Skate Perception: Self-Representation, Identity and Visual Style in a Youth Subculture

Abstract

Visual representation has always been an important dimension of youth culture. Academic studies frequently make great play of the style of groups such as punks and goths, arguing that clothing and bodily adornment function as symbolic statements of their rejection of mainstream values (e.g. Hebdige, 1979). Even so, the early ‘classic’ studies of youth subcultures typically accused the media of merely co-opting or colonising their more subversive elements. It was not until Sara Thornton’s work on club cultures (Thornton, 1995) that researchers turned their attention to the ways in which youth groups might positively use specialist or ‘niche’ media for their own purposes — not merely to disseminate information, but also to establish (and to regulate) collective identity.