Henrietta Hay's Column

Time magazine says that Americans are rejecting the rat race and getting back to basics. Farewell, yuppies: greetings, earth children. But wait a minute. They started as earth children. According to the much-overused cliché, whatever goes around comes around.

The decade of the eighties saw the rise of the yuppies and the big spenders. The word yuppie is a bit hard to define exactly. It is generally considered to be Young, Urban Professional __ and Rich. What always amuses me is that many of these people not too many years before were wearing flowers in their hair, sandals on their feet and shaggy beards on their faces. They were the flower children of Woodstock. But then they hit the age of responsibility and acquired a desire for all life's goodies. The eighties became the age of consumerism.

Time's story was chiefly about people who were earning several hundred thousand dollars a year and more, the people who wanted everything and thought they could have it. But they ended up paying a huge price in stress and loneliness to do it and some of them are deciding they don't want to pay it any more.

Now in the 90's we have a different economic picture. We had a stock market crash, the junk bond scandal, the S & L scandals, a recession and a war. According to Time, "The economic downturn struck some people as a just punishment for a dizzy era of excessive borrowing and spending." A lot of yuppies along with many other people started pounding the pavement looking for jobs, and others have switched to less money and a simpler life. People who used to ride in the white stretch limos are now driving them.

One extreme example, which affected even me, is Peter Lynch. I own a few shares of Fidelity Magellan, Peter Lynch's great financial achievement. Last year this 46-year-old yuppie, famous investment superstar who had built and managed the largest stock mutual fund of the 80's, suddenly deserted me. He quit: he quit his job: he quit Wall Street. He is now fixing his kids' school lunches and mowing the lawn. Of course, with a $50 million nest egg he can afford the lawn mower, but he is once again a family man and he claims he likes it better that way. I trust Magellan will continue to grow without him but it won't be the same.

The return to the simpler life, be it voluntary or not, is a most interesting phenomena. It is by no means limited to any age or financial group, nor is it a new idea. Value shopping has replaced wanton consumerism.

Take food. The emphasis on good health has caused all sorts of changes in the "in" and "out" groups. We're eating more oatmeal and fewer truffles. Reading food labels has become fashionable. Some day we can even hope that someone will design a food label that tells us what we want to know. One writer says mashed bananas are now more "in" than sliced kiwis. (If the Food Patrol is out there, I'm not disparaging the Kiwi.)

Power dressing is still "in", so they tell me, but there is a growing trend toward comfort and economy. One of the big, high priced women's clothing manufacturers recently closed six factories and slashed its staff by 1500 people. L. L. Bean, on the other hand, is going strong. I have it on good authority that Jackie Onassis shops at The Gap. Now I'm not familiar with The Gap, but they say that it sells "moderately priced, comfortable fashions." Now when we get into gadgets I get a little edgy. I can downscale eating and dressing, but don't take away my toys. Sad to say, my old friend, Sharper Image, which had the most wonderful adult toys I ever saw is cutting back. They posted a loss recently and had a sale for the first time in their 12-year history. Time even says Monopoly is more "in" than Nintendo, but I won't believe that for a while.

Maybe we really have come full circle. The flower children discovered that the simple life is not so simple. Growing up and having children steadied them, they earned money and got a little greedy, and then figured out what is really important after all. What's so new about that? Every generation does it.