The Meaning - or Meaninglessness of Style

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This essay investigates the concept and meaning - or meaninglessness - of style in youth subcultures. It does so in the context of the sociology of youth, particularly with reference to themes such as control, resistance and identity. The study builds on Dick Hebdige's ideas on the post-war, music-related youth movements, which he saw as a form of resistance, if not revolution, in the young population's repudiation of adult culture. The essay examines 'style' in the sense of popular culture, and namely fashion. Teens in the USA alone constitute a formidable group. In 1999, the spent $153 billion, and viewed shopping as a social necessity (Grant 2000: pp.08B). What meaning, if indeed any, youth subculture gives to 'style' is the main focus of this paper. It analyzes the capriciousness of the teen market - what is 'in' tends to show no rhyme or reason, and is dependent instead on the unpredictability of peer pressure. But fashion and style are analyzed here in the context of what they have to say about ideas of resistance and identity in youth culture. It is the claim of this paper that 'style', capricious and rapidly-changing as it is, reflects the issues of control and resistance in the shaping of youth subcultures and identities. To capture this up-to-dateness of the fickle meaning of style, this essay has relied on contemporary newspapers from various countries to assess these issues.

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