Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counter Culture (review)

Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo presents an in-depth view of the experiences of young women who rejected mainstream society in the Sixties. Her book responds to both media stereotypes of the counterculture ("the hippie-chick" and "the earth mother") and feminist criticism (e.g. that hippie women surrendered to an oppressive division of labor and succumbed to naïve beliefs about the differences between men and women). Without quite rebuffing these characterizations of hippie women, Lemke-Santangelo nevertheless shows that women in the counterculture were at once idealistic and inventive, pragmatic and environmentally conscious, generally fulfilled by their lifestyle and labor choices and imaginative in their thinking about gender roles and sexual attitudes.

Lemke-Santangelo takes us on a historical and, in a way, psychological journey, from the widespread decision of young women in the mid-60's to drop out of mainstream society, to the strategic adaptation of these young women to the (sometimes very unpleasant) realities of life on the commune, to the exploration by older hippie women of new approaches to marriage and motherhood, and finally, to the eventual transition in the late 70's and early 80's of these (by then middle-aged) female hippies into New Age healers, yoga instructors and massage therapists. Along the way she offers vivid details of hippie women's lives—from their sexual experiences to their birthing methods and child-rearing practices.

While clearly partial to the idealistic spirit and aesthetic impulses of the counter-culture, especially as it was lived by women, Lemke-Santangelo does an excellent job of presenting a nuanced, complex view of her chosen subject, resisting the temptation to romanticize the past. She notes, for instance, that hippie rejection of their parents' middleclass norms and late 20th century society's accumulated scientific wisdom came with a price. "Rustic and crowded conditions also led to the spread of communicable disease. Aside from sexually transmitted infections, communes were plagued with outbreaks of hepatitis; dysentery; food poisoning; respiratory, eye, ear, and throat infections; scabies; fleas; ringworm; and lice. Many communes and communards were, as clinicians noted, hygienically challenged, subsisting on scavenged food prepared under unsanitary conditions and relying on open, easily contaminated water sources for drinking and bathing" (108-109). She also discusses the problems caused by jealousy in open sexual arrangements, drug addiction, and self-imposed exile from the world of paid employment.

In the later chapters of the book, Lemke-Santangelo successfully mines the tension between feminism (as articulated by the politically active women of the New Left) and hippiedom, showing how female communards were more inclined to celebrate gender differences than to critique them. She notes that the division of labor on communes was noticeably similar to the traditional division of labor in American life, but argues that chores such as cooking and cleaning and raising children were more fulfilling in a hippie-setting than in a postwar suburban home because, on a commune, such chores were conducted by groups of women together, allowing for constant conversation, creativity and problem-solving.

Occasionally, Lemke-Santangelo makes claims that would have benefited from supporting evidence. She writes, for instance, "after joining the counterculture [hippie women] were less likely than their mainstream peers and hippie males to claim a traditional religious identity or preference." Without evidence or documentation, it is impossible to know if such a claim is true. It would also have helped to have some sense of the scope of the hippie phenomenon. How many hippie women were there?

Much of what Lemke-Santangelo describes will seem familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Sixties. But today's students may very well need a book like Lemke-Santangelo's to peak their interest in the period. Moreover, while Daughters of Aquarius is ostensibly limited in its scope to the experience of one half the population of the counterculture, the book serves as an excellent overview of the hippie phenomenon writ large. Her arguably narrow lens manages to offer a...