Don't Hate Whole Foods Because of Health Care...

Hey liberals, are you angry that the CEO of Whole Foods doesn't want a government option for health care? Does that make you want to boycott your local store? Come on, hipsters, wake up. Don't stop shopping at Whole Foods because its John Mackey is acting like a 19-year-old who just read his first Ayn Rand book. Stop shopping at Whole Foods because you're hipper than that.

Huffington Post readers, this is your clarion call. I know you. We're the same, you and I. You've been shopping at Whole Foods for a while now. You were one of the first. You felt that tingle of excitement at planting your flag. You were thrilled when your parents started shopping there. It made you feel like your whole family was hip.

I've got news for you: Whole Foods is lame. It's been lame for a long while now, but you didn't notice, because it sang you to sleep with a lullaby of green as it sold you frozen dinners and prepared meals dressed down in hip's clothing.

When McDonald's first restaurant opened it was a modern revelation; families went there for Sunday dinner together. Then McDonald's took that slide down the steep ravine into Rio Lamo, and the hip families stopped going. And you're definitely hipper than McDonald's now, right?

Now, look at your local Whole Foods. Walk up to the front of it, and squint your eyes. It looks big, and bright, and sanitary. Looks like a Path-Mark, doesn't it? If you live in the Midwest, maybe it seems like a Dominicks? See, there was a time when Path-Mark was the biggest, brightest, coolest grocery store in your neighborhood. And then Whole Foods opened, which made your local Dominicks look incredibly lame. So you started going to Whole Foods because it somehow seemed more...organic? Personable? No. Hip.

Whole Foods is lame. All of your lame neighbors shop at Whole Foods. You wouldn't shop at Urban Outfitters anymore, would you? Well your lame neighbors just discovered Urban Outfitters, and they love it. Your lame neighbors just found out about this awesome band called Arcade Fire, and they want to lend you the album. See? You used to think Urban Outfitters and Arcade Fire were hip. But now you know that those two things are, actually, completely lame.

Whole Foods is the Path-Mark of the oughts. You shop at Path-Mark.

So, what is the next, hip thing? What is the King Khan and the Shrines of grocery stores? Here's the amazing thing, Huff Posters: I can't tell you. You've got to discover that for yourself. Because the next hip grocery store is your local one, the tiny one, that stocks local produce from the farms in your area. In fact, the next hip grocery store may be so five minutes from now, so underground, that it's a fold-up tent that exists only on Saturdays in your local park or Sundays on your neighbor's porch. This transgressive food happening is called a farmer's market, and no, a farmer's market does not stock O Magazine and vacuum pearls at the checkout counter. Those things are lame, and belong at lame grocery stores like Whole Foods.

So, the next time you see your lame neighbor wearing that distressed t-shirt with the fleur-de-lis print on the upper right, or the lower left, or the chest area, and the military cap, and the Chuck Taylors, remember how lame you feel that person to be. Remember that, and then realize that you look that lame carrying a Whole Foods bag in your super hip neighborhood.

So stop shopping at Whole Foods, my HuPo comrades. But don't stop shopping there because John Mackey hates poor people. Stop shopping there because you've woken up. You've seen the lameness. And you've moved on to hipster pastures.

Follow Aemilia Scott on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aemiliascott

Comments

[lemuelhuer]

So if I got this right, Whole Foods *used* to be cool because shopping there meant one could lord it over others. It even survived the Hipster Acknowledgment Clause, which states that the day after anyone realizes something is cool, it's not cool any more. But it caused a Slinky effect, and the normal hipness/lameness cycle experienced a violent contraction.

It's uncool to shop at Whole Foods because one of its employees expressed a political opinion (a lame one, so it should be hip, right?), but because so many people are talking about it, it's uncool to boycott Whole Foods on the basis of its CEO's lame (possibly hip) opinion, but those two things clash, so now shopping at Whole Foods is uncool because Whole Foods is simply lame.

Which is pretty ... hip? No, lame. Being lame is lame, right? Wait ... I'm so confused ... won't *someone* tell me what I should be doing?

[Aemilia Scott]

Assuming the Hipster Acknowledgment Clause, I would argue that Whole Foods didn't suffer from the slinky effect, contracting the hip/lame cycle abnormally. That would assume that the contraction of hip to lame time happened suddenly.

Actually, the normal sine wave of hip to cool was somehow lengthened by the marketing and advertising of Whole Foods. So what seems to be a slinky effect is actually an adjustment. John Mackey was just the catalyst.

Currently, everyone wants to boycott WF, which makes it fail the HAC test, making it uncool. And yet becoming uncool does allow for re-adoption. And this article itself, having been put onto Alternet and enjoyed by other liberals, is now uncool. So forget everything you read. Completely lame. You, however, are hip.

But being hip does allow you a certain measure of lameness, and does afford you a high lame-to-hip ratio without seeming actually unhip. And in fact, the public effect of you incorporating so much lameness into your lifestyle and still seeming hip does often have the opposite effect, of making you seem extremely hip (i.e., American Apparel high wasted leggings, William F. Buckley Jr.)

So... Boycott. Or don't. Or alternate. Or talk about it, but don't do it. Or do it, but don't talk about it. See, now that I'm behind the hipness cycle, I'm no longer allowed to say what is hip or cool. That all happened in the space of me replying to your comment.

Aemilia

[tbridge]

That has to be one of the worst articles I've read in a while. While I disagree with the authors stance on Whole Foods, that's not the reason this was bad. To simply call something lame because more and more people have begun to go there/use it/listen to it/etc. is just awful logic. If you liked something in the first place, you have no reason to stop liking something just because other people begin to as well. Her Urban Outfitters example doesn't make sense. You should buy clothes somewhere based on what you like to wear, not because it makes you feel good about wearing things that other people really aren't on to yet. There's several bands that i like that were pretty unknown and now are fairly popular. That hasn't stopped me from listening to them at all.

[Aemilia Scott]

When you and your friends sit around the bar talking about what you like, do you stop the conversation to tell them that The White Stripes' "Di Stijl" is your absolute favorite album that everyone should listen to? Or do you tell them that you heard the *new* White Stripes album, and it's awesome and everyone should listen to it?

That's all I'm saying. Nothing to do with intrinsic quality at all.

That, and I'm a comedian.

What do you like to wear? Potato sacks? Barrels with straps? Or do you shop at Gap, or Express, or J. Crew, or one of the other conveniently located stores in your local mall or shopping plaza?

Potato sacks and Express Editor Pants will do the job the same. But obviously there are reasons that a person would choose one or the other. Many of which have nothing to do with your individual assessment of their value. We live in a complicated world, and the choices we make are mostly not our own.

[skippypicasso]

I'm so uncool I'm still a member of the local food co-op. And I give $200 to a local farmer in the spring, I spend a little time working in the summer, and voila! I'm stocked up for the winter. You all enjoy those "whole" foods. Ha ha ha!

[thereallawrence]

This article kind of creeped me out and almost does the exact opposite of what it set out to do.

[chipsaunders]

Whole Foods is over priced and they exploit their workers by suppressing unions.

They also are not green. Instead of buying from local farmers they buy from Chile, which cost a lot in terms of petrol dollars to get the food to the table.

I call Wholefoods Whole pay check, because it's so expensive. Hip? I never thought it was hip as I knew that the owner and CEO was an extreme Libertarian. Wholefoods was and always will be a fake.

[kramey]

Here in Tucson, we used to have a local, organic, grocery called Reay's Ranch Market. They started with one store, near the university and slowly expanded along with Tucson. Then they were bought out by Wild Oats. More stores were built, the original store was "remodeled," and some of the older stores were closed. Wild Oats was then acquired by Whole Foods. There are now two stores in Tucson, the local produce is gone, most of the "quirky" items you used to be able to find are missing, more national brands are on the shelf, and the prices are a lot higher than when it was Reay's. That's progress?

[Aemilia Scott]

Here here. Same thing happened in Chicago, which had numerous organic produce stores. These were all assimilated by Whole Foods. Although WF does allow an organic option for people who otherwise wouldn't be trying organic food -- and that might be progress -- it's business model is eerily Wal*Mart-y, which is not progress.

[jwrock]

Wow! What a take down of the Cool Crowd. Hilarious.

[gluvox12]

HuffPost's Pick

I used to shop at Wal Mart when they were on Matador.