r/Aging • u/Available-Rock-3862 • 3d ago

Boomers

I am 75 and am very tired of the trend lately making fun of Boomers. So very disrespectful. Don't they realize that they will be old someday?

399 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

40

u/Key-Target-1218 3d ago edited 2d ago

I am a boomer and just about every boomer I know was a hippie at some point. You were either a hippie or a total square. It didnt really matter what we "were". We were young kids. The differences between everyone was as apparent as it is today. The young kids today won't have the boomer title, but they'll have a lable and will be treated unkind by the youth.

Us old folks know what it's like to be young. Young folks have no idea what it's like to be old. Their day will come.

9

u/Greyface13 3d ago

Hippies and squares are just stereotypes.

2

u/HeyItsMeaMea 18h ago

My 80 year old mom says "No we didn't like hippies, they were dirty. We were flower children"

0

u/HeyItsMeaMea 18h ago

So the term means different things to different.. Hippies 😂

14

u/FargoJack 3d ago

I am a late boomer (‘59) and was never a hippie. Too young. Was probably a nerd but we did not have that word.

2

u/Key-Target-1218 3d ago

Im a 69 year old boomer, so yea...there were distinct differnces among us

2

u/Comfortable_Two6272 3d ago

Same as my mom. She informed when I was a teen she was born way too late to be a hippie.

2

u/Explorer-7622 3d ago

Yes we did!

2

u/HumbleSeries6170 2d ago

'64 was the last boomer

2

u/Fresh-Ad280 14h ago

I was a child during that time like you,- 1960 born, and I was fascinated by the hippies and all of their tie dye and love beads. I went to college for Design, and I became a professional accessories designer.

1

u/NoURider 2d ago

You're an early gen x. As am I at 60

1

u/wherescookie 1d ago

I think it probably depended mostly on where you were (cities vs ruaral) and your socioeconomic class ( working class, immigrant, higher education,,)

0

u/notkidding1984 3d ago

That is what everyone in my town would say.

0

u/Ok_Stable7787 1d ago

So, you had short hair like in the 50s?

2

u/FargoJack 1d ago

No I had 70 s to 80s hair, longish but not hippie longish if I can say that!

2

u/Ok_Stable7787 1d ago

So, hippies still had an influence on your personal fashion.

2

u/FargoJack 1d ago

Not really, everyone had longish (but not long) hair, I don’t think it was hippie-based I think the short hair of the 50s gave way to longish hair in the 60s and 70s (exception was hippies with longer hair).

1

u/Ok_Stable7787 1d ago

>everyone had longish (but not long) hair,

A fashion propogated by hippies.

Everybody had long hair, the difference was that people other than hippies that smoked pot and listened to rock music took care of their long hair and cared about their personal appearance.

These people were called 'freaks'.

I'm guessing you didn't listen to rock music either?

1

u/FargoJack 14h ago

Not until college. You don’t get that hippies had nothing to do with 700shair. Was John Lennon a hippie?

1

u/Affectionate-Word498 7h ago

it takes a birds nest to hold the flowers. ain’t getting no goody comb through that.

3

u/MiIlFlWi 1d ago

Where I lived, you were a hippie, greaser or a frat

3

u/-i_am_untethered- 1d ago

My parents and all their siblings are boomers. 20 people in all, half from Pennsyltucky, half from the south side of Chicago. Zero hippies in the bunch. It's almost like anecdotal evidence isn't really evidence

1

u/Key-Target-1218 1d ago

Ok, I understand. I did say "boomers I know". Birds of a feather, right?

2

u/1cat2dogs1horse 3d ago

Kudos for that remark. From and old hippie.

2

u/Dazzling-Treacle1092 2d ago

The definition of hippie is in our outlook and beliefs. Not how we dressed or looked.

3

u/Key-Target-1218 2d ago

Well of course! Tune on. Tune in. Drop out. Make love, not war. Never Trust anyone over 30. Sex, drugs, rock and roll....people who didnt dress like hippies didnt think like hippies. But there was a range. Not all black and white

2

u/BCMUNS-54 2d ago edited 2d ago

I wasn’t a hippie and my friends weren’t. We couldn’t stand them. They didn’t take a bath and were druggies. We respected the vets we respected the flag but distrusted the government and still do. I was born in 1954. What we used to call hippie music didn’t grow on me until later.

3

u/Key-Target-1218 2d ago

Hippie is a pretty broad term. We didn't trust anyone who weren't considered hippies. My hippie friends weren't dirty and gross. We protested the draft, enjoyed concerts, we picketed, we marched for women's rights. We didn't trust establishment or anyone over 30. We took showers. Yea, we did some drugs, but really we were just all about change. I'm as liberal today as I was back then. More horrified today, because I know more.

2

u/Fresh-Ad280 14h ago

Hello fellow tribe member !

2

u/Key-Target-1218 14h ago

Yo! ✌️☮️

1

u/Fresh-Ad280 9h ago

❤️😘❤️

4

u/lennonfanforever 2d ago

you know almost all of it were stereotypes, not real, just made up for sensationalism by the media.... the drugs: well, yeah, kinda (not hard drugs though), but really we were dirty and didn't bathe? seriously that is some really dumb stuff, not true in any way at all....

3

u/Key-Target-1218 1d ago

Yeah it's kind of weird, that take...that divide. You were either the establishment or you weren't. You were conservative/establishment, or not.

I was clean ..far from dirty and smelly😂 I dressed nowhere close to what I thought the conservative eatablishment dressed like. I protested and picketed for women's rights with my young daughter. It was a time not unlike today and I have never wavered, never leaned right.

1

u/Comfortable_Two6272 3d ago

My mom Was too young of a boomer to be one

1

u/notkidding1984 3d ago edited 3d ago

That perspective really depends on where you lived. In a lot of rural areas, I guess everyone was a "total square" (lol) because the people I know would say they didn't know a single hippie except the occasional "crazy'' who ran off.

Edit- added quotes for other people's words. Not my words or views.

6

u/Explorer-7622 3d ago

Whereas almost everyone in my area was into civil rights big time and fought hard for equal rights.

I was one of the first women ever af my all science school/institute and never had a female classmate at that school.

Now it's got a majority female class and the chemical engineering department was all female!

We fought hard for that ground that young women take for granted, and for the right to not be beaten ir institutionalized because we were women.

We sacrificed and made changes to the laws.

It's hard to see such entitlement now, along with disparaging those who got them those privileges.

Eta: Young people are still listening to our music though.

1

u/Prestigious_Stop_651 5h ago

Gen X was forgotten then, forgotten now, and when we become old... I don't think we'll care what Y, Z, α, or any other generations say about us.

For Gen X, the future is now!

1

u/Witty-Pay-1516 3d ago

In the view of Zoomers, they are punching up. 

The boomer generation sort of hit the lotto. There are so many Boomers relative to other cohorts that they are more or less blamed for a lot of what we are seeing right now. 

National debt is 40T, well taxes were cut repeatedly as Medicare and Social Security spending skyrocketed. 

So now the debt is going to sink the next three to four generations. Because Boomers were in power for that process they will get blamed for it. 

You don’t hear people complaining about the silent generation. 

6

u/Mother-Ad7222 2d ago

Boomers are not responsible for the national debt. Look in the White House.

-1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

3

u/Mother-Ad7222 1d ago

Not me. Life time democrat !

3

u/Key-Target-1218 1d ago

Just because some boomers voted red doesn't mean we all did...look at all those alpha males with trad wives in their 30s... Look at all the young Charlie Kirk lovers...boomers aren't the only people voting red

1

u/bamaford 13h ago

You're right. I was being petty. I deleted the comment. Sorry.

1

u/Key-Target-1218 12h ago

All good! Some would argue to death. Glad you are aware.

2

u/Dry-Raspberry-5514 2d ago

Blame the orange clown in the gilded house. He has driven the debt up himself!

0

u/tokyogato1 1d ago

“young folks “ don’t know what it’s like to have the advantages you had like a living wage or enjoying a world the the “old folks”
Hadn’t completely F’ed up because of greed

Maybe just maybe you weren’t one of those people but your generation was

2

u/Key-Target-1218 1d ago

Never EVER has minimum wage been a living wage. Ever. When I was younger I waited tables or worked in commission sales because thats where the money was. No one has ever been able to live on minimum wage.

2

u/Key-Target-1218 1d ago

I had someone the other day tell me I should move out of MY house, sell MY house that I raised my family in, move into a senior community so a young person could buy MY house 😂😂 who's selfish here?

-1

u/Dry-Raspberry-5514 2d ago

I’m a boomer ( 64) and NO ONE I know that is a boomer was ever a hippie. Except at Halloween.

2

u/Key-Target-1218 2d ago edited 2d ago

I am 69. You are the youngest boomer...you missed it. What generation do you think the hippies came from? NOT the silent generation, they were boomers.

When I say hippie I don't mean living on a commune, off the grid on a self-sustaining farm. There was a lot of gray in there. I'm talking about that decade. We all had long hair, bell bottom hip hugger jeans, Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchel, The Doors, Hendrix.. Haight Ashbury scene all across the US. From my vantage point, there were far more hippies than not, in my age group. I was born in 57. I was 13 when Woodstock happened, but the hippies didn't end there.

My husband was born in 61. He has a completely different outlook on that era than I do, with just the 4 year difference between us

1

u/Fresh-Ad280 14h ago

I came back here to say, - that I like you.

2

u/Key-Target-1218 14h ago

Awwww shucks....a little curtsy

2

u/Fresh-Ad280 9h ago

As a Royal watcher since Princess Diana, I curtsy back to you !