Friday, July 13, 2007

Steampunk Socialites

The New York Observer coins a new term, "New Vicotorians", in a lifestyle article on the return of Gen-Y Millenials to more traditional views on marriage. The New Vic world centers around child-bearing, cooking, gardening, knitting, nesting and other modes of bourgeois domesticity that the boomers thought they'd successfully done away with.
...recent years have seen a breed of ambitious, twentysomething nesters settling in the city, embracing the comforts of hearth and home with all the fervor of characters in Middlemarch. This prudish pack—call them the New Victorians—appears to have little interest in the prolonged puberty of earlier generations. While their forbears flitted away their 20’s in a haze of booze, Bolivian marching powder, and bed-hopping, New Vics throw dinner parties, tend to pedigreed pets, practice earnest monogamy, and affect an air of complacent careerism. Indeed, at the tender age of 28, 26, even 24, the New Vics have developed such fierce commitments, be they romantic or professional, that angst-ridden cultural productions like the 1994 movie Reality Bites, or Benjamin Kunkel’s 2005 novel Indecision, simply wouldn’t make sense to them.
Unfortunately, the article eventual devolves into yet another touchstone for female marriage panic. Girls musn't be spinsters in the New Vic world. And after all, isn't this just a new take on 80s era yuppie-ism?

Still, until everyone gets bored of playing house, I look forward to steampunk being the next major fashion trend for these Neo-Victorians and their trendy homes. With mid century modern on its way out, what would be better than Jules Verne inspired espresso makers, mp3 players, hd televisions, and cell phones?