Images of teenage girls in poodle skirts dominated American popular culture on the 1950's. But as Kelly Schrum shows, teenage girls were swooning over pop idols and using their allowances to buy the latest fashions well beforehand. After World War I, a teenage identity arose in the US, as well as a consumer culture geared toward it. From fashion and beauty to music and movies, high school girls both consumed and influenced what manufacturers, marketers, and retailers offered to them. Examining both national trends and individual lives, Schrum looks at the relationship between the power of consumer culture and the ability of girls to selectively accept, reject, and appropriate consumer goods. Lavishly illustrated with images from advertisements, catalogs, and high school year books, Some Wore Bobby Sox is a unique and fascinating cultural history of teenage girl culture in the middle of the century.

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About the author

Kelly Schrum is Assistant Director of the Center for History and New Media, and Assistant Research Professor, Department of History and Art History, at George Mason University.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Some Wore Bobby Sox
Book Subtitle: The Emergence of Teenage Girls' Culture, 1920-1945
Authors: Kelly Schrum
Series Title: Girls' History and Culture
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73134-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Palgrave History Collection, History (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2004
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-7397-9Published: 24 July 2004
eBook ISBN: 978-1-349-73134-3Published: 12 June 2019
Series ISSN: 2945-7718
Series E-ISSN: 2945-7726
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 209
Topics: US History, Modern History, Regional and Cultural Studies, Gender Studies

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

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