The Yuppie Handbook 1984 Book
. 111 DownloadsAbstractIn this chapter, I examine the most independent and selfishly suggestive of the eighties objects of knowledge—the yuppie.
After its introduction in 1984, the yuppie rapidly ascended as a significant demographic and political category, and was identified by pundits as an especially important target of the American political scene during the 1984 election season. Politicians and businesses alike courted yuppies and, in return, they transformed aspects of society that catered to their power-driven aesthetic—a taste for expensive cars, living in condominiums, and imported salad dressings. However, the yuppie label was soon contested by its members, particularly the association made between the yuppie’s seemingly frivolous lifestyle and the amoral “greed is good” point of view that fueled it.
The Yuppie Handbook 1984 Book 2
Some wholeheartedly embraced the corporate elitist ethic, while others struggled with the cynicism suggested by such an outlook. Thus, the stereotyped yuppie we are familiar with today fails to consider how the aspirant middle class negotiated the terms of their self-definition.
Hammond, “Yuppies,” 488. This at the end of 1986; in the same issue of The Public Opinion Quarterly, Michael Delli Carpini and Lee Sigelman reach the same findings.
Using more detailed research and sophisticated regression analyses, they find that the “political distinctiveness” of yuppies is “less a matter of demographic characteristics, than of a state of mind or a lifestyle” (517). There appears not to be “some unique political profile that results from the combination of being young, urban, and professional but rather that yuppies are more liberal than the rest of the population because they are young, and young people are generally more liberal; because they are urban, and urbanites are generally more liberal; and because they are professional, and professionals are, on balance and in recent times, more liberal” (Michael Delli Carpini and Lee Sigelman, “Do Yuppies Matter? Competing Explanations of Their Political Distinctiveness,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 50 1986: 515–516).
Yuppie or Yuppy pl. Yuppies: (hot; new name for Young Urban Professionals): A person of either sex who meets the following criteria: 1) resides in or near one of the major cities; 2) claims to be between the ages of 25 and 45; 3) lives on aspirations of glory, prestige, recognition, fame, social status, power, money or any and all combinations of the above; 4) anyone who Yuppie or Yuppy pl. Yuppies: (hot; new name for Young Urban Professionals): A person of either sex who meets the following criteria: 1) resides in or near one of the major cities; 2) claims to be between the ages of 25 and 45; 3) lives on aspirations of glory, prestige, recognition, fame, social status, power, money or any and all combinations of the above; 4) anyone who brunches on the weekend or works out after work. The term crosses ethnic, sexual, geographic - even class - boundaries.
Adj.: Yuppiesque, Yuppie-like, Yuppish. from book's text. So odd to realize that the 'Yuppie Handbook' came out in the mid-'80s- a more aggressive and American follow-on to the British 'Sloane Ranger Handbook', and a marker for the transformation of the low-key, reticent, old-money preppy class of 'The Official Preppy Handbook' into corporate strivers.
Other reviews have noted that the cultural styles of the Yuppie Handbook are, thirty-odd years later, so mainstream as to seem totally natural. It's odd to think about finding foodie obsessions and So odd to realize that the 'Yuppie Handbook' came out in the mid-'80s- a more aggressive and American follow-on to the British 'Sloane Ranger Handbook', and a marker for the transformation of the low-key, reticent, old-money preppy class of 'The Official Preppy Handbook' into corporate strivers. Other reviews have noted that the cultural styles of the Yuppie Handbook are, thirty-odd years later, so mainstream as to seem totally natural. It's odd to think about finding foodie obsessions and minimalist interiors strange or funny here in the Year Seventeen, when we take those things as givens for the educated, cultured, urban upper-middle class and as perfectly ordinary aspirations for middle-middles.
And, yes, back in the Long Ago I did pore over this book for social cues and catalog addresses- not ashamed to admit it, either. Anyway- funny, witty, and a look back at how contemporary class attitudes formed.