Stereotypes and Stereotyping - I Was a Teenage Hippie

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Stereotyping - I Was a Teenage Hippie

Imagine a 17-year-old kid. He is five feet eleven inches tall, weighs 180 lbs., with very long hair and a beard. His hair parts in the middle and stops at his waist, meaning his hair is about three and a half feet long. He dresses not for the fashion of the day, but with old standards: blue jeans and a flannel shirt in the winter or blue jeans and a short sleeve shirt in the summer. Generally, his shirts in summer are T-shirts, typically with some provocative text or an advertisement for a rock group. That kid was me in 1974.

I was the stereotypical "hippie," and my social circle during that year and the four years preceding it (two of those years in middle school and two years in high school) included other hippies. The hippie subculture has often been subject to a stereotyped image over the years. The image identified with the hippie is one of an individual that is generally unclean and unkempt, usually lives in squalor, has a drug habit, and is not very smart. Of course, male members of the hippie subculture all had long hair. Though the conservatives stereotyped me and my friends by what they saw, they did not know a single thing about us.

The group I was involved with socially was made up of eight other guys besides myself and two girls, but the eleven of us were known by our peers as "The Dirty Dozen." We were looked upon by the conservatives in our town as being "just a bunch of damn hippies." Obviously, The Dirty Dozen was stereotyped because of our appearance. Indeed, it would have been easy for any of us to change our image to something more socially acceptable. For example, cutting my air, shaving off my beard, and changing my...

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...day. I find myself not being so quick to judge by looks alone. I find myself consciously thinking that I should not stereotype what I see before me. I do not know the person; I only know the image. I certainly do not want to consider myself so narrow minded that I engage in the very behavior displayed by the conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s.

Because of the tendency of people to stereotype others, I hold the belief that I would be subject to stereotyping today. While I maintain views that might be politically incorrect and continue to hold dear a bit of the non-conforming attitude embraced by the hippie subculture, would people guess that to look at me today? Considering my conservative image today, would people guess that on the inside I might still be a "hippie?" Or would they look at me and see me as a "boring old fart" conservative yuppie?

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