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

from their weekday Establishment responsibilities, the committed hippies constructedtheir hippie identities through the iterated behavior of daily, repeated hippie dressing, andtheir long hair. The construction of hippie-ness through hair and clothes was such asuccessful performance of countercultural identity that this iconic hippie image survivesdecades later. In his 1986 novel Forrest Gump, Winston Groom’s eponymous heroinnocently wears his army uniform to a hippie club, and is complimented on his “far-out”costume (88). Female hippie characters in Julie Taymor’s 2007 film Across the Universewear long, unkempt hair, flowing gypsy skirts and East Indian print blouses. Hippie hairand clothing are still being used to perform hippie identity, instantly recognizable eventoday.The hippies knew that their clothing and long hair intrigued the rest of society,and were often the subject of blatant gawking by tourists in urban hippie enclaves. Whenthe hippie phenomenon exploded in San Francisco in the late 1960s, tourists and bustours drove through the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood where the hippies hung out togaze at the representatives of this strange new culture (Perry 55). 57 Even though theychose to dress differently from the rest of society to mark their distain for mainstreamvalues, some hippies objected to being on display and stared at like circus freaks. Inresponse, they would walk alongside the tour buses holding up mirrors to the windows sothat the tourists saw their own faces instead of the hippies they had come to observe likeanimals in the zoo (Perry 55). The hippies may have been performing their identity57 The Gray Line bus company ran a tour named the “hippie hop” and charged $6 for a 2-hour tour aroundthe Haight district (McWilliams 70; Morgan 183). In comparison, Mobe charged activists $8.50 for around-trip from New York to the Pentagon March in Washington (“Banners” par. 32).139