BUZZ BOOK: Forever yuppies
It was the 1980s, the so-called “decade of greed.”
Ronald Reagan was in the White House and the American economy was booming. On “Wall Street,” the Hollywood version, a character named Gordon Gekko, played by a slick-backed Michael Douglas, infamously proclaimed: “greed is good,” and “money never sleeps.”
Instead of a “chicken in every pot,” a political slogan from the Roaring ’20s, there was now — in that acquisitive and mercenary environment of the swinging ’80s — a BMW in every garage, a Cuisinart in every stainless kitchen, a workout in every chic health club, a bespoke pinstripe suit on every trim physique, a Rolex on every wrist and the repowder mains of a white on every nose.
A new species, in their mid 20s to their mid 40s, appeared out of the blue and became a phenomenon.
They were called Yuppie Young Urban Professional .
Now, writer-editor Tom McGrath has gone down memory lane and put the long-buried Yuppie movement under a journalistic microscope in his new book, “Triumph of The Yuppies: America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation.” In his highly readable more than 300-page account, McGrath questions where Yuppies came from, whether they’ve really disappeared, and “how much impact” they had in “the overall direction f the country.” e doesn’t miss a beat, n noting that the glamor doll, Barbie, had, for an instant, traded her swimsuit for an Oscar de La Renta business suit, while actressLeftist activist Jane Fonda had turned her fitness shtick into a lifestyle.
As McGrath deciphers, this new generation of upwardly mobile, materialistic go-getters were on “a fast-track career. A commitment to fitness. Sophistication about food.”
What tied them together,” he writes, “was the idea of optimizing your life — excelling, being your best, experiencing the best.”
“Certainly not every young professional in every major city in the country was approaching his or her life that way, but for a certain few, that was the culture, the ethos, now forming.” And for many, the only memory of the Yuppie movement four decades ago is a derogatory bumper sticker and graffiti: “Die Yuppie Scum.”