The Impact Of The Hippie Counterculture Movement

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President John F. Kennedy was very successful due to the portrayal of his family as the “typical” American family during the 1900s. Not only did he win his presidential election, but he also played a large role in the formation of the Hippie Counterculture Movement. The Hippie Counterculture was defined as a protest movement within the American youth which arose during the 1960s. Hippies, who were “the youth culture of the 60s that transformed life in the West as we knew it, introducing a spirit of freedom, of hope, of happiness, of change and of revolution” (Miles), opposed Kennedy’s view in promoting a “typical” family dinner. These young minds did not despise of the tight-bond at these family dinners, however, they did not see eye-to-eye with the foods Americans were consuming. Rather than indulging in the fattening and unhealthy foods of America, the hippies promoted all natural and organic foods. In addition to President Kennedy, America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, discrimination, and the discovery of many new forms of drugs and music each had an impact that would eventually lead to the Hippie Counterculture Movement. Each of these impacts played a large role in the formation of this subculture protest movement, whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, often in opposition to mainstream cultural mores allowed for them to grow as a union by promoting exactly what hippies resisted. One of the most prominent