DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND COMPARATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES: TITLE PAGE

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STUDENT IDENTITY NUMBER……………………1312416……………………………………………...…

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MODULE TITLE…………Britain in the Twentieth Century

TITLE OF ESSAY................................................................................................................

How Has Subcultural Youth dress been an expression of working class identity in the second

half of the twentieth century? 1950-1980.............................................................................

WORD COUNT……………………4512…………………………………………………………………..

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In recent years there has been numerous studies on the subject of class and subsequent redefinitions

in the United Kingdom, the largest of which was the Great British Class Survey of 2013. The GBCS tried

to lay a more comprehensive foundation for defining class by looking at associated factors, such as

economics, culture and occupation.1 However this process is not new, the Twentieth Century saw

earlier attempts to define class in more empirical terms, such as the studies as the NRS Social Grade,

which like its successor sorted the population into categories based on wealth and culture. These

sociological studies have broadly incorporated material culture and public activity as the means by

which to base the assumptions of class. In light of this focus on tangible, material culture and the focus

on a more nebulous system of cultural activity in the rhetoric of class it seems prevalent to look at

clothing as it ties these two dynamics together, particularly when looked at through the lenses of

youth. One spectator remarked on the disillusioned American working class youth’s attire that:

‘Adolescents… were translating these… garments, totally devoid of fashion vocabulary or grammar,

into the direct expression of their identity crisis.’2 And this is true of the British Working class in the

post-war period, this essay will draw on a relatively small number of sub and countercultural groups,

namely Punks, Mods, and Teddy Boys because their distinct modes of dress demonstrate their identity,

particularly when related to the social hierarchies, and more importantly are reflective of wide social

issues. The nature of these working class cultures further lend themselves to an interrogation of their

clothing’s symbolism because they have taken such a prominent and persistent place in popular

memory, one only has to look so far as film and television to see there has been a near constant stream

of programs and movies all demonstrating a fascination with these youth cultures: The Who’s

Quadrophenia (1979) being the archetypal film about Mods; 24 Hour Party People (2002) traverses

subcultural music scenes from punk to Rave; and more recently Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010)

catalogues Ian Dury’s life within the Punk and New Wave movements. In looking at clothing and its

1 Savage, Mike; Fiona Devine; Niall Cunningham; Mark Taylor; Yaojun Li; Johs. Hjellbrekke; Brigitte Le Roux; Sam Friedman; Andrew Miles. (2013). ‘A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment’. Sociology. 47(2). 219-50 2 Crane, Diana. (2000). Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing. London: The University of Chicago Press. P.182

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association with youth and class I hope to demonstrate the impact of, and the way in which, dress has

been an indicator of the youth’s interpretation of their class identity as well as showing the changing

makeup of the working class in the post-war era. However we must, before demonstrating the ways in

which clothing has affected youth perceptions of class, define what is meant by class, youth and

clothing/dress because of the often vague nature of these terms. Beginning with youth and dress, for

they are the framing considerations in ascertaining class identity, youth shall be defined as roughly the

period of fifteen to twenty five in a person’s lifecycle, the teenage years, in which education is

historically no longer compulsory and when an individual may begin earning; both important factors in

the valorisation of clothes as culturally significant as well as allowing for surplus income to be spent on

consumer products. Clothing is, at its base level, the items of fabric and adornment that cover the

body; though in the context of this essay clothing will also be seen as a cultural artefact that is imbued

with meanings constructed by its historical and spatial associations. Importantly, dress and clothing will

be used synonymously here for although there are nuances in their definitions, these nuances are not

as drastic as to change the argumentation of this essay. To understand youth, clothing and identity

there are four areas that must be explored; the first of which is the most visible way clothing has

actively shaped and translated the working class experience into a tangible form of cultural identity

and that is in clothing’s role as a mode of political engagement. The Second area in which this essay will

focus is the way in which clothing has been used by working class youth as a means by which to

differentiate the myriad of ever changing sub and counter-cultural identities within the less than

monolithic working class entity (particularly in a period where the make-up of the working class was in

constant flux). Indeed the demographic changes to the working class points us to the third

demonstration of how clothing has been an assertion of the working class youth’s identity and that is in

its associations with the, often conflicting, generational identities that appear in the post war period.

Finally this essay will look to subcultures, dress and gender in the hopes of further exploring working

class identity and its relation to dress.

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The clothing and the costumes employed among segments of the young working class have

been an expression of identity in their symbolic meaning as a mode of political and social engagement.

The emergence of the Punk counterculture in the Nineteen-Seventies being the most well know

example, although short lived, the movement’s dress is highly indicative of the changing nature of class

and their identity in relationship to this. Hanif Kureishi’s novel The Buddha of Suburbia follows Karim, a

middle-class, half-English and half-Pakistani adolescent cataloguing his youth within subcultural

movements and provides great insight into the punk movement’s ideological commitments and

developments from the perspective of an outsider. Karim states that ‘’We [his friend Charlie] can’t

follow them… Obviously we can’t wear rubber and safety-pins and all’’, ‘’It would be artificial… we’re

not like them. We don’t hate the way they do. We’ve got no reason to. We’re not from the estates. We

haven’t been through what they have.’’3 Here Karim shows the reader the heavily class related

intricacies of the punk movement and relates it to their mode of dress. He, a middle-class teenager,

can’t become part of the movement on any level other than superficial because of the gulf of

experience he has, even on the expressive level of dress he feels that it’d be ridiculous to wear what

they wear because of this. The ‘hate’ that Karim understands of the movement in a wider periodization

is a response to the dramatically changing experience of the working class at this time. With the

election of the Conservative Government under Edward Heath there was an increasing demonization

of the working class, the 1971 Industrial Relations Act curtailed union rights and striking rights, halting

inter-union disputes; indeed strikers were envisioned in terms of being enemies of the state rather

than fighting for their rights.4 For the ordinary young working class however the decade was in drastic

contrast to the post-war prosperity many of their parents had felt, the institution of the three-day

working week, rising unemployment among the young have become symbolic of the recession felt in

these years but in real terms eight million of the population were between 13 and 21, two thirds of

3 Sağlam, Berkem Gürenci. (2014). Rocking London: Youth Culture as Commodity in The Buddha of Suburbia. The Journal of Popular Culture. 47(3). Pp. 554-570. P. 5644 Todd, Selina. (2014). The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010. London: John Murry p.300-301

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which were working class and a quarter were on the dole.5 These factors culminated in a sense of

boredom, alienation and disillusionment with British Society and politics among the working class.6

Indeed the Government sanctioned and promoted consumerism of the post-war affluent society,

denoted by successive government policy and articulated by McMillians phrase ‘Britain’s never had it

so Good’, or Michael young’s argument that ‘class based on production was slowly giving way to status

based on consumption’ was fundamentally challenged by punk.7 The post-war Governments, in

promoting the pursuit of leisure through capital, established a backlash against it. In promoting a

system of class and community that relied on wealth to take part in culture a fundamental dichotomy

was sewn into the fabric of society, without wealth one could not take part in mainstream culture. As

such movements like punk was a rebellion to this establishment culture. It was remarked that ‘By the

dawn of the Seventies, the philosophy was that you couldn’t do anything without a lot of money. So my

philosophy was back to, ‘’Fuck You[‘’]… the anger was simply about money, that the culture had

become corporate, that we no longer owned it and everybody was desperate to get it back.’8 And this

attitude points to the Identity of working class youth not simply of one of alienation and

disillusionment caused by poverty but also one that sought a sense of community. The implicit beliefs

of the punk movement are in a similar vein to Richard Hoggart’s in The Uses of Literacy, where he

expressed a fear that consumer culture would destroy the traditional working class communities, Punk

saw consumer culture as having done it and thus sought to create a community based on the

opposition of the Establishment.9 Clothing was used to visualize and embody these ideas, the despair

and boredom of the young working class, the nihilism and anti-political sentiment is reflected by

clothing and the associated cultural activity. Punk youth wore, torn clothing, leather, bondage gear,

5 Simonelli, D. (2010). Anarchy, Pop and Violence: Punk Rock Subculture and the Rhetoric of class. 1976-78. On Contemporary British History. 16(2). Pp 121-144. P.1236 Ibid. p.121-67 Osgerby, Bill. (1993). ‘Well, it’s Saturday night an’ I just got paid’: Youth, Consumerism and Hegemony in Post-War Britain’ in Contemporary Record, 6(2), pp287-305. P. 290 and Todd, Selina. (2014). The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010. London: John Murry. P.2558 McNeil, Legs. And. Gillian McCain. (1996). Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. New York: Grove Press. P.2459 Moran, Joe. (2006). Milk Bars, Starbucks, and the Uses of Literacy. Cultural Studies 20(6). pp

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rubber and Nazi iconography all held together with safety-pins to shock onlookers and actively

promote their disillusionment with the establishment.10 Bonnie English has stipulated that the shocking

clothes worn by the punk movement were ‘designed to disturb and disrupt the complacency of wider

society’.11 This is averred by the article Punk Shirts Upset Jews ran by the Guardian in 1985 in which

there is a description of the upset caused to the Jewish community in response to Punks wearing ‘shirts

like those Jews were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps’.12 The abuse to the traditional

costume of rebellion, the Leather jacket, Jeans and T-shirt by designers such as Vivienne Westwood

embodied these attitudes.13 This idea of clothing as a mode of socio-political engagement is neatly

summarized by Malcolm McLaren, arguably the mastermind behind English punk, on his return from

the American punk scene he articulated that his vision for English punk was ‘the image of this

distressed, strange thing called Richard hell. And this phrase, ‘’the blank generation’’.’14 Here we see

the image of punk, the implication of its torn clothes and safety pins coming together with the politics

of youth; ‘the blank generation’, the young, bored and nihilistic generation of the seventies. Indeed, Syl

Sylvain remarked McLaren’s ‘inspiration from Richard [Hell] seemed less about ripped clothes and

more about poetry and politics.’15 Indeed other Subcultural groups used dress as a mode of social and

political engagement albeit less confrontationally. The Mod is often criticized for simply being a passive

consumer, similar to Hoggart’s criticism levelled at the Juke-Box Boys, a predecessor to the Mod.

Superficially at least this criticism seems founded, the Mod readily bought into consumer society after

all, ‘There’s a lot of lying when you’re blocked about… how much your suit costs’.16 However with

closer interrogation this argument proves untrue. Although they did consume, indeed much of their

10 Crane. (2000). Fashion and its Social Agendas. P.18611 English, Bonnie. (2007) A Cultural History of Fashion in the Twentieth Century – From Catwalk to Sidewalk. Oxford: Berg. P.10412 (1985). Punk Shirts upset Jews. The Guardian. 28 May. [Online] URL: http://0-search.proquest.com.pugwash.lib.warwick.ac.uk/docview/186593919?accountid=14888 (accessed: 15/04/2015)13 Crane, Diana. (2000). Fashion and its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing. London: The University of Chicago Press. P.18614 McNeil, Legs. And. Gillian McCain. (1996). Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. New York: Grove Press. P.19815 Ibid. P.19816 Hebdige, Dick. (1975). ‘The Meaning of Mod.’ In Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson eds. (2006). Resistance through Ritual – Youth Subcultures in Post War Britain. (2nd edition). Oxon: Routledge. P.76

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subculture revolves around excessive consumption, crucially the Mod appropriated that which he took

from the mainstream and used it as a way in which subvert mainstream culture through its inversion.

Moreover, the CCCS (Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural studies) has understood the Mod

movements as an ‘attempt by working class youth to symbolically ‘resolve’ the problematic

subordination of class experience’.17 Indeed, anecdotally at least, what we see is that many Mods were

not as wealthy as is often believed. In a 1962 interview with Town Magazine, Mark Feld (later Mark

Bolan of T.Rex) commented that much of what the Mods were wearing was bought cheap and

improvised upon to produce something that appeared more affluent; they cite buying cheap hat pins

from Woolworths and using them as Tie Pins.18 Further serving to evidence the fact that Mods were not

simply passive consumers but using ingenuity to appear more affluent in the framework of a consumer

society. Indeed, the obsessive neatness, expensive looking suits and short hair that characterizes the

Mod is an inversion of mainstream social values, he took the respectable look of consumer society and

satirized it through excessive vanity and their media association with the overconsumption of

‘dangerous’ leisure activities.19 The Mods mode of dress, an inversion of consumerism in itself, built up

more significance because of it’s the media association with activities such as the frequenting of ‘coffee

bars’, taking ‘pills’ and other activities perceived as morally dubious by the press. Sensationalist articles

such as ‘Mod Drowned after Beer and Purple Hearts’ from the Daily mail serve to illustrate this.20

Indeed, one article entitled ‘Are you a Mod or a Rocker?’ claims to be unbiased saying ‘one isn’t

necessarily a better type of person’ but has an implicit admonition of the Mod in the language and

ways in which he is described. One question determining your status as a Mod or a Rocker is whether

you would let a ‘fugitive’ into your home without question, which of course the Mod would ‘as a

17 Osgerby, Bill. (1993). ‘Well, it’s Saturday night an’ I just got paid’: Youth, Consumerism and Hegemony in Post-War Britain’ in Contemporary Record, 6(2), pp287-305. P. 28818 Fowler, David. (2008). Youth Culture In Modern Britain c.1920-c.1970 – From Ivory Tower to Global Movement – Anew History. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillian. P.131 19 Hebdige, Dick. (1975). ‘The Meaning of Mod.’ P.76-720 Clancy, Adrian. (1964). "Mod drowned after beer and Purple Hearts." Daily Mail. Daily Mail Historical Archive. URLhttp://find.galegroup.com/dmha/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=DMHA&userGroupName=warwick&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&docId=EE1865539740&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0 [Date Accessed: 01/05/2015]

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possible adventure’ whereas the Rocker would be ‘more suspicious… concerned about getting himself

in possible trouble.’ Thus implying them to have a disregard for authority in their lack of suspicion or

concern for getting in trouble.21 Which when looked at in the context of other articles about Mods,

such as their confrontations with the police, is made clear.22

Clothing has so far been seen as an expression of difference or opposition to the

‘Establishment’ but subcultural dress is also a way in which the young have distinguished themselves

from one-another within the confines of their class or represented their cultural identities within the

context of the period. Though an overused example, and one that has taken on more significance in

popular memory than it had in reality, is the rivalry between Mods and Rockers.23 Clothing for these

two groups was a means to show their differing affiliations within the context of their class, where

punk was a subversion and demonstration of opposition to the establishment, if you will the working

class versus the elite classes, Mods and Rockers modes of dress were to demonstrate oppositional

identities within their class as well as opposition to the elite. Mods, in their Italianate suits and

generally smart apparel of narrow ties, waistcoats and jackets were a stark visual contrast with the

Rockers, who wore leather, had long hair and dark clothes. Indeed, the activities and spaces in which

they occupied were also starkly contrasted, the Mods taking their name from modern jazz, listened to

Motown and British music influenced by the blues, occupying nightclubs; The Rockers listened to

Rock’n’roll accordingly and occupied cafes like Ace café.24 Indeed famously the oppositionality of the

Mods and Rockers erupted in the May Bank-Holiday of 1964 with seaside resort ‘battles’ in Southern

21 Routh, Jonathan. (1964). Are you a Mod or a Rocker? Daily Mail. Daily Mail Historical Archive. URL: http://find.galegroup.com/dmha/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=DMHA&userGroupName=warwick&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&docId=EE1865532753&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0 [Date Accessed: 01/05/2015]22 Daily Mail Reporter. (1960). "Teenage mob in Farson coffee bar battle." Daily Mail. Daily Mail Historical Archive. URLhttp://find.galegroup.com/dmha/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=DMHA&userGroupName=warwick&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=BasicSearchForm&docId=EE1866265765&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0 [Date Accessed: 01/05/2015]23 Hebdige, Dick. (1975). ‘The Meaning of Mod.’ In Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson eds. (2006). Resistance through Ritual – Youth Subcultures in Post War Britain. (2nd edition). Oxon: Routledge. P.72 24 Grayson, Richard S. (1998). Mods, Rockers and Juvenile delinquency in 1964: The Government Response. Contemporary British History. 12(1). Pp19-47. P.24

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England. The most infamous of which was at Margate, where over forty individuals were arrested by

the police. What makes Margate important is the fact that Barker and Little conducted a survey on

those who were arrested in order to better understand these relatively new teenage subcultures. The

findings of which concluded that clothing played a large part of their identity, and one that defined the

two groups against one another. The survey suggested that,

‘The Mods and the Rockers had a positive and negative view of themselves: the positive revealed how

they saw themselves, the negative by how they saw their rivals. Both saw themselves mainly in terms

of dress…Rockers see Mods as effeminate. ‘’They can wear skirts if they like, so long as I don’t pick one

up as a girl’’: that was a tolerant opinion. Mods see Rockers as slovenly and dirty: ’’Long greasy hair-

they use axle grease. They stink of petrol fumes’’.’25

This study, although problematic because of the small scale and the fact the subjects were the minority

of offenders, does serve as indication of the wider way in which the interaction between clothing and

youth subcultures defined them as oppositional to one another. Though there are limitations to the

study and we have to accept that the media portrayal and popular memory of these events are far

removed from the actuality of them; what were deemed ‘battles’ by the popular press was just

throwing stones at one another and ‘malevolent larking about‘.26 What the study and media reaction of

‘moral panic’ did do was solidify existing opposition between the two groups. Murdoch for instance has

suggested that media ‘polarisation penetrated the self-image of group members, with the result that

elements of style which had previously been neutral became the focii of inter-group antagonism and

conflict.’27 Though I have proven that the style and dress were not ‘neutral’ before the popular presses

interaction with the events by the fact that there had to be some oppositionality between the two

groups for even a small amount of violence to break out as well as the opinions of the Margate

25 Barker, P. and Little. A. (1964). ‘The Margate Offenders: a Survey.’ New Society. 4(96). Reprinted in Youth in New Society. (Ed.) T. Raison. 1966. London: Hart Davies. 26 Fowler, David. (2008). Youth Culture In Modern Britain c.1920-c.1970 – From Ivory Tower to Global Movement – A new History. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillian. P.14127 Clarke, John. (1975). Style. In Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson eds. (2006). Resistance through Ritual – Youth Subcultures in Post War Britain. (2nd edition). Oxon: Routledge. P.153

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offenders who saw themselves mainly in terms of clothing, what Murdoch does show is that clothing

and oppositional identity became more of a focus for the two groups after the Margate battle.

In the context of the period gay dress is important in demonstrating the subtleties of self-

expression within the working class. As homosexuality was criminally punishable up until 1967 and

there was a constant threat of being publically outed by social and media witch-hunts the gay

subculture developed various discrete means of communication, one particular method of which was

clothing.28 Importantly, in order to stay ‘invisible’ gay dress relied on knowledge of the subculture and

spatial awareness in order to recognize and be recognized by other members of the community. Gay

men would often adopted the hetero-normative fashions of the period and add accessories that would

make them recognizable to only other members of their subculture. Over the 1950s items in colours

traditional unaffiliated with masculinity became typically associated with the gay community. Of the

Blackpool gay scene Barbra Bell recalled that, ‘one year it was pink shirts. Nobody ever had pink shirts

so if you wore a pink shirt you definitely signalled that you were a gay boy.’ Indeed Dudley Cave, in an

interview conducted by Shaun Cole, said that ‘gay men’s favourite colour was blue or green… I was in

Simpson’s and they had a rail of green sports Jackets, green Harris Tweed. They were so good that I

took one. I bought one, but I was very embarrassed about its colour – but it showed me up, I feared.

Though how everybody… the straight community would know this secret colouring I had no idea.29’

Caves account here demonstrates the need for specific knowledge of colours, clothes and the

homosexual community in order to recognize him as gay, though he has trepidation about being

‘showed up’ by his Jackets colour he realizes the straight community would have no knowledge of the

‘secret colouring’.

Clothing has also been an important factor in the creation of generational identities

among the working class. The modes of costume, style dress and fashion employed among the young

segments of the working class are often a way in which they have expressed their identity as different

28 Cole, Shaun. (2000). Don we now Gay Apparel – Gay Men’s dress in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Berg p.59-6929 Cole, Shaun. (2000). Don we now Gay Apparel – Gay Men’s dress in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Berg p.63

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to that of earlier generations. Furthermore I hope to demonstrate here that the modes of dress

employed by young generations are also reflective of the wider changes to the demographic make-up

or visibility among the working class. On a more theoretical level every mode of subcultural dress is

built from a composite of earlier generations costumes and gives new meanings to, or incorporates

these old ones to create a new identity through their co-option, abuse and appropriation. To give an

example to this the clothes worn by Punks were an amalgam of styles taken from Teds, Rockers and

Mods such as drainpipes, Brothel creepers, boots and Bum-freezers or Leather jackets held together

with safety-pins; they then used these to represent their disillusionment with society.30 Thus we see

that there is a generational element in the subcultures themselves in regards to challenging their

parents cultures established norms using clothes appropriated from that culture with new symbolism.

Activities of youth and there changing modes of dress had a mixed reaction from their parent’s

generations, there was a general feeling that parents wanted their children to succeed and that the

youth wanted a different life to their parents, Alan Watkins suggested that ‘[w]e never looked… at our

parents as role models and actually I don’t think they wanted us to. I think we wanted to get on, do

something different and I think they wanted us to do better as well.’31 But there was also criticism of

the youth because of their ambitions and their different habits, particularly those represented in the

public eye such as dress, ‘older generation [were] saying ‘men don’t wear velvet you know!... the older

generation didn’t approve of young men, whatever their sexuality, wearing velvet. You didn’t wear a

tie all the time. Oh, long hair, a great outcry against long hair’.32 Indeed, perhaps what we see best is a

general feeling amongst youth subcultures, and wider youth in general that their mode of dress was a

way in which to differentiate themselves from older values and the older generations. For instance,

Leslie Paul, founder of the youth group Woodcraft Folk, insisted that the Mod’s ‘modern display of £25

suits is a protest of the young men with money, who still live in the dismal back streets, against a past

30 Hebdige, Dick. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Reprint. Oxon: Routledge (1988). P.2631 Todd, Selina. (2014). The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010. London: John Murry P. 24332 Lomas, Claire. (2007). ‘Men Don’t Wear Velvet You Know!’ Fashionable Gay Masculinity and the Shopping Experience, London. 1950- Early 1970s. Oral History. 35(1). Pp82-90. P.87

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they disown’.33 This display of money as a political statement, making poverty and class visible to the

public is representative of wider shifts in the working class. Though wages and employment had gone

up leading to the idea of a classless, meritocratic consumer society that was keenly promoted by the

popular press and Government, many of the working class felt it was a falsification. The fact of the

matter was for working class people the nature of poverty had changed, they were still marginalized to

‘dismal backstreets’ and although they owned more mod-cons much of this luxury was bought on

credit and left them in vicarious financial positions.34

Problematically for this essay is the participation of girls within the framework of working class

subcultures, what is apparent from the current historical analysis of post-war youth culture is the

notable absence of girls. As has been demonstrated, working class subcultures are often highly

gendered in terms of how they are perceived, boys defined themselves in terms of masculinity or lack

therefore of as has been seen by the main contention between Mods and Rockers being the

effeminacy or rugged, unkempt masculinity. Despite this gendered nature of self and rival identity

there is a curious lack of attention given to the experience of girls within the main youth subcultures of

the post war period. Of course this begs the questions, were girls’ part of youth subculture? And if they

were, why are they invisible? Arguably these questions can be answered by addressing the masculine

nature of youth subcultures as well as analysing the social expectations placed upon girls that limited

their access to the working class subculture. In relation to the former point, girls were often

marginalized within the frameworks of youth subculture because they were built predominantly on

masculine values and ideals. Rocker and skinhead cultures promoted a hyper-masculine form of culture

where female participation was limited to being coupled with one of the male members of the group as

a girlfriend or were marginalization because of their status as a sex object within that culture.35 In

addressing the later point, girls only had limited access to the public sphere in this period as emphasis

33 Todd. (2014). The People. P.24034 Todd. (2014). The People. P. 252-27735 McRobbie, Angela and Garber, Jenny. (1975). In Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson eds. (2006). Resistance through Ritual – Youth Subcultures in Post War Britain. (2nd edition). Oxon: Routledge. P.180

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was placed on her as part of the family, boys were expected to go out and to ‘have fun while they

could’ whereas girls were expected to ‘have fun’ but ‘stay out of trouble’, Indeed teenage culture for

girls was often built around the home and products she could consume in the home.36 However there is

a certain amount of female visibility in youth subcultures when focus is turned to the Mod subculture.

Here we see a greater amount of female participation because of the ‘softer’ type of masculinity it

promoted; wider social changes in the period; and the emphasis on activities that were open to female

participation, such as the emphasis on clothing. Mod culture was deemed to have a greater effeminacy

by the rockers and their gender characteristically been seen in more fluid terms. This meant the Mods

were to an extent more female friendly in their values and this when linked to the other factors that

will be discussed allowed girls to take on a more active role in Mod culture. Of the wider social

changes, the pill and the greater institution of Brooke Clinics must have come into the equation as it

would have relieved to a degree some parental tensions about unwanted pregnancy and also allowed

greater confidence amongst the female youth.37 Furthermore, we can see female engagement with

Mod subculture on fairly equal terms because of Mod culture’s emphasis on dress and style allowing

girls to participate more actively. The first reason being young female workers were inextricably linked

up with the production and sales of clothes, a staple tenant in Mods self-identification and their

identification by other members of society thus they were involved with the form of consumerism

apparent in Mod culture, girls were often part of ‘glamourous’ boutique stores furthering the

interlinking with the emphasis on STYLE. Indeed the very fact these young women had jobs gave them

a degree of surplus income which they could put back into the stylish boutiques in which they worked.

Secondly given the Mods staple costumes for both boys and girls were less outwardly aggressive as

Punk and Rock styles were and thus less likely to receive societal or parental condemnation.38

Ultimately subcultures were the domain of men, or at least appear so with the currently limited

historical research, but what we can learn is that because of the Mod subculture’s commitment to

36 Ibid. 186-737 Ibid. 184-538 Ibid 184-5

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clothing as their main signifier that working class girls could partake on fairly equal footing to their

male counterparts.

This interrogation has given insight into the continuity of class over the period. Though the rhetoric

changes, often the protestation by subcultures remain the same; Mods and Punks both used clothing,

albeit in a different way, to challenge inequality born from consumerism and the Establishment.

Indeed, there are problems with the current analysis of youth subcultures because it is such a new area

of historical analysis; it has a limited interrogation of gender roles; as well as failings in its analysis of

marginalised groups such as immigrant communities. However we can further conclude clothing has

been an indisputably important factor in the expression of working-class identity. In looking at sub-

cultural groups and their mode of dress we can see how they saw themselves and others, their

costumes being the visible incarnation of their political and social identity. Indeed because of the

reflectivity of the wearer’s identity we can also see how these subcultures were a response to the

changing nature of class and society. For instance Mod subculture is both a response and consequence

of the Post-war affluent consumer society. Consumerism and social factors such as the Welfare state,

and continued poverty creating the conditions needed for the subculture to emerge.

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