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1990. Yuppies are once again pronounced dead on the arrival of the recession.
1991. Ditto.
But this time is the coroner's verdict truly beyond dispute? Up to now, yuppies have proved harder to kill than Freddy Krueger. One can imagine the horror movie Nightmare at the Brie Counter, Part 12: Die Again, Yuppie Scum.
The yuppie mystique was built around a sense of generational entitlement that had its roots in the prosperity of the 1950s and '60s. In these more parlous times, there is an undeniable tempering of wanton consumption, but affluent baby boomers cannot cast off the experiences of a lifetime merely by switching outfits at the Gap. As marketing consultant Judith Langer puts it, "Values don't change overnight. Life-styles don't change overnight."
The getting-and-spending frenzy of the 1980s can be seen as just another stage in the life quest of the baby boomers, the successor to the hedonism of the 1960s and the obsessive self-improvement of the Me decade. But until something new replaces it, materialism will in some fashion continue to fill the void. "There is a free-floating sense of searching for a value system," says Ann Clurman, a vice president of Grey Advertising. "All the instincts of the baby boomers are saying, 'Slow down. Figure out what's important.' But they haven't arrived at what that is."
As for the late, lamented yuppies, there is no need to send flowers. Checks made out to cash will do just fine.
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