Analternative lifestyle orunconventional lifestyle is alifestyle perceived to be outside thenorm for a given culture. The termalternative lifestyle is often usedpejoratively.[1] Description of a related set of activities as alternative is a defining aspect of certainsubcultures.[2]
Alternative lifestyles andsubcultures were first highlighted in the U.S. in the 1920s with the "flapper" movement. Women cut their hair and skirts short (as a symbol of freedom from oppression and the old ways of living).[3][better source needed] These women were the first large group of females to practice pre-marital sex, dancing, cursing, and driving in modern America without the ostracism that had occurred in earlier instances.
The American press in the 1970s frequently used the termalternative lifestyle as a euphemism for homosexuality out of fear of offending a mass audience. The term was also used to refer tohippies, who were seen as a threat to thesocial order.[1]
^abRyan, Maureen E. (2018).Lifestyle Media in American Culture: Gender, Class, and the Politics of Ordinariness. New York: Routledge.ISBN978-1-315-46495-4.[page needed]
^Ciment, James (2015). "Introduction". In Misiroglu, Gina (ed.).American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History. Routledge. pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.ISBN978-1-317-47729-7.
