(Ed. Note: You were wrong, Karen, it did get printed. I printed it for several reasons: 1.) It is interesting in its point of view. I don't feel that hippies need to be thanked specifically as society has for sometime past been moving in the direction of greater tolerance. If it had not the condi- tions which permitted the hippie movement to develop would not have existed and there never would have been a hippie “movement”. 2.) The idea that youth has not gotten set in its ways needs further explanation. They just haven't had time to get set in the particular ways in which the older generation is set. However, they are just as set in their own particular ways. Witness the fact that the beard, sideburns, mustache and hair combination is practically mandatory. If the youth is so tolerant of non- conformists, why can't they tolerate a hippie who doesn't wear a beard or mustache as well as one who does. If that is his “own thing” why shouldn't he do it freely and without social pressure? You see it is the same prob- lem of intolerance toward variation from the group “norm”. In this case it's just a different norm. 3.) Fear of “losing all I have built—” is cer- tainly understandable to us oldsters but it also indicates that inexorably Karen is being contaminated with conformity, fear, and the need to main- tain status and position. Supposedly her peers, being more tolerant, would not care a bit if she were “exposed" as being “different” (i.e., a TV) and would say- "go ahead do your own thing and come to our next get together in a miniskirt, and see-through blouse” or would they? When it gets down to the nitty gritty that sub-culture has its own expectations even though they be different and transgressors are likely to suffer for it as they have always suffered in every society.

Dear Virginia,

I have been extremely pleased and enlightened by reading "TRANS- VESTIA" and it seems like a great personal loss not to have known of your book sooner. I have purchased many other so-called TV publi- cations only to find them quite crude and leaving me with the feeling I was being taken advantage of rather than sympathized with.

In some of the personal experiences I read in your books I see one thing I don't quite understand. Many of the men seem to find it embarrassing to purchase feminine clothing so they invent fictional sisters or a wife that they are making the purchases for. I have never found this to be necessary. I purchase whatever I want, wherever I want and at any time I want to purchase it without making any excuses for doing so. I don't see any reason to explain to a salesgirl why a purchase is being made. They can

25