Talk:Yuppie

To describe Yuppies

Not all of them are white or of WASP origins, baby-boomer (that can include generation Xers) and urbanites from the east or west coasts. Nor the yuppies are selfish, neo-conservative, social liberal and obsessed with professionalism. I've heard of newer terms of BUPpies (Black Urban Professionals) and HUPs (Hispanic Urban Professionals), plus the Asian American image is usually of a yuppie one esp. in the urban areas of California known for university and hi-tech business operations in the then-launched booming web sites industry. + 71.102.11.193 (talk) 05:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Although this article was nominated for deletion, the consensus was strongly in favor of keeping it. Loodog made the nomination, noting that it was a neologism. The arguments to keep, however were not particularly detailed or insightful, amounting basically to "It appears a lot, so it must be important". Unfortunately that conclusion does not assist in molding the article contents. What we're left with is a lot of people expressing their personal experience, backed with references to legitimize their perception. The article should be brief, not the heavy WP:SYNTHESIS that it is now. Also unpalatable, as you point out, is the very fuzzy definition of the word. Not just in identifying or isolating groups, but in the very concept that a particular person, of a particular color, of a particular age, of a particular political bias can be reduced to a label of a single word, where another person objectively cannot. "Yuppie" is highly subjective, politically correct, trendy verbiage. If a typical Wiki biographical article were to include the word, it would probably be struck as WP:PEACOCK or WP:BIAS. Note that in Wiki Advanced Search, it's very infrequently used in biographical articles. I'd be in favor of reducing this article to three or four sentences, including one that emphasizes the fuzzy nature of its usage. Regards, Piano non troppo (talk) 08:56, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Burning Of Bombay Street

The 2011 BBC documentary "The Burning Of Bombay Street" has been cited by one Wiki user as containing evidence via graffiti on a wall in one scene that "yuppy" was in use in Belfast in 1969. The documentary actually contained much footage more recently filmed, Presenter Lawrence Pitkethly revisited the area with a BBC film crew, and any "yuppy" graffiti is from more recent years. From extensive reading and quoting of late 1960s Belfast newspapers for a study I did on "The Troubles" in 1997, I can say with confidence that the "yuppy" word was entirely absent. A word that was apparently emotive enough to inspire graffiti would surely not have been.

The Wiki user states that the graffiti refers to a desire for more social housing, not yuppy apartments, which is also a concern of more recent years.

(Solidsandie (talk) 02:14, 18 March 2011 (UTC))

Chicago Magazine May 1980

The claim that Chicago Magdazine was first purveyor of the "yuppie" word is unsubstantiated. The Wikipedia link beside the Chicago Magazine claim does not lead to a copy of the article. As an encyclopedia, I think we should remain impartial about this until a hard copy of the article becomes available somewhere. So far it is hearsay. The '80s web historian in the case linked to below is reserving judgement, and I believe that if we are to perform to professional encyclopedia standards, we should do the same. Please see link below:

[1]

(Solidsandie (talk) 03:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC))so i let him go

fg

More about the Chicago Magazine 1980 claim

We've already covered the fact that Chicago Magazine claims that Dan Rottenberg had first printed use of the "yuppie" word in that magazine in may 1980. We also know that there is another claim to the coining of the word from Joseph Epstein in 1982. Once again, the Wiki article reverted to backing the Chicago Magazine claim, although the Chicago magazine article is nowhere to be found on-line. The only satisfactory proof would surely be a hard copy of the article from 1980? Until that appears, I request that Wikipedia continues to adopt a neutral stance, simply recording that the first appearance of the word is contested.

What we have at the moment is two sources claiming two different things. It is worth noting my own experience as a writer on all things '80s: I received an e-mail from a lady claiming to have spotted a very early usage of the "yuppie" word in an American soap opera. Close examination of the episode in question by myself revealed that the phrase used was "upwardly mobile", not yuppie! There does seem to be some confusion about these two phrases. "Upwardly mobile", of course, is of somewhat older vintage than Yuppie.

It is also worth noting the view of the Times (UK) newspaper on yuppies at the time of the 1987 stock market crash:

"I've lost my shirt today as well as the money of a lot of other guys," said one stereotype of the Yuppies who swarmed to the financial world to reap the benefits of the Reagan boom - [2]

Yuppies were generally seen as not only being "upwardly mobile", but anxious to take advantage of the opportunities offered them by the Reagan years.

I am actively seeking a genuine May 1980 copy of the Chicago Magazine article so that this controversy can be resolved once and for all. Until then, please can the Wiki article remain neutral? That would be the position of any other encyclopedia.

(Solidsandie (talk) 19:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC))

Connotation of the term?

The article briefly visits Yuppie being used as a negative term by people of lower income than the accused yuppies, but does not really clarify whether the term is pejorative or just purely descriptive and biased in that scenario. Can anybody expand on this, and update the article as such? Would anybody ever call themselves yuppies in a neutral or positive light, despite being somewhat self-flattering (describing oneself as upcoming). Any clarification here (or in the article) would be great. Thanks! Dataxpress (talk) 17:14, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Spelling Mistake

If you actually pick up a dictionary book instead of just guessing you will see in dictionaries from the very early 1980's including the OED that it is actually yupe, meaning young urban professional employee. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.128.56.151 (talk) 22:33, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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alternative explaination

I was told it meant if asked were you willing to kiss a lot of ass and lose your self-respect in order to make a lot of money what would you say...yup 75.130.206.121 (talk) 22:41, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Lists

These lists should be rewritten as paragraph and fully sourced re: WP:TRIVIA. -Classicfilms (talk) 16:09, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

In popular culture

• Yuppie Drone, The Pheremones' 1985 hit.
• In Duck Dynasty, Phil Robertson uses the term to describe one who had adapted to the urban lifestyle or a city slicker and could not hold their own if they were to have to go into survival mode. Robertson often calls his sons and daughters-in-law yuppies.
• The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, a "satire of yuppie excess"
• Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney (McInerney himself has been called "the archetypal yuppie")
• Family Ties, the TV show, features a young Michael J. Fox as the Republican coat-and-tie-wearing 'yuppie-in-the-making' Alex P. Keaton and his parents (played by Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter-Birney) as former hippies.
• Fight Club, the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel and 1999 film adaptation, follows "a disenchanted yuppie ... numbed by the sterile materialism of modern life."
• In John Carpenter's They Live, a pair of working class protagonists come into possession of sunglasses that reveal yuppies as predatory aliens.
• Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace, a short story about a young Republican enjoying life after prep school with a group of punk rockers.
• Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz describes a later (early 1990s) evolution of the Yuppie, in which the upper tier made considerably more than the lower, supporting tier, the "slaves" of the title, who were trapped by rents and insufficient salaries into a struggle merely to stay afloat in Manhattan.
• American Psycho, the 1991 Bret Easton Ellis novel and 2000 film about yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman.
• thirtysomething, U.S. TV series, seen as a representation of "yuppie angst" and midlife crisis.
• Stuff White People Like, a satirical blog that pokes fun at generalizations and yuppie culture.
• Wall Street, the 1987 film about stock traders, has been described as "encapsulation of 80s yuppie greed culture", particularly Bud Fox, Charlie Sheen's naive 20-something character.
• Dr. Snow, the 1988 true-crime novel by Carol Saline tells the story of the FBI's four-year (1982-1986) investigation/manhunt that brought down the cocaine distribution ring engineered by Philadelphia dentist Larry Lavin (a.k.a. "Dr. Snow") and his Ivy League college mates, in what the Bureau recorded in its annals as "The Yuppie Conspiracy".
• "Yuppy Love", a 1989 Only Fools and Horses episode based on Gordon Gekko from Wall Street, in which Del Boy reinvents himself as a yuppy and hangs out in trendy wine bars. Del's attempts at reinventing himself as a 'Yuppy' were a recurring theme over the next few seasons.
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, a 1989 comedy, features neighbors Todd and Margo as the quintessential yuppies.
• Married... with Children, a Fox TV comedy sitcom (1987–97) featured the Bundy's neighbors: A couple led by twice-married Marcy D'Arcy (her two husbands Steve Rhodes and Jefferson D'Arcy are upwardly mobile men), a bipolar paleoliberal-neoconservative feminist banker who loathes their blue-collar neighbors and she bullies Al Bundy, a failed shoe salesman.
• Jeff Goldblum's character in the 1983 movie The Big Chill is a quintessential yuppie who sold out his 1960s hippie ideals for money.
• The Last Days of Disco features male characters in the early 1980s who complain that they are referred to as yuppies.
• King of the Hill features the Hill family's next door neighbors, Kahn Souphanousinphone, Sr. and his wife, Minh. They are stereotypical yuppies based on a stereotype about Asian Americans. Khan and Minh are originally from Laos and moved to the U.S. through Anaheim, California, a known yuppie cultural center in Southern California and ended up in fictional Arlen, Texas.
• "Yer So Bad" song by rock singer Tom Petty features the verse "My sister got lucky, married a Yuppie"
• "Paranoid Android", a song from Radiohead's OK Computer album, features the lines "The dust and the screaming/The yuppies networking"
• "Ghosts of the Overdoses", a song from Damien Dempsey's Seize the Day album, features the line "From the cities, to make way for all the Yuppies"
• Irish soap opera Fair City had a week-long special in 2005 looking at the murkier side of yuppie life against the backdrop of property speculation reflecting the Celtic Tiger.
• Alex, a long-running comic strip that features archetypal yuppie characters.
• An episode of Portlandia titled "Pull Out King" features a sketch in which a character played by Jello Biafra awakes from a 28-year coma to discover that the world has been overrun by Yuppies (who identify themselves as being "Foodies," "Yogies," and one couple clarifying, "It's a Corgi!")

Related terms

• Commentator David Brooks characterized yuppies as bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos, in his book Bobos in Paradise - the term became somewhat popular in the 2000s.
• A buppie is a black urban professional.
• A huppie is a Hispanic/Latino urban professional.
• A guppie is a gay urban professional
• DINKs (DINKY in the UK) is an acronym is for Dual Income, No Kids [Yet]; at least one authority considers this to be synonymous with "yuppie".
• A scuppie is a Socially Conscious Upwardly-Mobile Person (the term is not commonly used).
• A Brazilian playboy: while in first this term had the same usage as in English, from the 1990s to the 2010s it changed its meaning to a local version of yuppie which first appeared in Greater Rio de Janeiro. Stereotypes of the Brazilian playboys include being classist, womanizer and sexist, at least way more than their yuppie counterparts from more developed countries, which in turn is result of social anxieties of the poor and the lower middle class against the upper middle and upper classes, or being great seekers of social status and influence. They also, contrary to yuppies, do not fashionize intellectuality, and can or can not be socially liberal (social divisions between liberals and conservatives, specially in the upper classes, makes much less sense in Brazil than in the Anglosphere). In the 2000s, some lower middle and middle middle class Brazilians from Greater São Paulo formed a new urban subculture also called playboy which is little to not related to the former. Non-urban young professionals in Brazil are called by the slang agroboy. Also in São Paulo, the term coxinha gained more currency in the late-2000s, making playboy fall out in the early 2010s, when the usage spread around Brazil, especially after the 2013 Brazilian protests.
• A winder is a young individual, uninhibited with regards to its own social success, and willing to comply only to a very soft (and versatile) set of moral standards.
• Yuppification often replaces the word gentrification; it is the act of making something, someone, or someplace appealing and thus marketable to yuppie tastes.
• Yuppie flu was a sometimes derisive, and inaccurate, term applied to chronic fatigue syndrome.
• Yuppie food stamp is a slang term in the United States for a $20 bill, because ATMs there typically dispense only $20 bills.
• Puppie is a poor urban professional (a.k.a. welfie and cheapie).
• YURP is a term describing the diverse group of young professionals who are dedicated to rebuilding New Orleans, and many low-income locals accuse them of "carpetbaggery".
• Yuppie Angst is when a yuppie experiences stress in pursuing a busy work schedule, anxiety attacks over minor fears or challenges, reckless driving on highways and overreacting in panic.
• Yuppie Puppy, derogatory term, synonymous with Malibu Barbie or Malibu Ken i.e. the vacuous overly spoiled and narcissistic offspring of the aforementioned Yuppies.
• Yuppiedom, a mockery of the term "kingdom" or a place of yuppies.
• Yuppie Values, also a mocking of core beliefs, trends and behavioral traits of yuppies as more of upper-income liberalism or an evolution of "Hippie values" about trying new or exotic things while pursuing a money-based life.

References

Other meanings

In South America, "yupi" or "yuppi" means pretty much the same thing, but stereotyped as being Chilean or Argentinian. In the 1980s and 90s, Chile had an economic growth spurt and even in the 2000s and 10s, their economy is rather strong, perhaps the most in Latin or South America. Argentina, like Italy and Spain in Europe, are viewed as a fertile ground for yuppies. The booms could produce a substantial number of young urban professionals in white-collar careers. 67.49.89.214 (talk) 16:09, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

further reading

As per this edit, please comment here rather than edit warring as to why these suggested books are of interest and worth including. There is nothing in either edit summary or edit itself to help identify what these are about, and what they add to the article. Whilst you are correct that links are not required, they help to identify whether the insertions are valid, tangential, or attempts at spam. Chaheel Riens (talk) 11:39, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Links will not be provided. As you concede, they are not required. If this is your sticking point, I suggest we go straight to an admin. Otherwise, you haven't provided any reason why the edit is controversial, which would be the only basis for blocking the edit. Incidentally, at least 2 of the citations have "yuppie" in their title, one of which is an encyclopedia. It seems to me that even the most cursory of evaluations should be able to answer the valid/tangential/spam debate. An edit summary is, frankly, irrelevant in judging the edit if you've read it — have you even read the edited material? Also, the "further reading" section is, as I've said, not for direct sources; yet, you're "editing" as if the books/articles listed were being passed off as sources for the article, but they're not. Again, if you don't explain your wildly exaggerated deviation from normal practices, we'll have to go to an admin. Torvalu4 (talk) 20:26, 17 July 2019 (UTC)

Fine, admin it is. I have asked for justification, and your justification seems to be that you don't need justification. That's not a strong starting point for a discussion, nor is flat out refusing use edit summaries or supply supporting evidence that the links are in any way notable. Any edit that is challenged needs to be justified, as per WP:ONUS - "The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content"

The fact that two of the titles include "Yuppie" is not conclusive - my concern and request is whether the reading material provides any benefit to the article by being there. For example, are the books from a reliable publisher, or are they vanity release?

Some level of restraint has to be displayed with regard to See also (indeed all sections) to prevent list creep. As per WP:SEEALSO - "Whether a link belongs in the 'See also' section is ultimately a matter of editorial judgment and common sense" - your editorial judgment and common sense thinks that the titles should be present, whereas my editorial judgment and common sense says that they could be present, but I'd like to see evidence of relevance first. The easiest way to do that would be to provide links, and/or reviews of the books. If there are none available, one has to wonder what value the books will offer to the article. Chaheel Riens (talk) 05:48, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Die Yuppie Scum

Needs a brief mention of "Die Yuppie Scum" phrase used for anti-gentrification protests and at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

"Die Yuppie Scum" was also used for anti-gentrification protests in NYC

Yuppie was not without detractors, and at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, "Die Yuppie Scum" was the best selling button

Washington Post: "Maybe a horde of yuppies would sweep down from Buckhead and take over -- survival of the fittest. Janice Dagley of Kansas City was selling a lot of "Die Yuppie Scum" bumper stickers, though. Maybe computers and television could replace the whole thing."

La Times: Everybody has a cause, so it’s no surprise to see people with buttons and signs reading “Die Yuppie Scum.”

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:d591:5f10:316e:b09b:a12a:56ad (talk) 11:23, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

References

Chicago Magazine "Claim" Is Correct

I am not versed in the rationales for policies of Wikipedia, such as the rule against "original research" that seemingly excludes the most useful information. But, for the benefit of those who are desirous of the truth about the earliest known appearance of the word "yuppie," you should be aware that the 1980 Chicago Magazine occurrence of "yuppie" is not a "claim," it is a fact. I have seen the original article and it is cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, which has researchers who verify every citation. -- Fred Shapiro, Editor, New Yale Book of Quotations — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:100:3DA0:31E7:1401:7107:D36E (talk) 11:24, 20 December 2021 (UTC)