Bacon-loving hipsters can kiss my vegan ass!

First, a quiz.

1. Do you have a strip of bacon, another pork product, or organ meat rendered on your body in tattoo ink?

2. Do you find yourself debating which adorably anthropomorphized bacon crochet figure to buy at the local DIY craft fair? Or should you buy the bacon toddler shirt for your niece? Or, oh my god, did you see those bacon wristbands!?

3. Do you spend at least twenty percent of your time bonding and debating with your fellow bacon lovers on “foodie” message boards regarding the most obscure cuts of animal parts (extra points if they’re considered an ethnic delicacy in a faraway culture and hard-core in our own) and finding off-the-beaten-path and hard-to-pronounce restaurants in which to indulge in your consumption of the cured and salted meats?

4. Is the Small Pig Farmer a mystical being to you, in possession of an enigmatic grace, preternatural patience and a transcendental inner-peace? Does he seem to walk and talk slowly but purposefully, surrounded by an ever-present halo?

5. Finally, have you ever had a foggy but still erotic dream featuring Anthony Bourdain and Michael Pollan even if you don’t favor men in this way? Similarly, do you feel something similar to an erotic charge when you hear of a new heritage breed of pig, chicken, turkey or cow you can consume even if you don’t favor food animals in this way?

Now, give yourself one point for each time you answered in the affirmative.

One point: You are on your way but clearly must bump the effort up a notch. Have you been to a charcuterie lately? Maybe you should get a pig cut chart poster for your kitchen.

Two points: Get that shoulder tattooed with a slab of bacon already, my friend! You are rapidly ascending the ladder to becoming a meat fetishist.

Three points: No average, run-of-the-mill hipster affectations for you, dear one. When you embrace an alternative fad, you squeeze the ever-loving life out of it and pee on it to make it your own. Go, Bacon-Loving Hipster, go!

Four points: Anthony Bourdain on Tivo? Check. Fresh organ meat moldering in your fridge? Check. Recently dashed off a blistering or fawning review of the local “underground” (meaning, actually, trendy, exclusive and overpriced) meat emporium on Yelp? Check. You, daring hipster, are nearly there. You are essentially one sardonically purchased bacon-themed craft away.

Five points: Your body is a shrine to bacon, inside and out. All other Bacon-Loving Hipsters tremble in your presence. You are cured, salted and fried. My friend, you have become the living embodiment of bacon (without the suffering),

In truth, though, if you answered in the affirmative to more than one of these questions, then you may very well already be a Bacon-Loving Hipster. And if so, you can kiss my vegan ass.

Bacon-Loving Hipsters will whiningly insist that they tried to be vegetarian - oh, how they tried! - and even may have had a vegan significant other in the past but a life without strips of salted pig flesh simply wasn’t worth living. They may have even gone on what might be thought of as a considerable sabbatical from bacon (six months? A year?) but when they finally gave in and welcomed it back into their lives it was a revelation! The floodgates opened and previously scorned meat products – Veal! Sweetbreads! Beef tongue! – flooded in like so much backwash. The Bacon-Loving Hipster understands the arguments against eating animals but rejects them because, well, because bacon tastes good. No matter how many times they repeat this, it never stops being funny. To them.

Bacon-Loving Hipsters are in the greatest representation demographically as urban, heterosexual and Caucasian males and females from 25 – 37 years of age or so. Bacon-Loving Hipsters with artistic natures frequently try to finesse their pro-bacon stance as being ironic in spirit but, when pressed, they cannot articulate how this is an ironic statement. A smirking “Because bacon tastes good!” becomes their default response to everything in life, whether it’s related to bacon or not.

Bacon-Loving Hipsters never met a progressive petition they wouldn’t sign unless it could result in them having access to less bacon. By and large, they are anti-war, opposed to homophobic views, profess to be of the feminist persuasion, against racism, global warming and so on. When it comes to supporting needless cruelties against animals, however, the line is drawn in the sand, and that line is made out of bacon. Bacon-Loving Hipsters will support most progressive causes, except for those that actually require them to challenge some of their most cherished and self-absorbed habits.

What Bacon-Loving Hipsters are not: They are not actually from rural areas, and though they romanticize the country life, they cannot actually thrive without the comforts of city living (good coffee, grungy-ironic redneck bars where they can drink PBR and won’t get their asses kicked by actual rednecks, used bookstores with a snotty, perpetual grad school staff) in close proximity. Bacon-Loving Hipsters may actually go to the farm where their shrouded-in-the-gauze-of-idealization farmer keeps his pigs, may actually see or participate in the slaughtering process, may wax rhapsodic on how deeply fulfilling this was and how incredibly satisfying it was to eat this clearly superior soft tissue with a religious fervor once associated with, well, religion. They will not, however, give up their urban lives so they remain here to torment us with their meat-fetishizing ways and hipster habits.

What Bacon-Loving Hipsters are: They are often the same kids who were popular in high school, suddenly punk in college and embracing appropriate “below the radar” hipster culture ever-after. They think stripping is liberating (as long as it’s women – preferably those with plentiful body-mods - shedding clothes, otherwise it’s Chippendales-y, which is tacky and gross), opposed to gentrification even though they will only live in neighborhoods where it is afoot and think that chocolate-covered bacon is God in edible form. Well, they would think this if they weren’t atheists.

Rise against! Bacon-Loving Hipsters are in opposition to everything that is good and truly rejecting the status quo. What should we do? It’s actually easier than it might seem. Here’s the strategy I recommend: Bacon-Loving Hipsters love to feel that they are part of a marginalized, truly transgressive subculture. What is the worst insult to a Bacon-Loving Hipster? To imply that his tastes are acceptable to a mainstream, white-bread populace. Puncture the hipster where it hurts thusly: when you see a Bacon-Loving Hipster – and they will all furiously deny being hipsters so don’t ever take their word for it – tell them in your best suburban-y, cheerleader voice how awesome you think bacon is, and how you can’t wait to get a pig’s anatomical chart just like they have tattooed on your ass, just after you get back from seeing that new Sandra Bullock movie but before you go to Ikea. This will undoubtedly cause the Bacon-Loving Hipster a serious bout of agonizing self-consciousness and perhaps even cause said hipster to abandon his or her bacon preoccupation and adopt something else as a new talisman of rebellion, ideally something not made of a sentient being.

This is how we do it, people. The Bacon-Loving Hipster must be stopped before yet another bacon-themed t-shirt is purchased. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, my darlings. Let’s get busy!