Hippies
Hippies (singular hippie or sometimes hippy) were members of the 1960s counterculture movement who adopted a communal or nomadic lifestyle, renounced corporate nationalism and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and/or Native American religious culture, and were otherwise at odds with traditional middle class Western values. They saw paternalistic government, corporate industry, and traditional social mores as part of a unified Establishment that had no authentic legitimacy.
Origins
The term derived from hipster which referred to white people in the US who were 'hip' or became involved with black culture, e.g. Harry "The Hipster" Gibson. September 6, 1965, marked the first San Francisco newspaper story, by Michael Fellon, that used the word 'hippie' to refer to the younger bohemians (as opposed to the older Beat Generation). The name did not catch on with the establishment press until almost two years later.
The hippie movement was at its height in the late 1960s. The July 7, 1967 issue of TIME magazine had for its cover story: 'The Hippies: The Philosophy of a Subculture.'
The touristic influx that accompanied the highly-publicized San Francisco Summer of Love did nothing to intensify counterculture. In fact by the time Hippiedom became commercialized, mid-late 1967, being a hippie had lost its real purpose. The last publication of the Diggers was the anthology of street news, manifestoes and articles titled The Digger Papers, that came out in August 1968. Co-published as an edition of The Realist, the Diggers distributed 40,000 free copies.
Legacy
By 1970, much of hippie style had passed into mainstream culture, but little of its substance. The mainstream press lost interest in the hippie subculture as such, though many hippies made and have since continued to maintain a long-term commitment to it. Because the hippies have tended to avoid publicity since the Summer of Love/Woodstock era, a popular myth has arisen that they no longer exist. In fact, they may still be found in Bohemian (or merely openminded) enclaves throughout the world, as wanderers following the bands they love, or elsewhere in the interstices of the global economy. Many have been rendezvousing annually at Rainbow Gatherings since the early 1970s to celebrate and pray for peace. Even today, many still gather at meetings and festivals to celebrate life and love, such as the .
Distinguishing marks
As a group, hippies tend to have longer hair and more/fuller beards than has been generally fashionable. Some people not associated with the counterculture find such long hair offensive, in part because of the iconoclastic attitude it bespeaks, and in part because they see it as unhygienic, or feminine. When Hair moved from off-Broadway to a large Broadway theater in 1968, the hippie counterculture was already diversifying and fleeing traditional urban settings.
Other traits associated with hippies include:
- Clothes having bright colors, and certain unusual styles (such as bell-bottom pants, tie-dyed shirts, peasant blouses, and Indian-inspired clothing)
- Listening to certain styles of music; psychedelic rock such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin; modern jam band counterparts such as Phish, String Cheese Incident, moe., the Black Crowes, or Goa trance music
- Performing music casually, in friends' homes, or for free at outdoor fairs such as San Francisco's legendary "Human Be-In" of January 1967, Woodstock (a famous gathering attended mostly by hippies) and today, for example, the Burning Man festival.
- Free love (see also: Sexual revolution)
- Communal living
- Incense
- Using recreational drugs, particularly marijuana, hashish, and hallucinogens such as LSD and Psilocybin. Marijuana was prized as much for its iconoclastic, illicit nature as for its psychopharmaceutical effect.
Drugs
In hindsight, people may recall that hippies did not smoke cigarettes made of tobacco, and that they considered tobacco dangerous, but a look through photographs made at the time shows that cigarettes were very much in evidence.
Often, the term "hippie" is loosely used with the pejorative connotation of participation in recreational drug use (at least to the extent of using marijuana) and choosing not to think or care much about work, responsibility, the larger society, or personal hygiene.
Politics
Though they were a genuine counterculture movement, the early hippies were not particularly tolerant of homosexuality. They were also prone to what some people would now deem highly unacceptable sexism.
The term is also associated with participation in peace movements, including peace marches such as the USA marches on Washington and civil rights marches, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. However, hippies were normally not antiwar protesters, since they were traditionally apolitical, preferring to drop out from society rather than change it. Philosophically, hippie thought drew upon the earlier Beat Generation.
See also
