yuppie

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The term Yuppie is an acronym and stands for the English y oung u rban p rofessional .

The English term professional means 'professionally qualified'. Yuppies are therefore young adults of the urban upper middle class or young, career-conscious, big-city people. The term yuppie emerged in Great Britain and the United States in the 1980s, sometimes referred to as the yuppie decade , as that time produced a generation of many successful business people. The boom in the computer industry and later the New Economy of the 1990s continued this trend.

The rural character, aspiring counterpart to the yuppie is as Rumpie , short for r ural, u pwardly- m obile p rofessional called.

Lifestyle and concept

In the 1980s, despite the negative side effects of the new economic policy under Ronald Reagan, optimism prevailed . The pessimism of the 1970s disappeared and a new social group had to be described, which was predominantly characterized by young, successful people who established themselves in management positions in international corporations. This group was called yuppies , an artificial word made up of young urban professional ( English for young, urban and well educated ).

In the media, the yuppies replaced the yippies of the 1970s. The purpose of life for yuppies was consumption. As a fashion drug, cannabis has now been replaced by cocaine . Furthermore, a cultivated, moderate consumption of alcohol was typical, one enjoyed cocktails, red wine, beer, cognac or various fruit schnapps, often in connection with extensive visits to renowned cocktail bars, exclusive restaurants and chic, “hip” discos. Drinking excesses were frowned upon. In contrast to the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, the yuppies focus on consumption and material wealth. This wealth and the associated hedonism were represented, for example, by wearing expensive clothes, expensive home furnishings or exclusive cars. The so-called “brand madness” emerged in the mid-1980s. The rise in single households also began during this period. It was no longer the “ shared flat feeling” of the 1970s that was in demand, but rather retreating into an expensive apartment (or a loft ) in an exclusive location that one then didn't want to share with anyone ( cocooning ). Quite a few yuppies were said to have a high degree of arrogance , selfishness and recklessness because of their lifestyle . Beginning with the economic crisis in 2001 (and confirmed by the economic and financial crisis from autumn 2008), the yuppies' concept of life has lost its reputation as a major urban culture.

Yuppies differed from previous groups both in terms of their professional perspective and in their consumer behavior. The gay variant Guppie (G as gay), blacks were Buppie called (B as black). As an antonym to the Young Urban Professional , Short mentions the Yuffie ( young urban failure ), who, unlike a Yuppie, could not distinguish himself through professional success and had difficulties in finding a job at all.

Movies

Wall Street , American Psycho and The Wolf of Wall Street are considered milestones of the "yuppie" theme in film history , which clearly emphasize the unscrupulousness or lack of meaning and the total numbing of feelings of this type of actor. Films like The Secret of My Success and The Last Days of Disco tried to approach the subject in a satirical and comedic way. In the film Breakfast at Her , the relationship between a 27-year-old yuppie and a 16-year-old waitress is discussed.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Manfred Günther : Dictionary youth - age , illustrations: Klaus Stuttmann ; Berlin: RabenStück-Verlag, 2010; ISBN 978-3-935607-39-1 .
  2. ^ John R. Short: The Urban Order. An Introduction to Cities, Culture, and Power. Blackwell Publishers, London 1996, pp. 154-155.

Web links

Wiktionary: Yuppie  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations