Teddy Boys Essay

Teddy Boys (Teds) emanated in the early nineteen fifties in South London and were described as young thugs who were defined by their unconventional Edwardian style of clothes. Teds broke the mould with their interpretation of fashion that was entirely “working class in its origins”. Their style was self-created and adopted from the fashions of the Edwardians, a style Saville Row tailors had reinvented as the latest nineteen fifties fashion, an upper class reaction to the dark days of the War. Teds ‘flaunted their clothes and attitude like a badge’ with their draped jackets and drainpipe trousers; crepe soled shoes and heavily greased quiffed DA hairstyle, so named, as it was alleged to resemble a ducks arse.

Williamson argued that Teds were the original modern ‘Folk Devils’. During the fifties there were serious concerns and anxiety in relation to juvenile crime, an issue Osgerby reasoned was constructed by the media who targeted Teds as being symbolic of a new form of violent delinquency. Williamson believed that labelling Teds as deviant was key in explaining the anxieties about youth, affluence and behaviour in post-war Britain. He opined that Teds

Narratives of social change throughout the nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties were dominated by consensus, affluence and classlessness all brought together under the general notion of middle class values. Yet Hall et al contend there is often an inconsistent emphasis on the class structuring of youth, and use as an example Abrams’s work on “The Teenage Consumer”, that portrayed a new, separate culture based on the ‘teenage market’. They point out Abrams recognised this ‘teenage market’ as having a very clear class base, where the ‘average teenager’ was the working class