Text Analysis

The Subcultures Reader Edited by Ken Gelder

Girls and Subcultures (1977) by Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber

Chapter 9 titled “Girls and Subculture (1977)” in Ken Gelder's "The Subcultures Reader" questions the lack of proper focus on the role of girls in youth cultural groupings in not just ‘subcultural studies, but also in pop histories, personal accounts and journalistic surveys of the field’. Authors McRobbie and Garber question why this is so by examining various examples of subcultural research from different researchers.

The first issue that is immediately addressed in this chapter is the stereotypical image of women in most studies, such as Fyvel’s research into the Teddy Boys where the girls are only vaguely mentioned as background companions to the boys themselves. It is already interesting to note that when girls are acknowledged in the literature, it tends to be in terms of their sexual attractiveness, which is particularly notable in the biker youth culture where the females were focused on mainly for their looks and treated primarily as sexual objects by the Hell’s Angels groups, or took on the role (Which was still rare) as the ‘Mama’.

This issue however is also difficult to interpret, especially when examining Paul Willis’ study into the motor-bike youth culture, the lack of content around the girls is apparently due to their unwillingness to respond to Willis’ questions as compared to the boys. It is not to say however that this issue occurs with every subculture group that gets interviewed, and while there have been no confirmation as to why they behave this way, there are hints that they behave in such a docile manner due to their position within a rather male dominant youth culture, where they do not feel as powerful or as important as their male counterparts.

Another important aspect that was included in this discussion are the different classes within these groups, it is a critical variable in defining the different subcultural options available to middle-class and working-class boys. The classes for both genders would most definitely impact the two quite differently from one another, especially during the 50s to 70s. The structuring of needs and options must also work at some level for girls. Some subcultural patterns are therefore true for both boys and girls, while others are much more gender-divergent.

For such subcultures as the Teddy Boys in the 1950s, while girls did participate in its culture of escape from the claustrophobia of family much like the better known male counterparts, their wages were not as high as those of boys. Teddy Girls do not tend to hang around the streets as much as the boys do, so to avoid assumption from others they were ‘promiscuous’, the Teddy Girls hence had to be much more cautious and subtle when it came to their actions as compared to the Teddy Boys.

While females are most definitely present in subcultures, there is a much stronger focus on the male-focused subcultures (With the popular press and media concentrating on the major incidents involving them) as compared to the girls’ subcultures of teeny bob stars and pop-music. it was the violent aspects that caught the attention of the media, which the girls lacked as compared to the boys.

In conclusion to this case study, the female participation in youth cultures can be better understood by moving away from the ‘classic’ subcultural terrain marked out as an oppositional and creative by numerous sociologists. Girls negotiate a different leisure space as compared to the boys. While each subculture has progressed differently when it came to its females, it is notable that the later ones soon began taking on a much higher profile (Especially when comparing the empowering Hippies to the normally sexualised Bikers).

Overall, there were a lot of interesting and insightful points that were addressed in this case study. The authors having considered each case from several different angles, while managing to refrain from being too bias when discussing such a topic.