Using the personal to critique the popular: women’s memories of 1960s youth

Helena Mills

doi:10.1080/13619462.2016.1206822

Abstract

Popular memory depicts 1960s young adults as affluent, permissive, promiscuous, delinquent, sub- or counter-cultural rebels. But these stylised images do not reflect the lived experiences of ordinary young adults, particularly young women, in the 1960s. Using Mass Observation and oral history interviews, this article examines how women who were young adults in the 1960s remember their youths and how they negotiate the gap between popular memory and personal experience. It argues that women can readily critique the popular memory of 1960s youth where it does not match their own lived experience. The popular memory is powerful, however, and so still shapes their understanding of the experiences and concepts of youth more generally. Moreover, the way women negotiate between popular and personal memories of youth is conditioned by their attempt to create composure and by subsequent life experiences.

Highlights

In 1966, Time magazine coined the phrase ‘swinging London’, suggesting that areas of 1960s London had witnessed sociocultural shifts in art, culture and morality.1 Via media transmission, this concept came to describe more than just London; it was the‘swinging sixties’more generally and youth culture was at the centre of this.2 The idea of the ‘swinging sixties’ took multiple forms and could be understood in subtly different ways by different people, but was primarily associated with sexual permissiveness, drugs, pop music, fashion, the rise of a visible youth culture and with sub- and counter-cultural movements
Young adults and youth culture in the 1960s are popularly depicted as free, permissive, hedonistic, fashionable, pop music obsessed, delinquent, rebellious, sub-or counter-cultural and in constant generational conflict with their parents
This characterisation does not reflect the lived experiences of the majority of young women— of young adults of both sexes—in 1960s Britain

Summary

Introduction

In 1966, Time magazine coined the phrase ‘swinging London’, suggesting that areas of 1960s London had witnessed sociocultural shifts in art, culture and morality.1 Via media transmission, this concept came to describe more than just London; it was the‘swinging sixties’more generally and youth culture was at the centre of this.2 The idea of the ‘swinging sixties’ took multiple forms and could be understood in subtly different ways by different people, but was primarily associated with sexual permissiveness, drugs, pop music, fashion, the rise of a visible youth culture and with sub- and counter-cultural movements.3. Using Mass Observation and oral history interviews, this article examines how women who were young adults in the 1960s remember their youths and how they negotiate the gap between popular memory and personal experience.

Results

Conclusion