Introduction
If I was to die tomorrowâI often joke about thisâand I was at my funeral, everybody would say⊠âNicole, she liked to drink, she liked to go outâNicole, 24, working-class non-student
âGoing outâ is widely recognised as a central leisure activity in the lives of many young people (Chatterton and Hollands 2003; Waitt et al. 2011), and engaging in leisure practices in the Night-Time Economy (NTE) is likely to be an important part of womenâs lives in the UK. Indeed, the ânight on the townâ is framed in many research accounts as offering important opportunities for young women to relax, socialise with friends and escape from the often mundane realities of everyday life, work and other responsibilities (Guise and Gill 2007; Jayne et al. 2010). Yet young womenâs experiences of the NTE are also clearly shaped by neoliberal and gendered expectations around consumption, body work and self-regulation. In particular , it is important to explore in more depth howâwithin a supposed âpost-feministâ contextâexpectations around âappropriatelyâ feminine dress and behaviour may continue to shape the experiences of young women like Nicole in contemporary leisure spaces.
But what does it actually mean and look like for young women to be âfeminineâ today? Is this something that is relevant or important to them? How are tensions around girliness and femininity lived and negotiated in practice in womenâs everyday lives? And crucially, is it still more difficult for some women to adopt âappropriatelyâ feminine identities than others? This book considers these questions and explores the ways in which womenâs participation in the UK NTE continues to be constrained in a supposedly post-feminist society (Harris 2004). More specifically, I examine young womenâs negotiations of their feminineâor âgirlyââidentities and bodies in spaces where âgirlinessâ is both celebrated and derided. Throughout this book, I highlight the ways in which young women position themselves as feminine or girly within the NTE and work to successfully embody feminine subjectivities in contemporary spaces of leisure and consumption, demonstrating how young women express a desire to embrace âgirlyâ identities within the NTE, yet also recognise that these identities are simultaneously both valued and devalued. This ambivalence around girliness leaves young women precariously managing a fine line between being âgirlyâ and being âtoo much of a girlâ. I also draw attention to the ways in which young women position themselves as respectable and feminine consumers in these spaces through classed and spatialised processes of âotheringâ that serve to distance them from bodies , behaviours and practices that are deemed unfeminine . In other words, establishing what is âappropriateâ and âfeminineâ is often done through describing whatâand whoâis not appropriate within these contemporary leisure spaces, and this is shaped by both classed and regional identities. Throughout, the key themes of authenticity, control and visibility will be drawn upon; all three play a central role in helping to elucidate where the boundaries of femininity are situated and the ways in which certain classed others are constructed (as inauthentic, out of control and hyper-visible).
When I started out on the research project that later formed the basis of this book, I began with a general interest in highlighting and exploring some of the ways in which young women experience, negotiate and make sense of femininities in a supposed âpost-feministâ society. My desire, ultimately, was to provide some more empirical data to inform and develop ongoing debates around contemporary femininity and the contradictions inherent within it (see Ringrose and Walkerdine 2008; Kehily 2008; Renold and Ringrose 2011; Budgeon 2014). The NTEâa space that appears fraught for women with âcomplex and contradictoryâ (Kovac and Trussell 2015: 205) tensions, expectations and even ârulesâ on how femininity should be embodiedâseemed like the ideal place to start. Indeed, recent researchâboth within and beyond the NTEâis beginning to shed light on tensions in young womenâs embodiment of contemporary femininities and the âambivalent negotiationâ (Hunt et al. 2010: 5) of gender in spaces such as the NTE. My interest lay in exploring the ways in which young women negotiate these subjectivities in practice, and the relevanceâor, of course, irrelevanceâof more theoretical conceptualisations to their everyday lives as they negotiate their own gendered identities in post-feminist, neoliberal contexts . Over the course of 2012 and 2013, I conducted 26 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with women aged 18â25 in the so-called party city of Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England, allowing me to explore negotiations of femininities in a post-industrial urban context and also to investigate intersections of femininity, class and âlocalâ or âGeordieâ identity (âGeordieâ is a localised, white working-class identity specific to the city (Barton 1990; Nayak 2003, 2006; Alexander 2008; Graefer 2014)). The research drawn on throughout this book involved directly engaging with young women about their embodied practices and identities in nightlife venues. Here, I present nuanced qualitative data that explores some of the connections between post-feminism, neoliberalism and young womenâs experiences in nightlife venues, whilst clearly highlighting the contradictions that young women are required to manage as they negotiate dress, drinking and risk in the contemporary NTE.
Whilst existing research is increasingly exploring the role of the NTE in young peopleâs lives, this is the first published text to focus primarily on the âgirlsâ night outâ and intersections of class and gender in this context.1 The current gap in the existing literature is surprising when a focus on the girlsâ night out can provide useful insights into how femininity and girliness are both collectively and individually negotiated in a leisure space that is of central importance to many young womenâs lives. The girlsâ night out represents a specific and widely recognisable kind of engagement with the NTE in the UK whichâwhilst of course still subject to diversities, nuances and variationsâcan be identified by some common characteristics (which were later confirmed in the ways in which the participants themselves interpreted and defined this kind of night out). A girlsâ night out necessarily includes only female participants, usually an existing friendship group, who will stay together for the whole night. The collective element of the girlsâ night out is important, as will be highlighted in later chapters. The night almost universally commences with communal drinking at one of the womenâs homes, whilst the group get ready for the night out together. This process can typically be identified as an important, necessary and distinct characteristic of the girlsâ night out, as will be shown throughout this book. Appearance tends to take on a central role, as getting âdressed upâ and making an effort are typically important. The night then involves further collective drinking in bars and usually culminates in a club in the city centre, with a focus on predominantly âmainstreamâ venues (see Chap. 2). Just as the girlsâ night out has been somewhat neglected in existing research, there has also been a rather surprising silence around nights out in âmainstreamâ venues. This may reflect a tendency historically to focus on âundergroundâ nightlife scenes, raves and club cultures that are often positioned directly in opposition to a devalued and inauthentic mainstream (Thornton 1995; Pini 2001; Hutton 2006). In light of these omissions, this book represents a timely contribution to wider understandings of the NTE by prioritising the girlsâ ni...