Gender and 1960s Youth Culture: The Rolling Stones and the New Woman

Abstract

In the 1960s some young British women challenged established gender roles, pursuing education, careers and personal freedom. Many of them grew frustrated with the limitations of 1960s youth culture, and particularly of new permissive sexual norms. The Rolling Stones, as a significant cultural force and symbol of London youth culture and sexual ‘freedom’, became a focus for criticism of this culture growing out of the women's liberation movement at the end of the decade and developing in the years since then. However, the Rolling Stones' response to changing gender roles in this period was complex and contradictory. At times, their songs endorsed women's subordination, rejecting their claims to independence. On the other hand, a number of the songs celebrated independent women and mutual relationships. The Rolling Stones, central figures in the youth culture of the 1960s and a symbol of that culture's commitment to subordinating women, were conflicted and ambivalent, rather than uniformly hostile, to changing gender roles.

Keywords:

• Rolling Stones
• Youth Culture
• 1960s
• Gender Roles

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Karen Weekes and David Ruth for their comments on earlier drafts of this article, and the Contemporary British History editors and anonymous readers for their suggestions.

Notes

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 [2] Heron, Truth, Dare or Promise, 207.

 [3] , Promise of a Dream, 115, 229, 250–2; Woman's Consciousness, 24.

 [4] Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, 14, 13, 22.

 [5] Donnelly, Sixties Britain, 35.

 [6] Whiteley, Women and Popular Music, 23.

 [7] Bailey, ‘Conspiracies of Meaning’, 142; Whiteley, ‘Little Red Rooster’, 67, 76.

 [8] Frith, ‘Why Do Songs Have Words’, 101. Italics in original.

 [9] Osgerby, Youth in Britain, 51–2.

[10] Maclure, ‘Forty Years On’, 127–8.

[11] Osgerby, Youth in Britain, 86–8.

[12] Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society, 258; Cook, Long Sexual Revolution, 268–9; Collins, ‘Pornography of Permissiveness’, 102.

[13] Ingham, Now We are Thirty, 166–7, 178.

[14] Ingham, Now We are Thirty, 137.

[15] Lewis, Women in Britain, 44, 48.

[16] Dunn, Talking to Women, 18, 136.

[17] Maitland, Very Heaven, 15.

[18] Green, All Dressed Up, 86.

[19] Donnelly, Sixties Britain, xiii.

[20] Collins, Modern Love, 175.

[21] Osgerby, Youth in Britain, 53.

[22] Levy, Ready, Steady, Go, 47.

[23] Rowbotham, Century of Women, 351, 364.

[24] Levy, Ready, Steady, Go, 312.

[25] Crane, ‘Fashion Design’, 66; Quant, Quant, 75.

[26] Maitland, Very Heaven, 170–1.

[27] Tarr, ‘Boundaries of Permitted Pleasure’, 59, 61; Geraghty, ‘Women and Sixties British Cinema’, 104–5.

[28] Faithfull, Faithfull, 86.

[29] Levy, Ready, Steady, Go, 181.

[30] Balfour, Rock Wives, 117–8.

[31] Faithfull, Faithfull, 138, 153.

[32] Davis, Old Gods Almost Dead, 155.

[33] Moller, Technicolor Dreamin', 226; Collins, Modern Love, 175–6.

[34] Meehan, ‘British Feminism’, 193–4.

[35] Mitchell, ‘Women: The Longest Revolution’, 25.

[36] Rowbotham, ‘Women's Liberation and the New Politics’; Segal, Straight Sex, 28.

[37] Spongberg, ‘Germaine Greer’, 416; Ellis, ‘Black and Blue from the Rolling Stones’, 434.

[38] Densmore, ‘Independence’, 111.

[39] Wyman, Stone Alone, 203.

[40] Donnelly, Sixties Britain, 46.

[41] Frith and McRobbie, ‘Rock and Sexuality’, 372.

[42] Whiteley, Space between the Notes, 89.

[43] Reynolds and Press, Sex Revolts, 19.

[44] Norman, Symphony for the Devil, 117–8, 141–2, 163–4, 177; Levy, Ready, Steady, Go, 159.

[45] Haynes, Thanks for Coming, 277.

[46] Davis, Old Gods Almost Dead, 231–2; Green, All Dressed Up, 262.

[47] Levy, Ready, Steady, Go, 176.

[48] Greer, Madwoman's Underclothes, 19.

[49] Segal, Straight Sex, 8.

[50] Kubernik, This is Rebel Music, 144.

[51] IT 100 (25 March–8 April 1971), 20.

[52] Green, All Dressed Up, 82, 180.

[53] Norman, Symphony for the Devil, 222–3.

[54] Frith, ‘Why Do Songs Have Words’, 91.

[55] Wells, ‘Me and the Devil Blues’, 19.

[56] Norman, Symphony for the Devil, 348, 369.

[57] Whiteley, ‘Little Red Rooster’, 93.

[58] Meade, Marion. ‘Does Rock Degrade Women?’ New York Times, 14 March 1971, D13, D22.

[59] Reynolds and Press, Sex Revolts, 19.

[60] Pedigo, ‘Under My Thumb’, 12.

[61] Hiwatt, ‘Cock Rock’, 144.

[62] Wyman, Stone Alone, 375; Thompson, ‘Before and After “Aftermath”’, 18.

[63] Pedigo, ‘Under My Thumb’, 26.

[64] Ellis, ‘I'm Black and Blue’, 431; Whiteley, ‘Little Red Rooster’, 73.

[65] Orman, Politics of Rock Music, 99.

[66] Gordon, ‘Image of Women’, 166.

[67] Norman, Symphony for the Devil, 351.

[68] Rolling Stone Editors, Rolling Stone Interviews, 48, 170, 331–2.

[69] Wenner, ‘Jagger Remembers’.

[70] Rolling Stone Editors, Rolling Stone Interviews, 48, 171.

[71] Merton, ‘Comment’, 30.

[72] Christgau, ‘Rolling Stones’, 199.

[73] Whiteley, Space between the Notes, 88, 102.

[74] Powers, ‘Rolling Stones’, 47, 49.

[75] Orman, Politics of Rock Music, 101.

[76] Gracyk, I Wanna Be Me, 191.

[77] Parsons, ‘Rolling Stones’, 118.

[78] Reynolds and Press, Sex Revolts, 3.

[79] Nehring, Flowers in the Dustbin, 251–2.

[80] Whiteley, Women and Popular Music, 23, 36; Whiteley, ‘Repressive Representations’, 163.

[81] Frith and McRobbie, ‘Rock and Sexuality’, 374.

[82] Reynolds and Press, Sex Revolts, xv; Whiteley, Women and Popular Music, 37.

[83] Whiteley, Women and Popular Music, 37.

[84] Kerr Fenn, ‘Daughters of the Revolution’, 168.

[85] Whiteley, Women and Popular Music, 37.

[86] Whiteley, Women and Popular Music, 40.

[87] Reynolds and Press, Sex Revolts, 21.

[88] Frith and McRobbie, ‘Rock and Sexuality’, 382.

[89] Hellman, ‘Influence of the Black American Blues’, 373.

[90] Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, 21–2.

[91] Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, 21–2, Rowbotham, A Century of Women, 364.

[92] Wandor, Once a Feminist, 120.