Ironic Musings on Countercultural Culture

I'm curious about something I've been thinking about for a very long time but have never attempted to articulate. I'm still surprised (in my mid-40s) by how many people seem compelled to alter their appearance in some obvious way: piercing, tattooing, or unnatural-looking hair style or color. I guess I really don't understand that urge. Is it based on a desire to explore and express one's uniqueness, or merely to conform to the norms of a particular subculture? What drives this?

I am sure it can be either or both, and probably a hundred other motives I can't think of at the moment. Still, I've always found it far more subversive (whatever that means in a culture where the greatest sin seems to be appearing "uncool") to pass for conventional on the outside, while being quite unconventional on the inside.

It's way less distracting, I believe. How many of us are truly not conscious of how we appear to others, and the kind of impact that makes? I'm talking about physical appearance here, not behavior. I decided at an early age that people who rule against me without making at least a cursory attempt to draw me out are not people whose opinions I value much anyhow. Maybe that makes me unconventional, right there. I don't know. I grew up in a migratory family that led to my attending six different elementary schools, and after the third switch, I think I just threw in the towel as far as being accepted by my peers. Why bother when you are only going to have a year or so with them anyhow? It didn't seem to be worth the effort when my "job" was really to study and get good grades.

And, of course, there were kids who hated me for that.

Are people who are threatened by the absence of failure really worth knowing anyhow?

If you looked me up on Google, you'd find that I have written or edited a fair number of books, many of which deal with sexually edgy material -- some of it fiction, some of it instructional, some of it autobiographical. Yet I look very Establishment, probably boring to many folks, especially younger ones ... plenty of whom are reading my books. I've gotten away with a lot while passing for normal.

Meanwhile, I have known many folks who seem quite delighted to spend a lot of their waking hours, not to mention money, cultivating their appearance. (My favorite joke from the post-Hippie era is the one about the woman whose idea of "self-improvement" was breast augmentation.) In the final analysis, though, this strikes me as distracting oneself from one's higher purpose, whatever that might be. And who am I to judge anyone's higher purpose? Only the lack of one indicates to me a fundamental lack of character, courage, or personal convictions. The capacity to view one's own life as being part and parcel of our collective progress and evolution -- seeing the world as greater than oneself -- is a necessary component of being a contributing member of society.

"Contributing member of society." How do you immediately react to that phrase? Do you know why?

"Member of society" ... sure, you can think outside of that box (and maybe even visualize alternatives), but you can't get outside of it until you die. Meanwhile, what's on your mind?

A lot of folks seem to confuse style with substance. Sure, it's fun to dress up sometimes, and it might even be fun to do a year or two of whatever kind of drag speaks to you -- to be a neo-hippie, punk, goth, glam-gangsta beatnik. You're more likely to get away with that notion while you're young, unless you're, say, Dolly Parton or Elvira, and make a career out of it. But those folks do a lot of other things with their time, too. They aren't distracted. And they weren't always considered cool -- far from it, in fact.

It seems like the more willing you are to look uncool, without being a humorless twit about it, the more likely you might be pretty cool after all.

I have heard the rhetoric that the inclination to festoon oneself hearkens back to some deep, primordial urges. Yet isn't there an equally strong urge to dispense with all that truck and use one's time and energy to speak through actions rather than appearances?

I think there is, but I suspect it gets lost in the noise a lot.