Demythologizing the sixties; reappraising the British groupie and her relationship to feminism, 1965-1974

The British groupie phenomenon first came to public attention in the 1960s and 1970s. This period saw radical changes in women’s lives, but roles for women were still restricted and historical accounts of the period continue to underplay and devalue their experiences. By examining groupie representation across a range of sources, including novels, films, newspapers and magazines, this thesis charts the contradictory, iconic, and extreme ways in which different actors have made sense of the groupie phenomenon at different times.

Feminist appraisal of the groupie has been historically fraught with paradox and conflict. This thesis examines how different kinds of feminist have made sense of the groupie phenomenon. By recording the oral histories of two British groupies and seeking to understand how these women make sense of their behaviour on their own terms, this thesis demystifies the figure of the groupie, dismantles stereotypes, and foregrounds the human agency in their struggle against the restrictive feminine role. The groupie pattern of behaviour is reconceptualised as a highly individualistic form of female liberation which corresponds with Hilary Radner’s neo-feminist paradigm (2011), and an imperfect form of resistance. This intervention disrupts established assumptions regarding the tangential role of women and girls in post-war male-dominated subcultures.

This approach also presents an important contribution to women’s history which undercuts key sixties mythologies such as the ‘sexual revolution’ and the ‘classless society’; by drawing a contrast between the lived experiences of two groupies from different social backgrounds, this thesis reinstates the concept of class as crucial to any analysis of the British groupie phenomenon. It is argued that while the category of respectability (Skeggs, 1997) worked to frame, constrain and produce working-class groupies, structures of class and gender established the hegemonic currency of subcultural capital (Thornton, 1995) in the underground field, to position and regulate which groupies were able to advance their social status by trading their sexual capital (Green A. I. , 2011) and which were not.