Shawyer dissertation May 2008 final version - The University of ...

other hippies see their commitment to the hippie cause. Abbie Hoffman explains in hisautobiography:Long hair wasn’t that superficial. It causes hassles with family, schoolofficials, the police. There was no way of hiding that your hair was gettinglong. You could hide in the closet if you were gay, a Communist, smokingdope, anti-war, or hated your boss. You could listen to the Beatles quietlyin your room. But you just couldn’t hide all that hair, and growing it wasthe coming out of the closet for the counterculture. (Soon 94)So-called “weekend hippies,” who worked regular jobs and only participated in hippieculture in their spare time, were forced to keep their hair short to appease mainstreamexpectations and retain their jobs, whereas hippies who fully committed to thecounterculture dedicated themselves with long hair because a “good, shaggy crop” of hairtook at least six months to grow (Hoffman, Soon 93). The importance of hair for thehippie identity cannot be overstated. Hair was such a central part of the hippie identitythat it was the first thing to go when a hippie was jailed. When Rubin’s hair was shorn inprison, he “felt sick at this destruction of [his] identity” (We are Everywhere 41). Hecompares the humiliation of his prison haircut to the Nazis shaving the heads ofconcentration camp inmates (41). While rather extreme, this analogy neverthelessunderscores the significance of hair in hippie culture.Long hair also worked as a sign of countercultural fellowship. Mobile and freewheeling,hippies often traveled around the country. They knew that they could alwaystrust someone with long hair to tell them about local hippie activities like be-ins, parties,134