The cultural intersection between LGBT rights and small business in America bears an extensive and complicated history. Although some people might be hasten to draw conclusions as to whether or not the rights of small businesses are compatible with those of LGBT communities in America, the reality is far too nuanced to yield any one definitive answer. In any case, though, an awareness of the complex of dynamic between small businesses and LGBT rights in the United States is fundamentally important to one's understanding of the social and cultural components of the professional world in America.

On the one hand, the relationship between LGBT rights and small businesses in America can be problematic and deeply strained. All too often, another report surfaces describing a family-owned U.S. business that has discriminated against an LGBT citizen. When this occurs, the owners of the business in question often cite freedom of religion or freedom of speech as a justification for their exclusive policies. While such discrimination can be disheartening to discuss, or even to think about, it is critical to understand the reasoning behind the actions of these companies, and to acknowledge the considerable extent to which small businesses could benefit from moving away from such prejudice.

On the other hand, small family-owned or community-supported businesses have also often played a crucial role in supporting LGBT Americans in their ongoing fight for social and legislative rights in the United States. The American LGBT community holds a relationship to small businesses that dates as far back as the 1950s, when locally owned bars, cafés, and similar businesses were the only safe havens for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, as well as anyone other person whose identity, lifestyle, and desires were outlawed by the American government. For decades, and especially in free-spirited and Bohemian areas such as New York's East Village, small businesses have been tremendous resources, and at times even sanctuaries, for LGBT Americans embroiled in the fight for basic civil liberties. There is, perhaps, no better example of this than the historic Stonewall Riots of 1969, when scores of LGBT Americans rioted against the New York Police Department in defense of the Stonewall Inn, a local bar that had grown popular among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender locals. These riots, which would go down in history as one of the defining moments in the fight for LGBT equality, were made possible by the mutually supportive relationship that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender New Yorkers shared with this local small business.

Of course, it is clear that American small businesses should treat gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender customers exactly the same way that they treat heterosexual customers—after all, discrimination is never acceptable. It is nevertheless overwhelmingly apparent, though, that the relationship between LGBT rights and American small businesses it not as simple as it may initially seem. Encouragingly, recent legislation has been passed in many states in order to prevent discrimination and repair the relationship between LGBT Americans and small businesses. In any case, it is likely that the rights of LGBT citizens and small business owners will remain fundamentally intertwined, due to the extent and intricacy of their collective history.

Marketing and popularizing what is commonly referred to as a “retro” (a shorthand slang term for “retrograde,” or backward-moving) aesthetic, the company Urban Outfitters is responsible, more than almost any other clothing brand, for the tremendous revitalization of hipster and indie style in American youth culture. Largely because of Urban Outfitters, the cutting edge of contemporary fashion has become perpetually bent on the past: evoking and fusing various generational trends to create something entirely fresh and new. Nowadays, girls sport the long hair and flower crowns of sixties hippies, the high-waisted shorts of eighties “pin-up girls, “the Polaroid cameras of nineties grunge enthusiasts—and of course, the archetypal vinyl record player.

Few items can rival the romance and nostalgia that a record player and its accompanying set of LPs so easily inspire in our hearts. Accurately or not, record players recall fond cultural conceptions of better music and simpler times, even for those of us who cannot actually remember a time before iPods, wireless speakers, and online music streaming. Their popularity is therefore owed not only to their tremendous aesthetic value as vintage or “throwback” items, but also to the manner in which our cultural associations between vinyl players and a golden age of music influence the product's overall marketability.

In light of this, it is clear that a large portion of the attention and reverence we pay to of record players is rooted in a deeply mythologized reimagining of our past. Nevertheless, despite the somewhat misguided origins of its popular revitalization, the record player's reemergence in contemporary culture has had a tremendous impact upon the manner in which we perceive music in our modern, technology-driven world. For starters, the physical structure of vinyl record players—particularly the fact that they require an entirely separate speaker component, which can either perfect or utterly ruin the overall sound quality depending on the speaker—compels serious music fans to consider not only the composition of the tracks they are listening to, but also the manner in which audio presentation can impact the quality of the entire album.

Furthermore, the rise of the record player reinforces the practice of selecting our music carefully, rather than streaming whatever albums are available on iTunes or Spotify at the click of a button. LPs are fragile and often expensive physical objects that require a great amount of maintenance and care. Because of this, American youth who purchase record players often find that they are no longer able to take music for granted—instead, they must prioritize buying albums by artists they truly care about, and treating whatever records they do purchase with attentiveness and respect.

In both of these cases, the revitalized status of the record player within American pop culture has helped reintroduce the notion of music selection, production, and performance as serious art forms worth pursuing. It is true that Urban Outfitters' successful marketing of record players likely has something to do with the fact that their consumer base holds a deeply romanticized perception of the cultural associations surrounding the product; nevertheless, the overall impact of the mass production of record players upon the music industry has been overwhelmingly positive, and should be recognized as such.

In recent years, the notion of thrift shopping as both a financially and fashionably sensible strategy has re-entered American culture a spectacular way. Filtering from a variety of counterculture influences, and popularized in the late 2000s in a lurid, self-referential, hilariously absurd manner by American rap and hip hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, thrift shopping has shifted fluidly from the last resort of the financially destitute, to a vibrant element of popular and consumer culture. Of course, thrift shopping can be a risky game to play. You will often get lost in the racks of badly folded fabrics, you will rarely find the perfect fit, and you will never, ever know for sure how clean that $2.50 vintage Sex Pistols shirt really is. Nevertheless, the rise of thrift shopping as a viable alternative to designer brands has carried big implications for the intersection of originality, class performativity, and financial inclusivity in the fashion world. The “thrift shop” style not only revives a variety of excellent and frequently overlooked counterculture trends from the past—it also makes fashion accessible to those of us who cannot afford the big name brands that have dominated pop culture style for years.

The bohemian, Alphabet City influence of thrift shop fashion has always enjoyed a little-known but lively position on the margins of fashion, emerging by inches every few decades or so, with the rise of each new, rebellious aesthetic music. In the 1960s, it was a defining feature of the hippie movement: a generation of experimental artists, recreational drug users, and anti-war activists who rejected the capitalist ethos of the American military- industrial complex and the constraints of rigid gender roles by donning the worn, loose-fitting, brightly colored garments in which they travelled the country and lobbied for peace and harmony. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the trend reemerged in the London punk scene, where men and women clad in used leather jackets, castoff denim jeans, and fraying shirts held together with safety pins, gathered in biker bars and underground clubs to listen to the likes of Joe Strummer, Sid Vicious, Paul Weller, and Poly Styrene. And just when it seemed that thrift fashion had faded away once again, it returned once more a decade later, at the height the mid-1990s grunge subcultures, when Kurt Cobain's thrift store boots and secondhand flannels defined the aesthetic of an era.

But despite the dynamic and resilient history of the style, it seemed that thrift shop fashion had met its demise at the hands of a new generation of wealthy rappers and hip hop performers who flaunt obscene amounts of money in music videos, with mind-bogglingly expensive clothing articles hanging off of their bodies, and designer labels emblazoned across their chests. In the rising popular culture ethos of the 2000s, it appeared that fashion had once again become the provincial territory of the wealthy and the privileged—until little-known performers like Macklemore came ambling onto the scene wearing lurid combinations of secondhand fur coats and used green shoes. The most wonderful part of this unexpected revival was not just the resurrection of the look that has been deeply loved in various subcultures, but also the manner in which fashion, trends, style, and aesthetic once again became accessible for the working class youth who could never have afforded the likes of Prada or Armani. Thrift shopping is back, and hopefully this time to stay—the style, like the clothes, will never be too worn for just one more wear.

Few fields in the west are as gendered, or as prominent in our collective cultural consciousness, as that of finance. Of course, the American art of professionalism is deeply rooted in sociability and collaboration; it is unsurprising, then, that a vast nexus of performative and psychological gendered norms characterizes the American business world in precisely the same manner that it characterizes most other facets of our social and cultural existence. Nevertheless, we are currently live through an extraordinary era of progress and change, and women in the United States are making remarkable strides towards workforce equality every single day. In the last ten years alone, the percentage of women working high-profile jobs has increased by roughly 20 percent: an incredible triumph for women who aspire to professional careers instead of or in addition to domestic responsibilities. In the hundreds of American startups and companies that are currently either owned or supervised by women, the contemporary world can catch glimpses of the rising potential for a new and better financial society, in which any person of any gender has an equal opportunity for success and satisfaction in business.

Of course, it is impossible to say exactly when or how the increased presence of women in the American workforce began; however, one significant event in the past decade was the publication of Google COO Sheryl Sandberg's 2013 novel, Lean In. Although many texts had been written before on the subject of female professionalism, Sandberg is one of the first and most prolific contemporary figures to outline the manner in which women can pursue fulfilling financial careers in the same manner as their male counterparts, without surrendering the obligations and joys of their personal and familial lives. Scores of American women have cited Sandberg's text as a primary inspiration for their professional endeavors, and give Sandberg herself particular credit for helping them acquire the confidence to engage fearlessly in competitive environments, and even consider begin companies of their own. In the years following the publication of Lean In, countless female professionals have followed in her footsteps by publishing studies, novels, memoirs, and newspaper articles of their own, hoping to similarly inspire everyday women to view themselves as capable of entering professional fields.

Of course, the fight for gender equality in the workforce is far from finished—even now, women start small business at just half the men do, and nationwide equal pay for equal work in the United States is neither a financial nor a legislative reality. Nevertheless, the speed and consistency with which gender conditions in the workforce have improved in the past 20 years is almost unprecedented in American history. Even more encouragingly, several studies have found that the increasing number of women with professional careers, and the corresponding manner in which household and workplace labor is starting to be divided between men and women in heterosexual marriages, results in overall happiness and satisfaction rates for both men and women alike. Despite a number of obstacles that we have yet to face, the American business world is moving closer towards becoming a fully meritocratic and equitable workforce every single day.