Counter Culture

Seventeenth-century church ministers, for example, expressed their exasperation about men who wore their hair long – with their ‘flying strands of hair’ and ‘loose-hanging hair locks’. Under the slogan ‘better long-haired than short-sighted’, long hair again became a symbol of protest in the 1960s. Conscripts who refused to cut their hair even faced imprisonment. These were the days of the Provo movement, flower power and hippies who stood up for freedom in upbringing and education, and through sex, drugs and self-expression. The playful and peaceloving 1960s truly ended in 1977 with the arrival of punk, which was all about assertive music, anarchist ideals and a high degree of autonomy. This time the motto was ‘do it yourself’. The squatting movement applied a similar mentality when responding to the housing crisis from 1960s onwards.