WI: No Hippies

We'd had to put up with pretentious post beatnik hipsters for a few more years.

Male grooming aids like Brylcreem (sp?) would sell a little better into the 1970s.

Barbers would still make money at traditional haircuts

Middle class kids ODing on Heroin would be well groomed and wear clean clothes.

We'd not have to put up with a lot of post folkie era flute and home made drum music.

Bikers and Iron Workers would still wear grunge clothes

The audience at Woodstock would be wearing blazers and ties. Jimmy Hendricks would appear wearing the dark suit and narrow tie of a couple years earlier.
 
What exactly are the parameters here? Do we need to just prevent the anti-war protest division? Do we need to just find a way to stop the proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs? Do we need to radically change the music of the era? Prevent the sexual revolution?

Basically, how strict is your definition of hippie?
 
What exactly are the parameters here? Do we need to just prevent the anti-war protest division? Do we need to just find a way to stop the proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs? Do we need to radically change the music of the era? Prevent the sexual revolution?

Basically, how strict is your definition of hippie?
drugs, long hair, hand drums, free love, etc. The anti-war protestors who weren't hippies otherwise and the feminists don't count as hippies.
 
hand drums,

I was briefly pondering whether or not I was a hippy, since it has been less than one year since I was last called one, and have lived through the era, from beat on through and I've never heard the word "hand drums", so I guess I wasn't. I did own two VW campers though.

Can who was a hippy be quantified? This was an American phenomenon, of course, since all Brits were either Mods or Rockers.
 
For argument's sake, let's say we get an American generation that looks like the Mods. That they're just as anti-war and into free love [if you have the invention of the Pill, nothing's going to stop that] but they dress much more conservatively. And for further argument's sake, we're taking about kids who are mostly white and middle class.

For one thing, you're not going to get as much of a conservative backlash. Someone wearing a suit and tie - however stylish - is going to raise a lot of less ire than a twenty-year-old in beads and sandals. And someone droning on about Camus and the French new wave film they just saw will simply attract less attention than dancing about barefoot on the streets of San Francisco.

Jazz might stay a lot more popular. And lastly, if they've superficially bought more into the system, the young and the unions might be able to build the alliance they never were able to achieve in this reality.
 
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