Hipsters broke my gaydar

At a holiday crafts fair, a cute woman with a half-shaved head and a septum piercing pushed a tin toward me. “Smell this – it smells awesome,” she said, smiling. People brushed past me; the sun lit the woman’s head like a halo.

I reached for the tin, which had an image of a mustache on it. Our fingers touched, and I noticed a tattoo of the “female” symbol on her wrist.

“If your boyfriend has any facial hair,” she said, “this’ll make his face less scratchy for you!”

The tin held $14 beard pomade. I blinked, startled; I don’t have a boyfriend. If she casually assumed I was straight, that means she probably isn’t queer. But ... how?

I backed away from her table. I was surrounded by strangers; I’d lost my way. I used to have a talent, but now it’s gone, vanished, like a beautiful dream I can’t remember.

I once had wonderful, startlingly accurate gaydar. I spent years writing a humor blog about the topic to educate fellow queers. Now I can’t always tell right away. It’s ruining my life.

In cities, trendy young people – queer and straight, male, female and non-binary – are blending together, look-wise. That’s because mainstream style is now hipster style. But here’s the thing: Hipster style is just queer style, particularly queer women’s style.

Put another way: Lesbians invented hipsters.

Don’t feel bad. This is good for you – it means you get to wear more outdoor gear. But since you now all wear carabiners as key chains, we lesbians no longer have any private signals to each other. We’re all screwed, except none of us are, because we can’t find one another anymore.

Think I’m wrong? There have always been people ahead of their time and on the edges of society, whose culture later spreads to the masses (beat poets, punks, hippies) or is stolen outright (jazz, hip-hop, pretty much everything by black people).

But there is only one group of people who live out every single aspect of hipster culture today. Lesbians. Lesbians were working on communal organic farms and freaking out about pesticides decades before the rest of the country. Who do you think made food co-ops cool? Lesbians did, my child. We lesbians have been making our own pickles and brewing gross health teas forever. We’ve had a community-supported agriculture farm share since your grandmother was feeling feelings while “practicing kissing” with her best friend (before getting engaged to your grandpa).

Now quick – describe society’s idea of a “typical hipster” for me.

Did plaid flannel come to mind? Work boots? Weirdly cut or especially shaggy hair? Maybe a bike?

I can’t tell queers and hipsters apart any more

How odd. You just described the cartoon stereotype of a lesbian.

Give me your undercuts, your messenger bags, your androgynous “dapper” clothing. Give me your commitment to environmentally friendly transportation, your $8 cider (the only gluten-free option at the bar) and the password to your Etsy store where you sell cloth menstrual pads screen-printed with astrological symbols. Your coffee mug stamped with the words “Male Tears” – give it to me.

All of these things are the property of my people. We did this to society. We, who have always listened with one ear (pierced in multiple places) to the rhythmic heaves of Mother Earth’s lunar tides, have finally made y’all really, really gay.

If you’re a queer bristling at my generalizations of lesbians, tell me you don’t know any gays who look like what I’m describing. Look me in the eyes and tell me this, and if you can do it, I swear to you I will do something straight for a week: I’ll watch “The Bachelor” without irony, or wear Dockers, or buy a “Live, Laugh, Love” throw pillow and display it in my home.

Now you straight people carry your own reusable bags back to your Prius after comparing artisanal brands of sriracha mayonnaise. That is super gay. You voted for Hillary Clinton, you freak out if someone throws plastic in your compost bin and you’re considering a week without eating meat – would it be so bad? You’re all lesbians now, America. And since the alternative is an endless stream of ballerina flats and Michael Kors handbags, or cargo khaki shorts with hairy toes in flip-flops on the morning train – a straight, alternate universe/hellscape with no way out – I say you’re welcome.

And also: I’m sorry. But mostly for myself. Because it’s harder to tell who’s queer now. That means I’m going to have to just ask you at the farmers market, and that is going to be uncomfortable for everyone. Krista Burton is a writer for the online magazine ‘Rookie.’