Skinhead
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A skinhead is a member of a subculture which originated among working class youths in London, England, in the 1960s and soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in the late 1970s. Motivated by social alienation and working class solidarity, skinheads (often shortened to "skins" in the UK) are defined by their close-cropped or shaven heads and working-class clothing such as Dr. Martens and steel toe work boots, braces, high rise and varying length straight-leg jeans, and button-down collar shirts, usually slim fitting in check or plain. The movement reached a peak during the 1960s, experienced a revival in the 1980s, and, since then, has endured in multiple contexts worldwide.
The rise to prominence of skinheads came in two waves, with the first wave taking place in the late 1960s. The first skinheads were working class youths motivated by an expression of alternative values and working class pride, rejecting both the austerity and conservatism of the 1950s-early 1960s and the more middle class or bourgeois hippie movement and peace and love ethos of the mid to late 1960s. Skinheads were instead drawn towards more working class outsider subcultures, incorporating elements of early working class mod fashion and Jamaican music and fashion, especially from Jamaican rude boys. In the earlier stages of the movement, a considerable overlap existed between early skinhead subculture, mod subculture, and the rude boy subculture found among Jamaican British and Jamaican immigrant youth, as these three groups interacted and fraternized with each other within the same working class and poor neighbourhoods in Britain. As skinheads adopted elements of mod subculture and Jamaican British and Jamaican immigrant rude boy subculture, both first and second generation skins were influenced by the rhythms of ska, rocksteady, and reggae, as well as sometimes African-American soul and rhythm and blues.
The late 1970s and early 1980s saw a revival of the skinhead subculture, and increasing interaction between its adherents and the new punk movement. Oi!, a street-level working class offshoot of punk rock, became a vital component of skinhead culture while the Jamaican genres beloved by first generation skinheads were filtered through punk and new wave in a style known as 2 Tone. With these twin musical movements, the skinhead subculture diversified and contemporary skinhead fashions ranged from clean-cut 1960s mod- and rude boy-influenced styles to less-strict punk-influenced styles.
During the early 1980s, political affiliations grew in significance and split the subculture, distancing the far right and far-left strands, although many skins described themselves as apolitical. As a pro-working class movement that was initially highly regionalised and excluded by society's moral norms, skinhead culture attracted those with nationalist beliefs, including violently racist or neo-Nazi fringe elements. In Great Britain, the skinhead subculture became associated in the public eye with membership of groups such as the National Front and British Movement. By the 1990s, neo-Nazi skinhead movements existed across all of Europe and North America, but were counterbalanced by the presence of groups such as Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice which sprung up in response. To this day, the skinhead subculture reflects a broad spectrum of political beliefs, even as many continue to embrace it as a largely apolitical working class movement.
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