Hi Christy, I just found this tribe too...

I'm absolutely with the "it's an attitude" notion. I try to dress nice, although fashion sense is often difficult for me to grok. When I was in high-school my grandmother used to take me shopping for new clothes before school each year. One year I apparently committed a horrid sin in selecting pants in particular and a couple of girls at driving school tortured me over it, asking me specifically if I was emulating a circus clown and that all I needed was the giant red shoes. In retrospect it probably would have been a lot better to have had my sister make my clothes selections, simply because I really couldn't predict how people were going to react to my choices. She'd already gotten away from our family by then - great for her, not so good for me unfortunately. I've been researching autism for several months and talking with some professionals here in Portland lately because I believe I likely have Asperger Syndrome, which has over the years made it difficult for me to navigate social interaction. But through it all I still believe that people are fundamentally good and I try to help people whenever and however I can.

I agree that "Hippie" is all about attitude, acceptance, love, free spirit, taking the path less traveled. As for the "Look", well, in the sixties it was for a time just tryin to be anti-establishment. Non-conformity, not dressing or getting your hair styled to fit in. I still have the long hair, clothes from the local goodwill, I don't support fashion or the rampat consumerism. I am no expert, nor do I do drugs, not even mary jane anymore, but on occasion, I will drink a beer or a sip of something stronger. Still jam out with friends and play in a band.
I am not nor have I ever been a homophobe, I have several close friends, both male and female who are gay and proud. And I am proud to know them.
Labels can be misleading and usually prove nothing in the long run. I am more conventional than I should be, but I still look like your average homeless street person, and have actually been told to move on when downtown in a nearby city! But in actuality, I am retired from a life in the military....
But I will always love to see someone dressed in tye-dyes and long hair...... Those are good memories for me, but I lost a lot of friends along the way too, to drugs, in our endless wars....
Peace & Hugs.......

"A hippie . . . is a member of a subgroup of a counterculture that began in the United States during the early 1960s. By 1965, hippies had become an established social group, and the movement expanded to other countries before it declined in the mid-1970s. Hippies, along with the New Left and the American Civil Rights Movement, are considered the three dissenting groups of the 1960s counterculture.Originally, hippies were part of a youth movement composed mostly of white teenagers and young adults, between the ages of 15 and 25 years old, who inherited a tradition of cultural dissent from the earlier Bohemians and the beatniks. Hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Eastern philosophy, championed sexual liberation, were often vegetarian and eco-friendly, promoted the use of psychedelic drugs to expand one's consciousness, and created intentional communities or communes. They used alternative arts, street theatre, folk music, and psychedelic rock as a part of their lifestyle and as a way of expressing their feelings, their protests and their vision of the world and life. Hippies opposed political and social orthodoxy, choosing a gentle and nondoctrinaire ideology that favored peace, love and personal freedom,. . . They perceived the dominant culture as a corrupt, monolithic entity "that exercised undue power over their lives" . . Noting that they were "seekers of meaning and value", scholars like Timothy Miller describe hippies as a new religious movement. " This is an excerpt from Wikipedia, and there's lots more there. - Me and mine, we called ourselves freaks back then, shuddered away from the word hippie, which was then used as a derogatory term. i had the good fortune to be at woodstock, an experience i wish i could give in a little silver box to each and every one of the young 'hippies' of today, for the joy and the harmony sharing and love there was truly bliss. no, you don't need drugs. we used them in the 60's to open some closed windows in the collective consciousness that are now wide open to us all. ..