In the spirit of awesome forums (I found last Friday's forum by Matthew Bowman particularly awsome) I decided I would make a list of my favorite forum speaches so far at Southern Virginia University. There are a lot that I like, but I decided the best way to do it was to choose my top 5.

Have you ever heard of the Glass Ceiling? The Glass Ceiling Congressional Commission defined it as "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements." Multiple spinoffs describe the invisible barrier in other professions and groups; including the Brass Ceiling (law enforcement and military), the Bamboo Ceiling (Asian Americans), and the Gray Ceiling (the lingering baby boomers keeping younger stock from moving up).  Now that we are familiar with the Glass Ceiling can you guess what the Paper Ceiling is?

Hipster. A word with an elusive definition, leaving behind - without fail - the question, what is a hipster?

Let's be honest here. I haven't the faintest idea. Countless people have tried to describe to me the hipster, and I've yet to truly understand what/who a hipster is. It's a topic of constant debate in our Accolade News meetings, usually ending with one among our ranks tossing his hands up with an exasperated "I don't understand what a hipster is!"

I feel like that quite often. 

(all images courtesy of LATFH)

THE ELUSIVE ANIMAL BECOMING EVER MORE POPULAR IN AMERICAN SOCIETY, ALTHOUGH POPULARITY IS A DIRTY WORD TO THE HIPSTER. 
THE FRINGE-DWELLERS WHO SUSTAIN THEMSELVES WITH ORGANIC FOODS AND VINTAGE CLOTHES.
THE GLAMOROUS HOBOS.






THE BANE AND KING OF FASHION.
THE PABST AND TEA, IRONY AND EARNESTNESS, WORLD CULTURE AND AMERICANA GURUS OF THE MODERN AGE.

If you’ve watched the hilarious show Portlandia then you’ve heard of hipsters. I hear this phrase pop up repeatedly at the mall, in the halls, and even at Goodwill. So what exactly is a hipster?

I’m not the urban dictionary, but I would split hipsters into two categories – the tragic and the chasers. The tragic should be addressed first since they really started the whole movement. They seem to be made of people are not willing to accept that they have grown up and the beauty of whatever epoch they came from is over. Whether it was the 80’s, 90’s, or coming soon the 00’s they keep bringing back forgotten styles, lingo, and music. It is almost like they found a real Never-never-land, where they will never have to grow up and act like adults e.g. wear grown-up clothes, get grown-up jobs, and talk about grown-up things – like realistic politics.

The term ‘hipster’ is one that fills me with derision, that inspires snooty contempt from the very root of my most callous and cynical id. Until now, I haven’t been able to articulate why, without becoming a living parody of the exact pretentious attitude that I am trying to dismiss. My point is, hipsters don’t really exist. Nothing can be hipster. That doesn’t make any sense. At least, not anymore. Like punk, the term has become a caricature of a once idealized mentality of something unique, smart, and true. And like punk, it is now a tool of advertising agencies to sell bland crap to an unsuspecting and easily duped demographic.

What exactly is hipster? Dictionary.com gives us a few answers: “A person, especially during the 1950s, characterized by a particularly strong sense of alienation from most established social activities and relationships.” Or, in laymen’s terms, “a person who is hip.”   

Their likes, for this group of nonconforming conformists, are rather similar in taste:

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