The Hippie Hammer

Five of us were sitting in the sauna.  Earlier, I had seen two of them outside–twenty-ish males, apparent hippie types. One had shoulder-length hair parted carelessly in the middle and a goatee; the other had his brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, a mustache and a small earring in his left earlobe. They had walked back in behind me. Now I found myself wanting to ask the second, who sat beside me, a question: How did he feel about the word hippie? So, politely as possible, I asked.

He said that no, he didn’t think he was a hippie. “Do you find the term offensive?” I asked.  “I mean, if other people call you a hippie, how do you feel about that?”
 
“Oh,” he shrugged, “it doesn’t bother me.”
 
“So, what do you call yourself?” I asked.

“A gypsy,” he said in a practiced manner.
 
“A gypsy?” I asked.  “Do you have any gypsy blood in you?”
 
“No,” he said somewhat defensively, “but when I was little my parents moved around a lot.”  This struck me as strange; after all, lots of people moved around a lot when they were kids–“army brats” are a good example. So why call himself a “gypsy”?  He mentioned that he had some Puerto Rican ancestry, but I suppose calling himself a Puerto Rican wouldn’t have explained the ponytail and the earring, and somehow, he thought “gypsy” did. 

“You know, I consider myself a hippie,” I offered, wanting to be sure he didn’t perceive me as a threatening outsider or a bigot.

“Do you think I’m a hippie?” he asked.

“Based on your long hair, facial hair and earring,” I replied, “yeah, I suppose I would.  If we gave a photo of you to a cross section of 100 Americans,“ I continued, “and asked each to give five words describing you, I’d bet that for at least 95, one of those five words would be hippie.”
 
Sounding ever more defensive, he retorted, “Hey, having long hair and an earring doesn’t make me a hippie!”
 
“If you were of some other distinctive ethnicity where males wore long hair–say Native American–that might make sense, but given that you‘re not, I think it’s reasonable to see you as a hippie type.”

“Well,” he responded, “if those people saw me with my gold chains on (he raised his hands to indicate a necklace), they wouldn’t say that.”  That having a few not identifiably hippie characteristics would mean people wouldn’t see him as hippie stuck me as a weak argument, but I didn’t press the point: I could see he was getting upset; the conversation soon ended. 

Were this an isolated incident, it wouldn’t be important. But I’ve seen similar resentful responses many a time. And the “gypsy” thing is also relatively common: hippie types often call themselves gypsy or something similar–“just a hippie gypsy,” to use Pete Townshend’s phrase (“Goin’ Mobile” off of Who’s Next). 

Since gypsies are an ethnicity, what we have here is a sort of displaced ethnic identity–Don’t call me hippie; call me gypsy, instead.  This as if gypsy conferred more legitimacy than hippie; certainly, this would describe how our sauna acquaintance seemed to feel.  And when he said he didn’t find being called “hippie” offensive, I think he lied.  How else can we explain his strained, slightly ridiculous and stubborn attempts to avoid that label?

Only an essentially ethnic approach seems to work; that is, members of disrespected ethnic groups, and especially those lacking any sort of opposing “pride” movement, are often ashamed of or in denial about their identity.  Though gays and lesbians aren’t an ethnic group, their term “in the closet” would seem appropos here.

As we showed in our last blog entry, “The Most Important Secret,” the social status of hippies, specifically the far right’s ability to scapegoat the counterculture, to use it as a foil, has facilitated a national slide towards fascism.  The antidote to that menacing power involves organizing the counterculture and defending its legitimate right to exist. So, how do you organize hippies if so many of them are terrified to admit, even to themselves, that they are indeed hippie?  That’s what we’re up against. Only when we first learn to accept ourselves can we save our culture, our country and this world.