Pejorative usage

To the Beat Generation, the flood of 1960s youths adopting Beatnik sensibilities appeared as a cheap, mass-produced imitation. By Beat standards, these newcomers were not clever enough to really be "hip," so hippie was a term they used with disdain.

Columnist Herb Caen's daily references to hippies expressed fascination and mild amusement rather than disapproval. Following his lead, many participants in the movement accepted the hippie label and used it in a non-pejorative sense.

Conservatives of the period used the term hippie as an insult toward young adults whom they thought unpatriotic, uninformed, and naive. Conservatives were especially critical of hippies who advocated wholesale rejection of middle class values or who espoused leftist political viewpoints. Ronald Reagan, who was governor of California during the height of the hippie movement, described a hippie as a person who "dresses like Tarzan, has hair like Jane, and smells like Cheeta."

Others used the term hippie in a more personal way to disparage long-haired, unwashed, unkempt drug users.

In contemporary conservative settings, and especially in political discourse, the term hippie alludes to slacker attitudes, irresponsibility, participation in recreational drug use, activism in causes considered relatively trivial, and leftist political leanings. An example is its use by the South Park cartoon character, Eric Cartman.

In Britain, the term, spelled hippy, is generally seen as a pejorative label, and is thus disdained by those to whom it is applied.