likewise, Jordan told me, “You go someplace and you always know two or three people. It’s a like a huge small town.” Courtney said, “Our community is small. Diverse, but small. Every place you walk into it’s like [the television show] Cheers, you know, everybody knows your name.” Albert stated that he liked Detroit, especially compared to other cities, because living there was like being part of “one big family.” Indeed, Jake noted that it was “sometimes cloying” because “sometimes you wanna go out and not know anybody.” But, for the most part, interviewees warmly noted the strong sense of community in Detroit as one of their favorite things about living in the city. As Elle told me, all of her friends “pretty much worked together too.” Generally, my research supported her assessment that “everyone’s lives are pretty intertwined.”

Interviewees created their “small town in the city” through taken-for-granted spatial practices of inhabitation and movement. Consistently, they tended to live in the same neighborhood, work in the same establishments, and patronize the same few restaurants, bars, and music venues. For instance, the restaurant where Elle worked, which I will call here the “The Art,” was one of a handful of locations where hipsters worked or socialized. The Art had a kitchen that featured vegetarian and vegan cuisine, a full bar, a space for bands to perform, and walls displaying images from local artists. Albert, Becca, Cassie, and Elle all worked at The Art when I interviewed them, and several other interviewees had worked there in the past. As Albert stated, “it’s like a hub for painters and activists and poets and music kids and hipsters and shit and everybody just hangs out.” He explained that The Art was “kinda like my office” not only because he worked there, but because it was a useful place for networking and finding people to participate in events that he organized. “I’ll go to work and I’ll be like ‘Oh, [snaps fingers] oh yeah that’s right, you’re in that one band, you wanna play a show?’”

It seemed that everyone I met was plugged into the same tight network of social and romantic acquaintances. By frequenting the same businesses over and over, and living in a few select parts of the city, members of this subculture created a community within the city with its own values and norms. This is indeed an accomplishment, as Detroit is not a “small town,” but the 14th largest metro in the country (Noble and MacDonald 2019). Although all cities could potentially be understood as patch works of neighborhoods (Jacobs 1961), once individuals entered the hipster subculture they would continue to patronize those same few establishments even if they moved to a new physical location in Detroit.

The Detroit hipster subculture effectively created a mirror-opposite of the racial composition of the city as a whole. While Detroit is about 85% black or African American, I estimated that membership in the subculture was about 85% white. I was particularly interested in how these white spaces were constituted and maintained because everyone that I spoke with was extremely socially and politically liberal, and expressed a desire for encountering greater racial and economic diversity in their lives. The following vignette, however, highlights the contrast between interviewees’ stated progressive desires and the persistent politics of their everyday life world:

It was my first day in Detroit as a researcher, and Albert had invited me to see a local band at a bar. As I entered, I noted that there were two main rooms: a sparsely populated bar and the room with the stage. I joined Albert at a small table near the bar and asked him about the tour that his band had recently returned from. He told me about their fun adventures, especially in Portland, Oregon. He described a raucous lesbian punk band that they had seen perform and an underwear-only dance party they had attended. Taking this as an endorsement of Portland, I commented that I had never been there and implied that I would like to go. Albert’s tone immediately changed and he crinkled his nose. He explained that he liked Portland, but he was “suspicious.” He said that Portland was all white, the people were fit, and there were bike lanes, and I then understood that all this was a critique that contrasted Portland negatively with Detroit. “It’s a utopia for us, but where’s all the culture? Just because we say its culture doesn’t mean it is.”³ Although Portland sounded like a paradise for someone like Albert, he rejected it as too perfect and too racially exclusive. I accepted this and our conversation turned to other concerns. His words returned to me, however, when we finally went in the main room to watch the headlining band. There were five people on stage: three women and two men, all white. I looked around the crowd and estimated that about 50 people were in attendance; almost everyone appeared to be white. I carefully examined the crowd and saw one woman who appeared to be Asian. I wondered why there did not appear to be a single black attendee at an event held in a city that is 85% black.

As my fieldwork continued, I gained insight into how this condition might have come about by observing how Albert and his friends organized and planned events in various ways, depending on the situation. For instance, Albert, Zach, and Brian, who were in a band together, organized a show for a band from Brooklyn. Hosting bands from out of town was important for them because independent bands would trade this service for each other. The next time Albert, Zach, and Brian wanted to play in New York they might be able to open for this band and would not have to secure a venue themselves. In addition, the guys took great pride in making sure the show was successful because that would demonstrate that Detroit was vibrant and “cool.”

To advertise the show, Zach screen-printed and hand-numbered 30 posters, and this image was shrunk and photocopied for small paper handbills. I accompanied Albert and Zach as they placed these advertisements in select locations. The first place we went was the Art, where a folding card table was dedicated to stacks of fliers promoting local events. Albert made room for their handbills, hung a poster, and we continued on our way. That afternoon Albert and Zach went to four additional restaurants, two bars, a coffee shop, the modern art museum, a record store, a brewery, a submarine shop next to a Wayne State dormitory, and, finally, an anarchist complex. As I wrote down our route, Zach assured me that it was a good thing for me to note because we were going to places where they thought their friends would see the posters. For Zach and Albert, these were all “cool spots.” Indeed, it seemed we were tracing the boundary of Detroit’s hipster subculture and I realized I was already familiar with almost every place on the list. Albert also noted that “a cool thing about handbills is that you could flier bikes and cool kids ride bikes.” Albert and Zach were clearly targeting members of their subculture for this show. Four days later, I worked the door for the event. I asked everyone for a $5 donation, except for two of Albert’s roommates who I was afraid of offending by implying they were not “insiders.” I collected $110, which everyone agreed was a good amount of money. Ultimately, Zach, Albert, and Brian deemed the show a success because enough of their friends had attended to show support for the bands, both by reacting properly to the music and by generating a respectable amount of money, all of which was given to the grateful touring band.

That show was held at Zach and Brian’s home, described above, and everyone that attended seemed to be a member of the subculture. Another example, however, indicates how this pattern changed when the desired audience for an event was larger and more diverse. In this example, Albert intentionally courted a more diverse audience for an annual neighborhood street fair that spanned four city blocks. I had returned to Detroit in September specifically for this event because many of the people that I had interviewed in June were performing or volunteering, or both, and Albert had been named Chair of the event. I landed in Detroit on a Thursday, two days before the street fair.

That night, I joined Albert to do one last bout of advertising. Albert and Scott had created stencils to be used with neon-pink spray chalk. This allowed us to “tag” the city in a temporary and nondestructive way. Albert and I left his house at 1:00 a.m. to round up potential volunteers who were at a bonfire. Everyone tried to brainstorm spots that should be tagged. Albert interjected: “We don’t want white kid spots.” To that, Bobby jokingly replied by listing “white kid spots.” Each place he listed had been targeted to advertise the previous show held at Brian’s home. Albert reiterated by stating that someone should spray at the Rosa Parks Bus Depot. After clarifying where it was, someone commented that they would “get run out of there,” but did not specify if it was the police or the bus station patrons who would object to their presence. Albert was undeterred and put the matter to rest by replying, “So?”

After more debate on which locations were most important, it was decided that Albert’s car would go to the New Center area while another group focused on downtown. As we drove back to Albert’s house to get the supplies, we brainstormed more locations in our area. Frank suggested Happy’s Pizza, and Albert was impressed: “Now you’re thinking multicultural!” Once again, I noted each place that we went, and we targeted places that were frequented by members of the subculture and by Detroiters in general. Specifically, we placed advertisements outside the entrance to a loft, the recycling center, a gay bar, the Motown Museum, a downtown office building, a bar, a music venue, a coffee shop, a book depot, a sidewalk near Wayne State, an indoor marketplace, and Eastern Market, where produce is sold in bulk on the weekends.

The event was deemed a complete success. The Saturday in question was sunny and warm, and Albert estimated that about twenty thousand people attended the street fair. The crowd filled the streets and appeared to be extremely diverse. Albert was proud that the event had no corporate sponsorship, and the only paid advertisement had been an ad in a local paper devoted to social justice issues. Instead of advertising, they had relied on word-of-mouth, our chalk tagging, reports in local papers and radio stations, and the annual event’s good reputation.

These contrasting events highlight the cultural politics of event advertising in this subculture: “friends” were targeted for events that occurred in interviewees’ relatively private spaces, while “diversity” was sought for more public events. In effect, “community” for the hipsters was assumed to be a place for “sameness” (i.e., people with similar tastes, backgrounds, and racial identification), while the “public” of Detroit was synonymous with “difference.” Indeed, a few hipsters noted this during their interviews. Greg admitted, “If you go to hipster parties, and you go to Slow’s [restaurant], and you go to whatever, it’s racially homogenous, generally” but naturalized this state of affairs by explaining, “I don’t think it’s motivated by anything negative. I just think it’s the way it ends up.” Similarly, Courtney told me “there’s definitely segregation from the people who were born and raised here and the people who moved here and are trying to do something with it,” and confided, “it makes me feel a little guilty sometimes.” Thus, this subculture struggled to reconcile its impulse to create a sufficient level of consistency and coherence in its membership with a progressive political commitment to increasing diversity. My research indicates that in order to create a subculture that is not racially homogenous they need a notion of community that is more expansive, such as defining community on the basis of shared goals for the city or identification with a larger spatial area. Integration and other progressive goals require that “community” be redefined so that “difference” is understood as a crucial component of, not the opposite of, community.

Conclusion

Haenfler’s (2015) recent review of masculinity in youth culture notes: “Both youth and masculinity studies have at times inadvertently produced a caricature of misogynist and alienated young men that fails to capture the increasingly complicated masculinities of the 21st century. Where are the spaces in which men, especially young men, stretch the confines of patriarchal masculinity?” (127). This study provides one answer to that question by focusing on hipster masculinity. Hipsterdom was a useful identity resource that enabled participants to challenge many middle-class norms associated with masculinity, such as the expectation that they would “settle down” with a woman, maintain relatively shallow friendships with other men, and secure a white- or blue-collar job that enables conspicuous consumption. Subcultural membership was thus an important resource for these men as they failed to meet some of the standards of hegemonic masculinity.

While these men were successfully enacting their progressive values in some arenas (read: gender), they were unsuccessful in others (race relations). Their assumptions about community and spatial practices ensured that even in a city with a black majority they spent most of their time with other white young people. Indeed, this analysis suggests that jettisoning their class affiliations stimulated the impulse to generate a homogenous community. In other words, the ontological insecurity of abandoning middle-class norms in a new place increased the importance of community as a haven for these men. Perhaps it is too much of a burden to ask individuals to abandon their race, class, and gender norms simultaneously, especially in the absence of an explicit political project. The hipsters I studied are certainly not alone in creating a racially homogenous community. In fact, Detroit and its surrounding suburbs are some of the most segregated areas in the country (Jackman 2018). They would probably need an agenda that emphasized race traitorship—the conscious and purposeful rejection of white privilege—in order to undertake this identity project without engaging in a certain amount of racial exclusivity (Collins 2000). This study, therefore, indicates that the potential of progressive political impulses may be moderated by the desire for a community of similar people. At the same time, strong and meaningful subcultural membership can provide the support necessary for ways of life that radically diverge from the mainstream.

This study focused on the performance of masculinity and whiteness in one hipster enclave, but the importance of class was woven throughout. I have argued that hipsterdom was attractive for these men because they were raised in middle-class families, are highly educated, and yet do not have white- or blue-collar careers. But was their move into Detroit and hipsterdom a choice, in the sense that they rejected “traditional” career opportunities, or was it a response to their inability to secure more lucrative positions? For some interviewees, I have no doubt that embracing hipster norms was a rational decision because they did not have financial support from their families or the ability to secure a middle-class job themselves. Albert, for instance, did not finish his undergraduate degree because of a lack of financial resources and had never worked outside the service sector. The anxiety he expressed about never moving into the creative class and remaining a bartender was acute. Other interviewees emphasized personal choice and probably could turn to their parents for financial assistance if needed. Zach, for instance, had a degree from a prestigious university and portrayed his unemployment as a source of freedom. The distinction between actual choices and the rhetoric of choice is difficult to distill using ethnographic methods because interviewees who had other options and interviewees who did not might both emphasize their personal agency. Nevertheless, the fact that all interviewees came from a middle-class background has real implications for their futures and for the subculture. Unlike Detroiters who lack the finances or personal network to leave the city, Zach told me, “if you don’t like something about where you’re living all you have to do is move.” This unexamined privilege is a much more profound difference than the taste preferences that interviewees often invoked to explain their subcultural exclusivity. Many of the men I spoke with have an exit strategy available to them that is not an option for black or Hispanic communities in Detroit facing intergenerational poverty and economic hardship.

All of this helps explain why the term hipster is negatively coded. As one reviewer noted, hipster is an outsider term imposed on others as an insult (see also Schiermer 2014). This study shows that the hipster label could be considered offensive for multiple reasons. Hipsters challenge traditional gender standards but may only be “tourists” in the communities where they live. Previous research has shown that masculinities that challenge hegemonic masculinity, such as metrosexuality, are met with anxiety and derision (i.e., Buerkle 2009; De Visser, Smith, and McDonnell 2009). In addition, embracing the aesthetics of poverty while having middle-class resources as a safety net offends cultural commentators who see hipsters as inauthentic and contributing to gentrification (Maly and Varis 2016). A related question is whether these men will remain in the hipster subculture and living in the city or if they will depart from it as they age. The average age of interviewees was 25.7 years, so hipsterdom could be a form of delayed adolescence or emerging adulthood. Citing Mizruchi, Llyod (2006) notes that perhaps “thirty is the tipping point beyond which such a slack existence ceases to be socially acceptable” (159). A longitudinal study of hipsters would address whether youth subcultures are “stickier” than previously conceptualized and if the subcultural capital they provide is commonly turned into cultural capital (Haenfler 2018). In the meantime, this study provides a vivid picture of the masculinity work done by some hipster men and shows why subcultural membership still holds allure.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Margaret Anne Murray

Notes

Author Biography

Margaret Anne Murray is an assistant professor of Language, Communication, and Culture at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Her research focuses on the communicative construction of identity.

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