Alternative lifestyle

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An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle generally perceived to be outside the cultural norm. Usually, but not always, it implies an affinity or identification within some matching subculture (examples include hippies, yuppies, goths and punks). Some people with alternative lifestyles mix certain elements of various subcultures (i.e.-grunge musicians were often influenced by a mixture of the punk, hippie, emo and heavy metal subcultures). Not all minority lifestyles are held to be "alternative"; the term tends to imply newer forms of lifestyle, often based upon enlarged freedoms (especially in the sphere of social styles) or a decision to substitute another approach or not enter the usual expected path in most societies.

Alternative lifestyles and subcultures originated in the 1920s with the "flapper" movement, when women cut their hair and skirts short. (As a symbol of freedom from oppresion and the old way of living) Women in the flapper age were the first large group to practice pre-marital sex and dancing and cursing and driving in modern america without scandal following them. This was because this new flapper lifestyle was so popular that the flapper's brash behavior became more normal than previously thought.

A Stanford University cooperative house, Synergy, was founded in 1972 with the theme of "exploring alternative lifestyles."

The following are examples which may be considered by some to be alternate lifestyles:

• Nudism and clothing optional lifestyles.
• Living in unusual communities, such as communes, intentional communities or ecovillages.
• Lifestyle travellers, homebirths, homeschooling, home gardening, housetruckers, New Age travellers, vegetarianism, veganism, freeganism, meditation, hypnosis, reincarnation and feng shui.
• Non-typical sexual lifestyle, such as BDSM, homosexuality, swinging, polyamory and certain types of sexual fetishism or paraphilia.
• Alternative spiritual practices.
• Alternative medicine and natural methods of medical care or herbal remedies as medication.
• Eastern religion as sought and practiced by some western converts into faiths based in East Asia and South Asia, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Shintoism and so on, as opposed to Monotheism or Judeo-Christian belief systems.
• "Non-mainstream" religious minorities, such as the Amish for example pursue a non-technological or anti-technology lifestyle.

Same goes to the single parent movement, by the growing trend of children raised by one parent, which once was viewed as an alternative lifestyle. It is now mainly acceptable choice of lifestyle, in which the term "alternative" originated to stand for "not the norm, allowed" by social standards of the present time.

External links

• Synergy House at Stanford University