Yuppies

The other night on the subway, two young women were talking derisively about yuppies. Then one of them asked what yuppie even stands for and they tried out possibilities. They knew the Y was for young, but beyond that, they were lost. Young Unemployed Privileged People, one guessed? They seemed pretty sure the U was for unemployed, which struck me because yuppies were decidedly not unemployed. I don't want to extrapolate too much from this, but I do think it's interesting. When the term was coined, the object of derision was people who worked -- probably long hours -- in high-paying jobs. Now it's people who are so privileged that they don't have to work who are despised.