Abstract: | "This manuscript examines post-World War II style and youth culture through the lens of what the author terms 'class acts'--when middle class youth play with their class identity by appropriating the mannerisms, language, and fashions of the working class and poor. Rizzo focuses her analysis on young men, defined as being between their mid-teens and early twenties. Such acts are deeply complicated. At one and the same time, they are examples of the privilege and power of the middle class to utilize other cultures and classes for their own purposes and to critique economic, social, and political structures. Rizzo places these class acts within the historical development of marketing, which shares the same foundational belief that identity is a matter of choice. By analyzing debates within marketing theory, she traces the development of the concept of lifestyle, an idea which marketers and advertisers seized on since the 1960s to assert that class (and other identities, like age) are individual consumer choices, divorcing them from material conditions. Through chapters that include discussions of the rebel of the 1950s, the hippie of the 1960s, and the white suburban hip hop fan of the 1980s and 1990s, Class Acts illuminates how the concept of 'lifestyle,' particularly as expressed through fashion, has worked to both express social class and diffuse social criticism in post World War II America"--... "Class Acts explores the development of lifestyle marketing from the 1960s to the 1990s. During this time, young men began manipulating their identities by taking on the mannerisms, culture, and fashion of the working class and poor. These style choices had contradictory meanings. At once they were acts of rebellion by middleclass young men against their social stratum and its rules of masculinity and also examples of the privilege that allowed them to try on different identities for amusement or as a rite of passage. Starting in the 1960s, advertisers and marketers, looking for new ways to appeal to young people, seized on the idea of identity as a choice, creating the field of lifestyle marketing. Mary Rizzo traces the development of the concept of lifestyle marketing, showing how marketers disconnected class identity from material reality, focusing instead on a person's attitudes, opinions, and behaviors. The book includes discussions of the rebel of the 1950s, the hippie of the 1960s, the white suburban hip-hop fan of the 1980s, and the poverty chic of the 1990s. Class Acts illuminates how the concept of 'lifestyle,' particularly as expressed through fashion, has disconnected social class from its material reality and diffused social critique into the opportunity to simply buy another identity. The book will appeal to scholars and other readers who are interested in American cultural history, youth culture, fashion, and style"--... |
