Using in-depth interviews with punk women growing old disgracefully, Way explores how women construct punk identities. Reflecting on punk ‘then’ and ‘now’, they reveal the constraints punk women experience on their identities growing older, the complex relationship between appearance and dress, and the impact of social expectations around aging.

This book presents in-depth investigation of the language used about women and ageing in public discourse, and compares this with the language used by women to express their personal, lived experience of ageing. It takes a linguistic approach to identify how messages contained in public discourse influence how individual women evaluate their own ageing, and particularly their ageing appearance. It begins by establishing the wider cultural context that produces prevailing attitudes to women, before turning to an analysis of representations of the ageing female body in beauty and cosmetic advertising and the lifestyle media. The focus then moves to a detailed investigation of women’s own perceptions of the process of ageing and of their ageing appearance as revealed through their personal narratives. The final chapters challenge dominant attitudes to women and ageing by presenting two case studies of women who for different reasons and in different ways refuse to conform to cultural expectations. This work provides a platform for further academic research in the fields of linguistics, gerontology, gender and media studies; as well as offering meaningful applications in the wider domains of business and advertising.

The concept of ’subculture’ is an invaluable tool to frame the study of non-normative and marginal cultures for social and cultural scholars. This international collection uncovers the significance of meaning-making in the processes of defining, studying and analyzing subcultural phenomena. Examining various dimensions of interpretivism, the book focuses on overarching concerns related to interpretation as well as day-to-day considerations that affect researchers’ and members’ interpretations of subcultural phenomena. It reveals how and why people use specific conceptual frames or methods and how those shape their interpretations of everyday realities. This is an unprecedented contribution to the field, explaining the interpretive processes through which people make sense of subcultural phenomena.

Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians focuses on ageing within contemporary popular music. It argues that context, genres, memoirs, racial politics and place all contribute to how women are 'aged' in popular music. Framing contemporary female musicians as canonical grandmothers, Rude Girls, neo-Afrofuturist and memoirists settling accounts, the book gives us some respite from a decline or denial narrative and introduces a dynamism into ageing. Female rock memoirs are age-appropriate survival stories that reframe the histories of punk and independent rock music. Old age has a functional and canonical ‘place’ in the work of Shirley Collins and Calypso Rose. Janelle Monáe, Christine and the Queens and Anohni perform ‘queer’ age, specifically a kind of ‘going beyond’ both corporeal and temporal borders. Genres age, and the book introduces the idea of the time-crunch; an encounter between an embodied, represented age and a genre-age, which is, itself, produced through historicity and aesthetics. Lastly the book goes behind the scenes to draw on interviews and questionnaires with 19 women involved in the contemporary British and American popular music industry; DIY and ex-musicians, producers, music publishers, music journalists and audio engineers. Ageing and Contemporary Female Musicians is a vital intergenerational feminist viewpoint for researchers and students in gender studies, popular music, popular culture, media studies, cultural studies and ageing studies.

Subcultures: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introduction to subcultures in a global context. This fully revised new edition adds new case studies and an additional chapter on the digital lives of subculturists as well as reflections on the relationships between subcultures and globalisation and the resurgence of the far-right. Blending theory and practice, this text examines a varied range of subcultures including hip hop, graffiti writing, heavy metal, punk, gamers, burlesque, parkour, riot grrrl, straight edge, roller derby, steampunk, b-boying/b-girling, body modification, and skateboarding. Subcultures: The Basics answers the key questions posed by those new to the subject, including: What is a subculture? What are the significant theories of subculture? How do subcultures emerge, who participates and why? How do subcultural identities interact with other aspects of self, such as social class, race, gender, and sexual identity? What is the relationship between deviance, resistance and the ‘mainstream’? How have both progressive and reactionary subculturists contributed to social change? How does society react to different subcultures? How have subcultures spread around the world? In what ways do digital technologies and social media influence subcultures? What happens when subculturists age? Tracing the history and development of subcultural theory to the present day, this text is essential reading for all those studying subcultures in the contexts of sociology, cultural studies, history, media studies, anthropology, musicology, and criminology. It pushes the field forward with cutting-edge theories of resistance and social change, place and space, critical race and queer studies, virtual participation, and ageing and participation across the life course. Key terms and concepts are highlighted throughout the text whilst each chapter includes boxed case studies and signposts students to further reading and resources.

What happens to punks, clubbers, goths, riot grrls, soulies, break-dancers and queer scene participants as they become older? For decades, research on spectacular 'youth cultures' has understood such groups as adolescent phenomena and assumed that involvement ceases with the onset of adulthood. In an age of increasingly complex life trajectories, Ageing and Youth Cultures is the first anthology to challenge such thinking by examining the lives of those who continue to participate into adulthood and middle-age. Showcasing a range of original research case studies from across the globe, the chapters explore how participants reconcile their continuing involvement with ageing bodies, older identities and adult responsibilities. Breaking new ground and establishing a new field of study, the book will be essential reading for students and scholars researching or studying questions of youth, fashion, popular music and identity across a wide range of disciplines.

What happens to punks, clubbers, goths, riot grrls, soulies, break-dancers and queer scene participants as they become older? For decades, research on spectacular 'youth cultures' has understood such groups as adolescent phenomena and assumed that involvement ceases with the onset of adulthood. In an age of increasingly complex life trajectories, Ageing and Youth Cultures is the first anthology to challenge such thinking by examining the lives of those who continue to participate into adulthood and middle-age. Showcasing a range of original research case studies from across the globe, the chapters explore how participants reconcile their continuing involvement with ageing bodies, older identities and adult responsibilities. Breaking new ground and establishing a new field of study, the book will be essential reading for students and scholars researching or studying questions of youth, fashion, popular music and identity across a wide range of disciplines.

Girls’ Feminist Blogging in a Postfeminist Age explores the practices of U.S.-based teenage girls who actively maintain feminist blogs and participate in the feminist blogosphere as readers, writers, and commenters on platforms including Blogspot, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Drawing on interviews with bloggers between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one, as well as discursive textual analyses of feminist blogs and social networking postings authored by teenage girls, Keller addresses how these girls use blogging as a practice to articulate contemporary feminisms and craft their own identities as feminists and activists. In this sense, feminist girl bloggers defy hegemonic postfeminist and neoliberal girlhood subjectivities, a finding that Keller uses to complicate both academic and popular assertions that suggest teenage girls are uninterested in feminism. Instead, Keller maintains that these young bloggers employ digital media production to educate their peers about feminism, connect with like-minded activists, write feminist history, and make feminism visible within popular culture, practices that build upon and continue a lengthy tradition of American feminism into the twenty-first century. Girls’ Feminist Bloggers in a Postfeminist Age challenges readers to not only reconsider teenage girls’ online practices as politically and culturally significant, but to better understand their crucial role in a thriving contemporary feminism.

What happens when your gender doesn’t fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary. The powerful first-person narratives of this collection show us a world where gender exists along a spectrum, a web, a multidimensional space. Nuanced storytellers break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships. From Suzi, who wonders whether she’ll ever “feel” like a woman after living fifty years as a man, to Aubri, who grew up in a cash-strapped fundamentalist household, to Sand, who must reconcile the dual roles of trans advocate and therapist, the writers’ conceptions of gender are inextricably intertwined with broader systemic issues. Labeled gender outlaws, gender rebels, genderqueer, or simply human, the voices in Nonbinary illustrate what life could be if we allowed the rigid categories of “man” and “woman” to loosen and bend. They speak to everyone who has questioned gender or has paused to wonder, What does it mean to be a man or a woman—and why do we care so much?