Despite 'Girl Power' Women Remain Marginal To The Product Of Youth Culture. Discuss.

0105199 Page 5/6/2007

Despite ‘Girl Power’ Women Remain Marginal To The Product Of Youth Culture. Discuss.

Throughout History many stories are told of great and powerful men. Men who were warriors, politicians and kings. History often leads us to believe that women were hardly an existence in the past as many history books write only of great men, most men believed that they were superior to all women.

However, there were indeed women in the past that held great power in their own way, Queen Victoria, Joan Of Arc, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher are only some examples, but why has there been so little recognition of women? A reason being that the majority of recorded history was recorded my men and so they often failed to represent the female’s achievements and powers.

Mayfield Sue. (1988) Page3, Timeline: Women and Power. London: Dryad, Describes power and its connection to all women, “Power is not just about government and control. Ordinary people possess power…in the past women had great influence on society’s structures…many women who have no public power may nevertheless have great power within family units as wives and mothers. There are rarely records of this sort, and it is often difficult to pinpoint or to measure it” Women are often underestimated in society as being the weaker sex and this underestimation is usual being said by men, however has Mayfield (1988) Page4, also describes, many societies are centred around women, “some societies are essentially matricentric (centred on mothers) even though the men may have outward control and power”.

Biology favours the females. Women are by nature, the stronger sex. A woman’s life expectancy is greater than a man’s if both are fed and cared for equally. Radtke.L, Stam.J, (1994) Page15. Power/Gender: Social relations in Theory and Practice. London, Sage. Describes how women are biological powerful. “Females are given by nature a powerful social role: females conceive, bear children and feed them from their bodies, and have always taken responsibility for maintaining them – that is maintaining the entire human race”. The male in this role has no obvious contribution to it apart from the role of sexual drive. This may be a reason for males, more than women, being driven to create an identity. They have over the past thousands of years redefined themselves in a way that contradicts nature “men call themselves powerful, indeed dominant, but this definition is flung in the face of nature, not given by it. Male power is self-proclaimed based in the world; thus it can be realized only symbolically”. Radtke.H, Stam,H (1994) Page16.

Women’s power has grown considerable from 1900 onwards. This rise in power was due manly to significant events such as the two world wars, were women replaced men in the workplace. Women were then seen as being capable of doing such jobs. Major breakthroughs for women also include women over 30 years of age being allowed to vote in 1918, and in 1919 the first woman sits in Parliament. Women struggled and fought hard for such opportunities as these, these were the first steps to equality for women and these were all led by women. Such examples of these are ...

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Now in the 21st century we have seen even more equality for women, with female politicians and managers and many females in powerful social roles, all women in Britain are now equal with men in terns of voting, all women have the right the right to vote.

But it was only until after the second world (1945) that women were to been seen as suitable for such power involving roles. Research on youth culture shows that young women have been ignored in history in post-war Britain and that the culture process was completely male dominated.

In youth culture research, youth, culture and late modernity are three key concepts.

Youth can be described as physiological development, it is around the time in one’s life of adolescence. Bolan,G. Fornas,J. (1995) Page3. Youth Culture in Late Modernity. London. Sage. Also describes youth in terms of a social category, “framed by particular social institutes (school) and social acts such as leaving home, forming a family and finding a profession. Youth is something which is culturally determined in a discursive interplay with musical, visual and verbal signs that denote what is young in relation to that which is interpreted as respectively childish or adult”

Culture can be described as people’s way of living, it has a broad term and can also be described as “a hermeneutic and semiotic concept of culture as symbolic communication – that is, human interaction through symbolic modes” by, Bolin,G.Forna,J. (1995) Page 4. All human activities have cultural aspects as we all communicate through symbols and therefore a wide definition of culture can also be useful.

In modernity there is the combination of several different themes. One is looking at the present with contrast to the past, there is also the ‘what’s new’ and there is “a curiosity about the ephemera of the present and the intensive feeling of here and now that youth culture is so often pervaded by”. Bolin,Gfornas,J (1995) Page4. We must note that in modernity and modernization there is a difference, modernization is more of a process where as modernity is a condition, also modernism is seen as an attitude and reaction against the condition that is modernity.

Youth, culture and modernity impose on each other. Young people are culturally orientated and use many ways to express them selves; through music, styles texts and pictures, young people are also associated with what is modern and associated with the future. “Cultural phenomena increasingly formulate ideas on the modern, and youth (or the youth) has become a main cultural theme”. Bolin,G.Fornas,J. (1995) Page5.

With the youth culture being male dominated in post-war Britain, how has the effect of ‘girl power’ been on establishing women as part of the youth culture? Female’s invisibility in youth culture may be that of a partial one, males may have thought to neglect females when thinking of it, as it was male dominated. Girls were seen to be invisible, but there are examples of youth cultures were females were visible. In these examples however, the way females are present tends to suggest that they are being retained and reproduced, that they are ‘remaining marginal to the product of youth culture’. Three examples of such, are the ‘motor-bike girl’, the ‘mod girl’ and the ‘hippy’.

The motor-bike girl was an image at odds with conventional femininity and this image gave a suggestion of sexual deviance. The girl would wear all leather and the press took to it as a pin up. McRobbie.A. (2000) Page18, Feminism and Youth Culture, London. MacMillan. Describes how this image of a motor-bike girl was used, “this image of was often used as a symbol of the new permissive sexuality of the 1960s and was encapsulated in the figure of Brigitte Bardot astride a motor bike with her tousled hair flying behind her”. This image showed female sexuality in a bold and modern way with the girl models looking sexual, expressionless in a way that they had no feelings, and this image was often used in advertising soft porn.

In this motor-bike culture this image of females was however more a fantasy than reality. Girls were very rarely seen as the image portrayed by Brigitte Bardot. In the Hell’s Angels groups, where this was even more male dominated, girl’s roles were particular and institutionalised. McRobbie,A.(2000) Page19, describes how the girls were treated by the Hell’s Angels, “the Angels treated their women primarily as sexual objects. If they were not objects of the gang-bang, the only other role open to them was that of a mama’. Very few girls were seen to be at the heart of this culture as generally they knew very little about the knowledge of the machines, of the camaraderie and of the competition between the riders.

The Mod culture offered girls more of an opportunity as it was located and came about from the working-class teenage ‘consumerism’. It was in the mid to late 1960s that there were more teenage girls at work, sections of these employments included; beauty business and jobs in the new boutiques as well as the white collar section. All these jobs involved a degree of dressing up for the part. It was during this time that girls became expected to reflect the image of the shop and were to provide a sort of model for the younger consumers. Girls were given this sort of glamour and status at work but it usually meant working very long hours for low wages. This full time employment encouraged girls to have greater freedom in there domestic lives, as MacRobbie,A. (2000) Page19, describes, “girls were living in flats and bedsits, a pattern hitherto unknown for working class girls, these factors made it more likely that girls got involved in mod culture than might otherwise have been the case”.

The mod culture meant wearing the right clothes, having the same hair – style and going to the right clubs. The girls took the same attention to detail here as the males. The greater visibility for girls in this culture was largely due to the growing confidence of the teenage girls in the late 1960s.

However this rise in confidence and the presence of these girls, in this culture was however still remaining marginal as MacRobbie,A.(2000) Page20, describes, “their independence reflected short-term rather than long-term affluence, the jobs which provided the extra cash afforded immediate access to consumer goods, but few opportunities for promotion or further training”. These girls were again are seen to be not truly at the heart of this culture and were advised to consider marriage as their real careers.

The hippy culture is one that girls would have been most likely to enter through the social life of universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The university time allows the girls time to experiment while being unsupervised. It gives three to four years where the thought of marriage is pushed to the back. Staying in the halls of residence gives them more space and freedom to experiment. MacRobbie,A. (2000) Page21, describes how the girls reacted to these circumstances, “The lack of strict demarcation between work and leisure also allows for – indeed encourages – the development of a more uniquely personal style, the middle class girl can express herself in dress without having to take into account the restrictions of work”.

Like the motor-bike girl and the mod girl, the hippy girl yet again remains marginal to the youth culture. The media representations and the visual images have lead to moral panics around hippies, claiming they are dirty and this meaning of dirty usually draws the attention towards the females and to the sexual immortality of commune living, yet again it is the females that the bad attention is drawn towards.

History has shown us that there is a male dominance in cultures, although females are present they seem to be invisible. Female power has been acknowledge in the past but only with exceptional females, these females are believed to have masculine qualities. In more recent times more recognition has been noted towards female power. After post-war Britain women began to be recognised as equals and now share with men the same right to vote and opportunities etc. although it must be noted that there are still more men in Parliament, more men in higher positioned jobs and even when both male and female are doing the same job, the male tends to get paid more money.

But despite the ‘girl power’ and all the recent achievements for women they still remain marginal to the youth culture, we have seen that with the motor-bike girls, mod girls and the hippies, although women are visible they remain marginal, the real power in these cultures lie with men, it is men that dominate them and in a way control what happens in them, when a women tries to assert some power they are either outnumbered, or the power they gain is still in control of the male. Women are getting more powerful in youth cultures and are recognised for a lot of different and good aspects, but with such a male dominance and male power, women still remain second to men.