They used to call them hippies

Long hair, beards, nonconformity, ease of expression. These were characteristics of the hippie movement—if you can call it as such—of the 1960s. Back then, in crew-cut America, hippies were seen as radical, an object of attention on sidewalks and plazas and public spaces. Some passersby shrugged and went on their way. Others treated them as unwelcome. Richard Nixon's Silent Majority adopted the term "hippie" as a pejorative.

Today, people young and not-so-young are tattooed and wearing rings in places other than ears. Anyone can adopt their own hair style or hair color. Few people, other than the old and cranky, seem to be bothered by it.

As for long hair and scruffy beards, they are seen on everyday TV reality shows. The television tells of the lives of Alaska frontiersmen or Louisiana bayou loggers, long-haired, bearded and scruffy looking. Middle America tunes into these shows; they don't see those men as loathsome. The country is moving toward a live-and-let-live attitude. Maybe not fast enough but we're getting there. Slowly, surely. So the gentlemen depicted here, whose fathers and grandfathers perhaps saw hippies as disgraceful, aren't out of place today. Not at all. Actually, they're hot.