There used to be “Freak Shows” back in the day. Today it is politically incorrect to even say “Freak Show”.
White guys with afros about all I remember. Hippies could stink pretty bad.
NO....people were “different”....but no one went out of their way to dress and act like a jerk most of the time...
Do fops and dandys count?
Yes, they were in circuses.
Now i think of it, this body mutilation thing seems to have really taken of sometime during Gen-X and really going now with the useless millennials.
Tattoos used to be mostly hidden other than some arm stuff on old sailor types.
beatniks
No. Reputable people didn’t get tattoos except for military veterans. Nobody mutilated their bodies with weird piercings and such. What you describe is a historical sign of the decline of a culture. I think it was Spengler who said you know a culture is on the rise when the lower classes emulate the upper classes, but a culture is in decline when the upper classes mimic the lower classes.
Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me, where is sanity?
Freak shows at the state fairs were wild.
There were some, mostly artists or entertainers. People who did things to get noticed. I’ll post some pics tomorrow.
The guys with the big holes in their ears crack me up. I keep wanting to ask one of them if that’s so they have a place to hang their dry cleaning while they open the car door.
There have always been people who pushed the boundaries. However, the societal pressure to confirm was a lot stronger back then, so you didn’t see as much.
The polite terms I’m aware of in use in the last century were “bohemians,” “long-hairs,” “beatniks,” and “hippies.”
Personally not dating back that far lolz, but I would guess this kind of counterculture stuff was tolerated earlier in France and some parts of Germany than in the US. Then analogous groups became established in US and brought in and tried to normalize pot (the real reason it was banned, not “racism”) worked to cleave youths away into the first generational gap in the US with beatnik culture carefully designed for that purpose. The leaders of this were primarily homosexuals and pedophiles.
I can remember when only Hispanic girls would get their ears pierced. Only guys who served in the military and got drunk overseas would get a tatoo. The only hair color most women wanted was “Marilyn” blonde or “Rita” red. To rebel men or women smoked cigarettes. Women would rather be nearly blind than wear glasses.
To this day the biggest turnoff for me is to see a woman with a visible tatoo. The body piercing thing is also totally bizarre.
Not so much.
It began in the 80’s.
It took a long time to be one mainstream establishment like it is now.