All the young dudes: educational capital, masculinity and the uses of popular music

Since its emergence in the early seventies, glam rock has been theoretically categorised as a moment in British popular culture in which essentialist ideas about male gendered identity were rendered problematic for a popular music audience. Drawing on a Bourdieusian theoretical framework, the article argues that whilst this reading of glam is valid, insufficient attention has been given to an examination of the relevance of educational capital vis-à-vis the construction of self-identity in relation to glam. It is therefore concerned with raising questions about social class in addition to interrogating questions of gender. The article draws on the ethno-biographies of a sample of glam’s original working-class male fans; original interviews with musicians and writers associated with glam, as well as published biographical accounts. In doing so it contends that glam’s political significance is better understood as a moment in popular culture in which an educationally aspirant section of the male working-class sought to express its difference by identifying with the self-conscious performance of a more feminised masculinity it located in glam.