What is a Hippie?

It is also spelt as Hippy. They were raised under the ideological system that came out of the turbulent in the 1960s in North America and Western Europe. Many questions came to people’s minds when their movement started, such as whether the government’s decision fair for them or the world could have been more peaceful and loving with them.

The reason why they were opposed is that they took a stand against conformity. The meaning of conformity is people who accept the decisions or instructions generally accepted by the group. They got this name as they where they stand and what was going around them.

This movement began in the college campuses in the U.S, and later it spread in various countries like Canada and Britain. This name arrived because they were “hip”, this was the word that was given to the Beats of the 1950s, like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

This movement began with the more primal Beatnik movement, an association of nonconformists residing in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Hippies were not directly linked with politics than their activist counterparts, who were known as Yippies.

Hippies thought they were being alienated from the middle-class society, which they felt as they dominated them by materialism and repression. When this started, they created their own style by their appearance as they thought this is the best visible way to represent their beliefs.

Some of them walked barefoot, started wearing bell-bottomed blue jeans, favoured long hair, and wore unconventional dresses, especially in psychedelic colours. They supported tie-dyed t-shirts, men grew beards, plus both men and women used sandals, rimless granny glasses and beads.

Their major complaint was against the Vietnam War as they felt it was not fair. In fact, they had a wish and support for returning to a peaceful and natural lifestyle. They wanted peace in the world, and they displayed a sign of peace in various ways. They advocated nonviolence and love; they made a famous phrase called “Make love, not war.”

They express themselves through new kind of music, and they loved listening to psychedelic, rock and folk music which protested the war and encouraged freedom from conformity. The great thing about them was they did large music festivals and gatherings for protesting against the war.