Douchebags, Hipsters, and Bros

All of these things have meant the same thing to different people at different times in America. Today the term "douchebag" generally just means jerk, although it has gone through phases of much more specific connotations. Brian Palmer supplies an exposition on the history of the term "douche" as an insult in the repertoire of American vernacular. Here is a condensed timeline:

Novel Ninety Times Guilty (1939) includes a pimp named Jimmy Douchebag

Journal article about military slang (1946) definition: “a military misfit”

Book Plexus (1953) a male transvestite named Minnie Douchebag, a “crazy fairy who sings and plays the piano”

Cult hit Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) the prostitute Tralala tells a man she’d “fuckim blind not like that fuckin douchebag he was with.”

Definition by the journal American Speech (1967) “an unattractive coed,” or, “by extension, any individual whom the speaker desires to denigrate.”

Taping of The Morton Downey Jr. Show (1987) an audience member taunted political activist Lyndon Larouche with the phrase “Larouche is a douche."

Anthrax song “Startin’ Up a Posse” (1991) lyrics “You’re a douche, you’re a douche, you’re a douche,” in apparent reference to record executives and/or government censors.

Brooklyn hipsters adopted the epithet to describe men with “gelled hair, fitted baseball cap, multiple pastel polo shirts with popped collars layered one atop another”

The insult turned back on them, as outsiders proposed calling a collection of skinny-jeans-wearing Brooklynites “a douchebag of hipsters.”

The Oxford English Dictionary defines douchebag, in its epithetical sense, as a “general term of disparagement,” or more specifically as “an unattractive or boring person.” Now clearly these definitions don't consider modern usage of the term, which to me just describes your average arrogant Entourage watching Broseph. Hearing someone called "douchebag" hardly brings to mind an image of what it physically is - a hygienic accessory for female genitalia. Now it's no surprise that the term evolved to be a general pejorative description of somebody that sucks. It's rare to hear a female referred to as a "douchebag", most likely because the term is intended to point out some sort of insufficiency, or even worse, immasculinity in a man. Clearly nothing is more insulting than being likened to a vaginal hose which actually increases bacterial infections. Yikes.