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The Macaroni in ‘Yankee Doodle’ Is Not What You Think
- gohrt 10y agoReading between the lines a bet, (first wave) "macaroni" is what certain hipsters called themselves, until people they didn't like started dressing like them, at which point the hipsters mocked their mainstream followers. This behavior was satirized in Portlandia's "Over" sketch. Also, "metrosexual". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA
- monknomo 10y agoSo, hipsters and hipster hate has been around for at least 225 years?
- jcl 10y agoFor those unaware, "hipster" turns out to be an excellent analogue to "macaroni"... In the 1940s and 50s the term had positive connotations as someone fashionable or in-the-know, but it has since come to be a term of ridicule. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=hipster http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&searc...
- Apocryphon 10y agoHipsters are a subclass of fops, I think.
- aaronbrethorst 10y agoI hated fops before it was cool. And yes, according to Wikipedia you are absolutely correct! Some of the very many similar alternative terms are: "coxcomb",[1] fribble, "popinjay" (meaning "parrot"), fashion-monger, and "ninny". "Macaroni" was another term, of the 18th century, more specifically concerned with fashion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fop
- Apocryphon 10y agoI figured it'd be accurate, given that the subject of the song is a Yankee Doodle dandy.
- sk5t 10y agoOr perhaps a sibling to fops, and child of dandy.
- reflexive 10y agoYankee Doodle went to town Without his shaving razor Ate so much his pants got tight And called himself a hipster
- jcoffland 10y agoKeep your day job.
- jsmthrowaway 10y agoNow imagine digital archaeologists coming across your version and writing the equivalent explanatory article for future readers.
- wolfgke 10y agoHipsters are no food and probably are also no food in the future. ;-)
- maxerickson 10y agoI bet there is a letter from Roman times that calls out some hipster analogue.
- jdminhbg 10y agoThe idea that current generations are less manly and morally upright than their forefathers is basically the defining trope of Roman literature.
- dexwiz 10y agoI think that is the the defining trope of the older generation.
- ef4 10y agoYup, when your founders were fathered by Mars and suckled by a she-wolf, you can only go downhill from there.
- snovv_crash 10y agoInterestingly, in Latin, a she-wolf (lupa) is slang for a prostitute. For some inexplicable reason I feel that it is much more likely that they were nursed by a prostitute than by a wolf ;-)
- toomanybeersies 10y agoI'm sure a quick reading of Aristophanes would turn up some humor against hipsters. On the note of ancient literature, it's amusing to note that penis jokes have been around for over 2000 years, some things just never get old.
- douche 10y agoThe Romans drew penises on everything, all the time[1]. They're like your friends, when you fall asleep at a house party [1] http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411682/ancient-romans-drew-penises-on-everything-and-heres-why-122715/ http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113411682/ancient-roma...
- breadbox 10y agoI'm fairly certain it can be dated back to the dawn of written language, and presumably extends back to the beginning of human society. Hell, if there is a verifiable record of a time period in which a significant fraction of the established generation wasn't moaning on about how the next generation was ruining everything, I'd like to know about it.
- wonkaWonka 10y agoHMMPH! AUSTRALOPITHECUS THINK HIM SO GOOD WITH ANIMAL PELT. ME SHOW HIM! ME IMPRESS CAVE LADY WITH SUCH SMOOTH ROCK. THEN HIM NOT THINK HIM SO GOOD AS ME!
- Dylan16807 10y ago> the established generation wasn't moaning on about how the next generation was ruining everything That's not at all what people mean when they talk about 'hipsters'.
- breadbox 10y agoPerhaps not always, but in my experience it largely comes from the same place, and has about as much actual reason behind it.
- philovivero 10y ago> macaronis drank only milk, avoided eating roast beef at all costs, and disdained popular gathering places like bars and coffeehouses Looks like Macaronis were not hipsters. One cannot separate a hipster from his coffee and brew.
- derefr 10y agoDrinking coffee was one thing, but visiting a coffee-house was perhaps another. The term brings to mind a very different environment even just by adding the context that the coffee-house exists in modern-day Amsterdam; I can't guess what the social milieu of a coffee-house would be in 1700s Britain.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago> I can't guess what the social milieu of a coffee-house would be in 1700s Britain. Quite an interesting topic, actually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17th_and_18th_centuries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17...
- JulianMorrison 10y agoAnd for roughly the same reason: masculinity enforcement against a group perceived as flouting gender.
- CPLX 10y agoThat's not the reason people find hipsters annoying, doubly so these days as the lumbersexual look that's all the rage relies on exaggerated masculine stereotypes.
- JulianMorrison 10y agoIt's a queered version of masculine stereotypes, though, because it's playful and not serious. And it gets attacked for being not really masculine, along the lines of "have you ever cut down a tree or fought a grizzly? Then have a razor."
- CPLX 10y agoIf you say so. Personally I am annoyed by hipster culture because it's often pretentious and judgemental of others while living off family money, confuses materialistic fetishizing of certain kinds of brands with genuine authenticity, and fundamentally is an expression of narcissism. I could care less what gender they express.
- mason240 10y agoI dislike it because it's essentially privileged urbanites mocking working class rural people.
- AstroJetson 10y agoNice job HN, I had a cool song to sing with the grand daughter as she ate her artesian Kraft Mac and Cheese about our founding fathers, but now it's about hipsters? Are hipsters the reason we can't have nice pasta based songs? Next you'll be telling me the Oscar Meyer song isn't about baloney but some hipster tofu loaf infused with sirachi sauce.
- taneq 10y agoArtesian? You mean there's a giant underground lake of pressurized mac'n'cheese? :D
- briandear 10y agoSource please. Really.. GPS coordinates would be even better. A lake of Mac and Cheese? If it were adjacent to a lake of RC Cola, I think I'd be set.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Taniwha 10y agono it's about wanna-be hipsters ... you could switch to Too Fly for a White Guy instead
- mattnumbe 10y agohipster is such a conundrum because every person I've ever met who'd be considered one claims to hate everything about hipsters.
- throwanem 10y agoThat's a defining characteristic. Hating hipsters doesn't necessarily make you a hipster, but you might want to take a close look at yourself to be sure.
- yeahdef 10y agoThe modern day equivalent? The Brony?
- sperglord 10y agoThe analogue that I thought of was metrosexual, but everyone else in the thread is calling them hipsters.
- zhemao 10y agoIs metrosexual still a thing? Haven't heard that word in years.
- anjc 10y agoThe modern equivalent is still Americans trying and failing to be fashionable by aping world trends 5 years after they've died.
- j_m_b 10y agoYou ain't schooling me on nothing you click-baity title. I knew this from when I satisfied my own curiosity with wikipedia.
- Animats 10y agoThe author is trying to say there's some gay aspect to this, but it's really just a country vs. city thing. That goes back a long way, at least to the Roman Empire. There's also the Britain vs. the rest of the world thing, which was a big deal during the days of the British Empire. The "macaroni" outfits shown are only a slight exaggeration of 18th century European male formal dress. The 20th century equivalent would be a zoot suit vs. a business suit.
- wavefunction 10y agoLeisure suits were big in the Seventies so I am afraid your simple binary explanation is insufficient
- Cogito 10y agoThe author quotes numerous original sources from the time that commented on the 'gay aspect' of macaronis. They make the argument that this commentary, in particular caricatures, were a driving force behind the macaroni's change in perception in the public eye. Perhaps these caricatures were motivated by a city vs country thing, but seeing as there were caricatures created in the cities this seems unlikely. English commentators... variously referred to macaronis as "that doubtful gender," "hermaphrodites," and "amphibious creatures." One song described a macaroni as thus: "His taper waist, so strait and long, / His spindle shanks, like pitchfork prong, / To what sex does the thing belong? / ’Tis call’d a Macaroni." The Oxford Magazine similarly described the macaroni as not belonging to the gender binary: "There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male, nor female, a thing of neuter gender, lately started up among us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasure, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion." in the early 1770s, Mary Darly, a cartoonist by trade, devoted so much energy to caricaturing macaronis that her store in London became known as "The Macaroni Print Shop." Darly’s ridicule of macaronis became the first widespread use of the caricature as a means of social commentary.
- thaumasiotes 10y agoWhat would be comments on a "gay aspect" today aren't necessarily so 200 years ago, even if the wording is the same. The past is a foreign country. Your third quote is especially unpersuasive; it lists "neither male nor female" side by side with many other obviously hyperbolic insults, all of which are to the effect "they're unnatural". And one of them specifically says that macaronis are given to womanizing.
- eximius 10y agoSo it was what I thought.
- Eric_WVGG 10y agoSame. Despise this headline formula.
- thomasdub 10y agoThere is a fantastic Lexicon Valley podcast episode about this [0] which draws on most of the same evidence. It also dicusses whether the word "Dude" my have been popularised from the same song. Definitely worth checking out! [0] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/01/lexicon_valley_the_etymology_and_early_history_of_the_word_dude.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2014/0...
- anjc 10y agoIt's amazing how, to this day, American fashion is still largely off the pulse and out of step with the world. http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/014/711/1380697092809.jpg http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/014/711/138...
- jcromartie 10y agoAm I the only one that actually did learn this in school?
- losteverything 10y agoThe author says today treated as a patriotic anthem Not in the america I grew up in. It has simple lyrics, a familiar tune and easy to instruct children to learn and play an instrument to
- fluidcruft 10y agoMaybe you just don't patriot? It's a 4th-of-July staple.
- losteverything 10y agoI would suspect this is a regional difference. I live in a different area that I was reared and we often have fun comparing the differences. like pop vs. Soda
- jandrese 10y agoListen to the music behind any flag festooned 4th of July car dealership commercial. The song has a definite patriotic bent now. We were never taught the actual meaning of the lyrics in school, but we did learn the song. Reading through the lyrics it seems oddly awestruck by the state of the continental army. Men were thick as Hasty Pudding, eating enormous quantities of food, and the talk of Captain Washington makes him sound loved by the men. It should be noted however that the dandy in the song sees the massive graves being dug and runs back home in the end. If it's supposed to be an insulting song it doesn't land very hard, at least to modern ears. The only one insulted is the titular dandy who is clearly not man enough to die for his country.