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What is a hippie?

 

If I were to ask you to picture an image of a hippie in your head, most of you would probably come up with someone dirty and long-haired, wearing only flowy clothes made with psychedelic dyes, round colored glasses, talking about their groovy acid trip while Bob Dylan or The Beatles plays in the background. This image is not far off from reality, but there is more to hippies than what may initially be believed by some, and their impact on the world has been far more than just “drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll.” 

 

Hippie culture started without a name on college campuses with roots in the small neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco-- home to famous artists such as the Grateful Dead’s guitarist Jerry Garcia, Graham Nash from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and even Jimi Hendrix. Eventually, this counterculture grew to spread across America, and small gatherings of like-minded people on topics such as anti-war, acceptance, and love popped up. A rejection of regimentation and the regular lifestyle and mindset of the 1950s seemed to sweep over the young generation. This new generation wanted to “make love, not war,” and live an unconventional life in supportive communities not dependent on money or full of prejudice and judgment. Music was central to this counterculture and often embodied the mindset and beliefs of the artists as well as their audience (Sklaroff). Craig Houston and Kenneth Bindas state in their journal that, “As the music grew up in the sixties, its attitude, sound, beat, and lyrics were at the center of the new youth culture. While the themes remained constant after 1965 rock 'n' roll adopted a vigorous anti Establishment posture. To many young people, the Establishment represented an uncaring bureaucracy, social and economic injustice, and a morality blind to anything but profit” (1). Instead of conforming to the morally corrupt, “ideal” middle-class life, hippies went on a journey of creating a life centered around love and a deeper understanding of the self (Sklaroff).

 

“Hippies felt alienated from middle-class society, which they saw as dominated by materialism and repression, and they developed their own distinctive lifestyle” (“Hippie”1). The mood of this new generation was full of love, community, and people who craved peace in the world. Woodstock was a famous three day music festival that was whipped together in the summer of 1969 (which is perhaps the peak of the hippie era), and it is a near-perfect embodiment of hippie culture (“Hippie” 1). 400,000 people spent three days together out in a field in the name of music and love, and it served as a way of showing the outside world that peace was an option- that you can take a break from a materialistic lifestyle bogged down by “ism’s” and “Give Peace a Chance” like John Lennon requests (“Plastic Ono Band”). Woodstock was not the only gathering held by hippies, and many nonviolent protests occurred during this era. 

 

In “The Flowering of the Hippie Movement,” Howard states that there are four different categories of hippies: Visionary, Freaks and Heads, Midnight, and Plastic. The epitome of a hippie, Visionaries are “utopians who pose an alternative to existing society. They repudiate conventional values… [and they] gave birth to the movement” (43). Freaks and Heads are the drug-oriented hippies who used mainly marijuana and LSD, and more rarely opium or heroin (Howard 44). Drugs were viewed as a way of opening the mind and, in the case of LSD, experiencing a temporary ego death and the ability to connect more with life. People of older generations who identify with the beliefs and values of the younger love generation are considered Midnight hippies. This group of people bridged the gap between “straight” society and hippies by looking more “presentable” (Howard 51). Having conformed to society, they are able “to articulate and justify the hippie point of view with at least some possibility of being listened to and believed” (Howard 51). Last is the Plastic hippies who are a group that barely recognize the ideology of the movement. This subdivision of hippies arose at the height of the era when being a hippie was cool and it became a fad to wear the clothes, glasses, and beads (Howard 50). Eventually all four groups dwindled in numbers towards the end of the movement after the Vietnam War ended, and the era slowly came to a close. 

 

The impact of this counterculture on music, ideologies, and even fashion today is still strong, proving that the values that hippies held were more than just a fad. There is depth and discontent with the way the world is run at the heart of the hippie movement, and they chose to do something with it in a nonviolent way. They achieved their dreams for a small while, and the groovy gatherings and community that occurred are exactly what hippies wanted to achieve. While their counterculture’s push for peace never grasped the hearts of everyone, it captured enough to make a lasting impression on the world.  


 

Bibliography 

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Bindas, Kenneth J., and Craig Houston. “‘Takin' Care of Business’: Rock Music, Vietnam and the Protest Myth.” The Historian, vol. 52, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24447600.

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"Hippie." Britannica School, Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Dec. 2017. School.eb. com/levels/high/article/hippie/389237. Howard, John Robert. “The Flowering of the Hippie Movement.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 382, 1969, pp. 43–55. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1037113. 

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Plastic Ono Band. “Give Peace a Chance.” Live Peace in Toronto 1969, Apple Records, 1969.

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Sklaroff, Lauren R. “During the Vietnam War, Music Spoke to Both Sides of a Divided Nation.” 

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APNews, 15 Sept. 2017. https://apnews.com/e2f76df3f13df341ea12d4256e3db2ef