is Yuppie a dirty word?

About 7 months ago, I registered myself on the waitlist for some co-ops, Quebec Manor being my top-co-op. I've shied away from telling people because someone said to me "how yuppie of you" when I mentioned the co-op thing. Don't really know why I was embarrassed about being called a yuppie. I mean, I am young (depends on your audience) and I do live in an urban environment and if having a full time job makes me a "professional" then I guess I sorta fit that description. Apparently, as it has been pointed out to me, these other factors also make me a yupster:

• I drive a mid-size cross-over (translation: small s.u.v)
• perceived as being upwardly mobile (translation: don't understand actually, lost in translation)
• like listening to 80's music (who doesn't like Madonna and Kool and the Gang??)
• have a cell phone and laptop (which makes me a "neo-yuppie" GAWD)
• ambitious (I prefer to think of it as needing work to pay my bills)
• like my trendy clothing
  

However, by other standards or assumptions, I am also not a yuppie and aspiring or true yuppie aficionados would scoff at the thought of Vi as a yuppie because I obviously lack:

• a gigantic bank account
• a six figure income
• don't own any prada or gucci (though I do have Chanel eyeshadow!)
• artsy qualities (can't write, can't paint, don't do art shows or check out indie bands unless it's my youth who are doing the performing!)
• not business or investment saavy (RRSPs is the extent of my attempt to diversify my financial portfolio)
• don't live anywhere hip, just in the good ol' Hastings Sunrise area and with my parents to boot!
• periodically make bad fashion choices

The thing about being a yuppie though, is that you're loathed by everyone. The urban dictionary (such a reliable source y'know) summed it up best when they said that yuppies are loathed by both the far right and the far left.

The left wingers think of yuppies as self-absorbed, conceited, spoiled fucks who are obsessed with money, their wall street careers and trendy condo loving gentrifying neighborhoods. I find this funny, because most left-wingers I know fit this description to a tee and are basically themselves, a bunch of wannabe hipsters/artists/activists who claim to fight the power when in fact their parents represent the power and all things capitalist!

The right wingers, on the other hand also hate the yuppies because they often confuse yuppie with hippy, whatever, it's all one homogenous doo-hicky for them. Yuppies are perceived by the right as representing all things counter-culture, as falling off the deep end of the liberal pendulum and corrupting the status quo with their alternative health-hemp-homoerotic-promoting lifestyles.

As someone who truly believes in concepts of community development and consensus building, I obviously don't align myself with the right but what the hell do I know because I'm neither left or right. This is not to say that the definition of a yuppie is solely defined by such harsh polarized paradigms of politics and socio-economic status...

No one likes being labeled, but in this day and age, I find that you can't really distance yourself from or take such an anti-labeling approach because everyone you meet will take on a particular lens or window to understanding or rather, misunderstanding who you are. Why resist the label when you know who you are. And if you don't really know who you are, then whatever, you have the rest of life to figure that out--it's not a speed test.