yuppie

yuppie, term used most frequently in the 1980s and ’90s to describe college-educated young professionals. Yuppie is short for “young urban professional” or “young upwardly mobile professional.” These individuals were typically of the American baby boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) and worked high-paying jobs in cities. Yuppie started as a fairly neutral expression, but its connotations shifted toward the negative, especially as it began to be associated with social issues regarded as problematic, such as gentrification. Since its peak in the early 1990s, yuppie has largely been phased out as a descriptor, though the term remains familiar to a large number of Americans.

The neologism yuppie was likely used and spread colloquially by word of mouth before appearing in print, probably for the first time in a 1980 issue of Chicago Magazine. Journalist Dan Rottenberg, who did not take credit for coining the term, used it in his article about a growing trend of individuals moving into fashionable neighborhoods in Chicago. Indeed, at the time, much of the media was hyping a reversal of so-called white flight, suggesting that baby boomers, characterized as a generation of former hippies who were then entering their 30s, were shifting away from the suburbanized notion of the American dream of their parents and toward a new idealized urban lifestyle.

Interest in these affluent young professionals grew, and in 1984 Newsweek magazine labeled 1984 as the “year of the yuppie,” noting that the generation was becoming increasingly influential in America’s political and economic landscapes. Yuppies were often portrayed in the media as career-minded, materialistic, self-serving, having a hedonistic lifestyle, and prioritizing physical fitness. They were thought to be fiscally conservative but politically liberal. Their values seemingly stood in sharp contrast to the anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, and nonconformist hippie ideals of the prior decades. Many former hippies, however, still believed in sexual liberation, feminism, and the right to abortion. The shift toward economic conservatism may have developed as a result of the inevitable loss of the hippies’ bright-eyed optimism following the cycles of inflation, recession, and high unemployment in the 1970s as well as the frantic end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Not all yuppies, however, were former hippies, and some favoured more conservative views than others. As a whole, the political stance of yuppies was considered vague.

As yuppies moved to cities such as New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco, critics argued that they perpetuated gentrification. Gentrification, a term coined in its modern sense in 1964 by British sociologist Ruth Glass, was becoming a hot-button issue as baby boomers came of age. The term refers to the flocking of middle-to-upper-class residents to urban neighbourhoods, opening establishments such as high-end grocery stores, gyms, restaurants, bars, and boutiques. The perceived neighbourhood revitalization often resulted in higher prices for real estate and commodities and possibly caused the displacement of long-term residents who could no longer afford rent.

By 1991 Time magazine had written about the “death of the yuppies,” attributed in part to the stock market crash of 1987. However, the term was still sometimes used in the 21st century to describe young urban professionals. By that point, the original generation of yuppies had aged out of the “young” descriptor and were often simply called “Boomers.”