A Not-So-Mainstream Mother's Day

Mother’s day is this weekend, meaning that I need to find a gift for my mom and I need it soon.  While procrastinating on that little chore, I have decided to kill time and give you all the gift of help when it comes to getting presents.  Now, I want to admit that I don’t know most of your mothers, which may make things difficult if you’re looking to make your gift personal.  If that is the route you want to take, then I’m no good for advice on what your mother likes, however I will suggest a coffee mug with your Mom’s name on it.  Not only will she have a new coffee mug, she’ll be able to easily tell if she has the right mug or not in times of confusion.  Or an xBox.  You can’t go wrong by getting your mom an xBox.  Moms love xBox.  Anyways, moving on, I’ve decided to help people shopping for a certain type of Mom.  This time Mom is the new version of “the cool Mom” which is sweeping the nation like the Bubonic Plague.  That’s right: The Hipster Mom. 

This baby has a weirdly shaped head.

Why are Hipster Moms becoming more and more common in today’s society?  I’m going to go with the fact that since everything retro is now hip again, it seems that by not changing anything, your Mom is all of a sudden cool again.  Has your mom worn the same leather jacket since you were in diapers?  Has she kept her same thick rimmed glasses since before Weezer’s Blue Album came out?  Does she still have her beloved collection of vinyl albums somewhere around the house?  If this is the case for your mother, then she’s probably a Hipster Mom.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there is a very good chance that this is unintentional and she may not even know what a hipster is, but a Hipster Mom is a Hipster Mom, and she still needs to be celebrated this Sunday.  Enough of my endless jargon, it’s time to give you all gift ideas for the hipster that brought you into this world.  Just think about how happy your Mom will be when she finds out you took trouble to help her be cool in today’s world!

Vinyl- Inexplicably, but in a good way, vinyl has come back in a big way.  Bands new and old are releasing (and sometimes re-releasing) albums on vinyl.  Old is the new New.  New is old.  Wait.  I’m confusing myself here.  Anyways, there are two ways you can handle giving your mother some sweet vinyl this mothers day: 1. You can go support your local record store and buy the new album by a band that Hipster Moms like/think is ‘so cool’ like Bon Iver, Mumford & Sons or Arcade Fire, or 2. You can go sift through your mom’s old album collection and find an album by…say, the Talking Heads, wrap it up and give it to her.  Even if your Mom knows that she already has the album, she will be very impressed that you went through the trouble to find an old, original album from her youth. 

Boy George and Co. was a favorite of my mom :-/

VHS Player- I’m going to make a safe bet here and say that most of you reading this are in your early/mid 20’s, meaning you grew up in the 90’s, which is awesome.  Since you are most likely a 90’s kid, take a moment and think back to watching movies as a youngin’.  Chances are you were watching 101 Dalmatians on VHS with your Mom on a rainy day after Kindergarten.  If your mom is anything like mine, she kept a good chunk of these VHS tapes because it brings her back to simpler times.  Also, if your mom is anything like mine, she still has trouble figuring out how to use a DVD player because “it’s too complicated”.  What’s the solution to this problem that would also make a Hipster Mom happy?  A VHS player!  Think about it, they’re most likely dirt cheap right now and can be found at the Salvation Army or Savers, you can help bail your mom out of the difficult DVD player, and she can watch old VHS tapes like Home Alone or Jurassic Park and pretend that you’re there with her!  It’s really a gift that keeps on giving.

Tell your Mom you care with...er...this.

This guy didn't disappoint his Mother (for once) with this gift!

 

Band Tshirts- Back in the day, your Mom probably loved bands like Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Poison, Television, Blondie etc. and had some sweet tour tshirts from 1984.  Over the years, as our mothers matured and stopped using Aquanet in their hair and gave up their dreams to be Mrs. Van Halen, they traded the band tshirts for work appropriate attire.  Now, with retromania being in full swing, we have the perfect opportunity to make our moms feel young again.  How you ask?  By going to the nearby Savers or similar thrift store to find some sweet band tee’s that will make your mom scream with delight as if she were about to be serenaded by Eddie Money.  Honestly, what else could make your mom feel like a Material Girl living in a Material World than a tshirt from her past?  Fortunately for you, the prices at Savers will make the tshirt cost about the same it probably did in the mid 80’s (side note: Tshirts at a recent Muse concert I went to started at 35$. God damn inflation, man).  This is the ideal gift choice for those of you trying to save a lot of money, and making your hipster mom feel hip by getting her something new, which is old, which is now cool.

This Motley Crue shirt was a hand me down from his Mother, only to be regifted back to his Mother.

College Coffee Mug From a School She Didn’t Go To- A few years back, I got my Mom a Providence College Alumni coffee mug as a joke.  She left PC after her Freshman year and transferred to URI (I know, I know.) so since I’m a pain in the ass I decided to mock her and get her this mug.  When I was started thinking about gifts for a hipster mom, I thought about this stupid PC Alumni mug and it hit me that getting your mom a mug from a school that she never attended can certainly fall into the hipster category.  There is no doubt that a good chunk of hipster trends are complete nonsense.  People wear tshirts commemorating places or events that they have never been to, and don’t really know much about.  A true hipster mom would appreciate a random mug from, say, Pepperdine University, when your mom went to, say, UMASS.  One of the aspects that hipsters got right is that it is cool to have things that other people don’t.  If you execute this gift idea correctly, your mom will be the proud owner of a random college mug that none of her friends will have.  After all, isn’t it sort of mainstream to drink coffee from your own school’s coffee mug? 

Mom went to UNH? She'll love this!

Art- Moms love art.  Along the lines of nonsense and randomness, one area of gifts we have not yet touched is art.  As I mentioned earlier, having something unique is key to a hipster lifestyle.  Art is such a wide ranging area that it makes your job of finding a unique gift so much easier.  Get your mom a sculpture of Edgar Allen Poe.  Perhaps a self portrait of someone you don’t know?  A framed picture of a ukulele would look great in your kitchen!  How about a collection of Polaroids, just because it’s a collection of Polaroids?  In this day and age, the random-er the better.  Your mom will be completely puzzled, perplexed, confused, bamboozled, flimflammed, and overall thrown for a loop when she gets a ceramic rooster candle holder, but she’ll most likely love it since it came from you.  Unless of course your mother doesn’t like you, but if this is the case then you probably have more issues than picking out a mother’s day gift.  (Sidenote: Searching google images for 'weird art' is very disturbing. I honestly don't recommend it).

This. Is. Art.

Eye candy.



This piece can really brighten up a room.
 

I hope this helps you out while rushing to find your Mommy Dearest a nice gift.  Most people in my age range are degenerates, so it really pays off to be kind to your Mom and get her something she'll enjoy and cherish forever, like a ceramic Cow Pie.