Question

Were hippies conformists or nonconformists? Discuss your answer by considering how hippies were different yet similar to the youth of their parents generation.

Answer 1

The answer to this question is rather tricky. First of all, what is a conformist? What is a nonconformist?
Well, a conformist is ‘a person who conforms to accepted behavior or established practices’ and a nonconformist is ‘a person whose behavior or views do not conform to prevailing ideas or practices.’ Just based off of this, to most of society, hippies were nonconformists. However, look at the definition of a hippie: ‘A person of unconventional appearance, typically having long hair and wearing beads, associated with a subculture involving a rejection of conventional values and the taking of hallucinogenic drugs.’
The simple fact that there is a wide group of people called hippies suggests that they are, in a way, conformists. Most if not all hippies do similar things, making them conformists to their own group’s ideals.
They were similar to their parents’ generation because the hippie generation mostly thought the same thing, thus making them similar to all other generations. The difference to the youth of their parents’ generation is, simply put, that they did things that their parents would never agree with.