From juke box boys to bobby sox brigade: Female youth, moral panics and subcultural style in wartime Times Square

Snelson, Tim ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8282-2432 (2012) From juke box boys to bobby sox brigade: Female youth, moral panics and subcultural style in wartime Times Square. Cultural Studies, 26 (6). pp. 872-894. ISSN 0950-2386

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Abstract

Through its analysis of the complex discursive struggle over Times Square's – and later America's – ‘bobby sox brigade’, this article reintroduces young women into historical and theoretical accounts of youth culture. In doing so it challenges subculture and moral panic theories for their over-emphasis on working-class masculinity and their inability to account for the complexity and localized specificity – both historical and geographic – that such case studies command. The bobby soxer and the conflicting debates she engendered must be understood as a product of wartime contingency and in relation to the contested discourses within and between different localized contexts and media forms; the bobby soxer was simultaneously positioned as the key problem of wartime and promise of the post-war prosperity ahead. This article ultimately proposes a theoretical framework focusing on localized and contested terrains of discourse, appropriate to (sub)cultural activity in times of war and other disruptions.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media
Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > East Anglian Film Archive
Depositing User: Katherine Humphries
Date Deposited: 05 Dec 2012 10:13
Last Modified: 21 Jul 2023 09:18
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/40375
DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2012.687753

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