There’s a little town right on the Washington, DC / Maryland border, Takoma Park, which is home to the aging hippies. Just about every woman there dresses in loose clothes mostly in purple, with home made looking knitted scarves. There’s a lot of tie dye there, and flax. And of course Birkenstocks. The look was so particular, like a uniform, and a lot of the stuff is actually kind of expensive but made to look home made. I always scratched my head - how much could this be considered very counter culture when it was all the same and so dear to buy?
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The first “real” concert I went to was Skinny Puppy on the VIVIsectVI tour. I was drunk (the driver was drinking, and, as shotgun, I figured the only way I could possibly survive a crash was to be really, really relaxed) and disappointed at the sea of black clothing. At several points I was hauled off whilst screaming “Everybody in black is a f*****g conformist!” from the balcony. The only black-clad attendee I respected was in full LOBO face-paint.
Most of us want to belong to a group, its just that many of us want to (believe we) belong to a small group.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension
on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals,
and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired,
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells,
And run my stick along the public railings,
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens,
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat,
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go,
Or only bread and pickle for a week,
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats
and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,
And pay our rent and not swear in the street,
And set a good example for the children.
We will have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me
are not too shocked and surprised,
When suddenly I am old
and start to wear purple!
- from Warning by Jenny Joseph
I’m never going to be an old woman, but I sure am looking forward to three pounds of sausages at a go.
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geriatric pixie dream girl?
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But it is nothing new.
I do daydream of this woman regularly. I wonder how close my wife and I shall get, and horrified my children shall be.
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“Geriatric Pixie Dream Girl”
(before it was cool 
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You could just signal your narcissism with a bumper sticker instead:
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Viable if no two hipsters in the band have the same hat, shoes, shirt, pants or accesory.
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Thomas Frank’s essays in “Commodify Your Dissent” speak to the notion of commercialized rebellion and how it creates an ironic conformity, sigh. Catch you on the flippety-flop: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/200732.Commodify_Your_Dissent
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…and it (seemingly) has little outposts in Old Greenbelt and Mt. Rainier. In a certain way it was like I’d never left Austin.
When I first encountered natural/organic foods (at least with convenient availability) I remember thinking “who the hell can afford this stuff?”
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Now they can join the Red Hat Society for some organized non-conformity. I guess the guys get to join the Shriners for their red hat.
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It’s been the catch-22 of nonconformists for generations. If your particular style of nonconformity is common enough to have a name and style of its own then you’re basically just conforming to the norms of a smaller group.
Real nonconformists are often social outcasts just because they strike everyone else as so damn weird that they don’t even have their own sub-group.
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I had a feeling I was breaking some kind of law by hanging out at boingboing.
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So original in her black lipstick
Listening to some obscure band
But isn’t she pissed at all the other non-conformists
who listen to that same obscure band
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When I was very young, I decided that I needed to have my own counterculture. I came up with a look (three-piece business suit, extremely long hair with broken bits of vinyl woven in and geometric face paint). Do I need to point out that going it alone never works out the way you’d hoped? All I accomplished was universal bafflement wherever I went. It was a decidedly unhip sensation and I did not turn out to be any kind of trailblazer for anything.
Most people use these uniforms as a social filter, a means to push away people who are too hung up on appearances. Take it too far and you create the finest social filter there is.
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Seems like there is a glaring presumption here that the goal of non-conformity is shallow and vain. Why shouldn’t there be agreement about what exactly the problems are and how to address them. It’s not about “being different.” It’s about not being like you, for example.
Then there is the well understood phenomenon that “creatives” are seen as more credible if they don’t look normal.
Without bothering to actually read the stupid thing it looks from here like a load of butt-hurt “employees” trying to justify their envy of those who have managed to carve out some space for themselves.
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A certain workaround is to build a style that is centered on being practical, and screw what others think and who else does it too. Military surplus clothing or black versions of the same, modded with more pockets if stock variant not sufficient, sew your own if the market does not provide. Cheap, easy, robust to last for years, fashion-resistant.
Not being able to fit in is quite liberating - once you stop trying. You are what you are, take it or leave it.
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Yeah, I was working up to something similar. The only thing that all the images in, say @Brainspore’s collage have in common is that they’ve rejected a specific group’s oppressive style. While it may be true for the truest hipsters that the goal may simply be to non-conform, but for others, the rebellion is against a specific mode, which means the hypocrisy claim doesn’t stick as readily. Non-conformity is more of a symptom, rather than the inspiration. Hipsters non-conform for the sake of non-conforming, while many other break-away groups in many cases are actually trying to make a new society based on a real set of ideals.
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The Rebel Sell by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter was a brilliant skewering of nonconformity and the close relationship between counterculture and marketing. IIRC it was published before hipsters were a thing.
“They note the image of rebelliousness and critique of mass society has
been one of the most powerful forces driving consumerism for the past
forty years. Far from being ‘subversive,’ being a rebel consumer has had
no political or economic consequences and is simply a form of status
distinction.”
All that said, it’s just young people doing stuff. Who cares? Just as long as they stay off my lawn.
Exactly. It’s normal and ok, let’s move on.
