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Gender and 1960s Youth Culture: The Rolling Stones and the New Woman

2008; Routledge; Volume: 23; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13619460801990104

1743-7997

Andrew August,

Musicians’ Health and Performance

Abstract In the 1960s some young British women challenged established gender roles, pursuing education, careers and personal freedom. Many of them grew frustrated with the limitations of 1960s youth culture, and particularly of new permissive sexual norms. The Rolling Stones, as a significant cultural force and symbol of London youth culture and sexual 'freedom', became a focus for criticism of this culture growing out of the women's liberation movement at the end of the decade and developing in the years since then. However, the Rolling Stones' response to changing gender roles in this period was complex and contradictory. At times, their songs endorsed women's subordination, rejecting their claims to independence. On the other hand, a number of the songs celebrated independent women and mutual relationships. The Rolling Stones, central figures in the youth culture of the 1960s and a symbol of that culture's commitment to subordinating women, were conflicted and ambivalent, rather than uniformly hostile, to changing gender roles. Keywords: Rolling StonesYouth Culture1960sGender Roles Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Karen Weekes and David Ruth for their comments on earlier drafts of this article, and the Contemporary British History editors and anonymous readers for their suggestions. Notes [1] Rowbotham Rowbotham, Sheila. 2001. Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties, London: Verso. [Google Scholar], Promise of a Dream, 5. [2] Heron Heron, Liz, ed. 1985. "Truth, Dare or Promise: Girls Growing up in the Fifties". London: Virago. [Google Scholar], Truth, Dare or Promise, 207. [3] , Promise of a Dream, 115, 229, 250–2; Woman's Consciousness, 24. [4] Rowbotham Rowbotham, Sheila. 1973. Woman's Consciousness, Man's World, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 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