Yuppie

"Yuppie", short for "Young Urban Professional," describes a demographic of people comprising baby boomers as well as people in their late twenties and early thirties. Yuppies tend to hold jobs in the professional sector, with incomes that place them in the upper-middle economic class. The term "Yuppie" emerged in the early 1980s as an ironic echo of the earlier "hippies" and "yippies" who had rejected the materialistically oriented values of the business community. Although the original yuppies were "young," the term now applies as well to people of middle age.

The yuppie stereotype

The term "yuppies" has come to refer to more than just a demographic profile: it is also a psychographic profile. It describes a set of behavioural and psychographic attributes that have come to constitute a commonly believed stereotype.

Related Topics:
Psychographic - Stereotype

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According to the stereotype, yuppies are more conservative than the hippies who preceded them (in reality, many of the early yuppies were actually hippies in the 1960s and early 1970s). Dispensing with the social causes of the hippies (who themselves shed traditional values), yuppies tend to be "work hard / play hard" types. A cinematic example is Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street". Yuppies tend to value material goods (especially trendy new things) and are also supposed to have "bad taste" or buy expensive things for the sake of buying expensive things. In particular this can apply to their stocks, luxury automobiles (e.g. BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz), sport utility vehicles, development houses, and technological gadgets, particularly cell phones.

Related Topics:
Conservative - Hippie - Gordon Gekko - Wall Street - Stocks - Automobile - BMW - Lexus - Mercedes-Benz - Sport utility vehicle - Cell phone

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The yuppies' fast-paced pursuit of material goods can have unintended consequences. Usually in a hurry, "yuppies" may seek convenience goods and services. Being "time poor," their family relations can become difficult to sustain. Maintaining their way of life is mentally

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exhausting. Sometimes, they will move every few years to where their job goes, straining their family. This fast-paced lifestyle has been termed a rat race.

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Heavily influenced by a competitive corporate environment, "yuppies" often value those behaviors that they have found useful in gaining upward mobility and hence income and status. They often take their corporate values home to their spouses and children.

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According to the stereotype, there is a certain air of informality about them, yet an entire code of unwritten etiquette can govern their activities from golf and tennis to luncheons at trendy cocktail bars.

Related Topics:
Golf - Tennis

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One of the most popular depictions of yuppies was found in Bret Easton Ellis' controversial 1991 novel, American Psycho.

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