However, it seems society is not so forgiving of the bad girl. From Amy’s bloody nights out, to Britney’s infamous umbrella incident we are quick to cast a shameful glance upon girls gone wild. In the domain of the normals, we judge harshly the girls who have had one too many and are causing a scene on the dancefloor. Hell, we’ve given them a name and multiple facebook groups: the ‘trashbag’.
Yet the drunken male escapes punishment. It seems to be that the bad girl can exist only as stylised ingénue Russh style.
However, this is neither the time nor the place for feminist diatribe. After all, this is a BOY blog. So I instead turn my attention to the bad boy.
The ‘bad boy’ has been a pop-culture icon for decades. From James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause, to Elvis’ devil may care pelvic thrusts, as females we are loathe to resist a careless swagger and dangerous attitude.
The ‘bad boy’ has been a pop-culture icon for decades. From James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause, to Elvis’ devil may care pelvic thrusts, as females we are loathe to resist a careless swagger and dangerous attitude.
But why is this? It is certainly evident that black skinny jeans, leather jackets, white tees and wayfarers are a winning combination in just about any decade since the 1950’s. But yet it seems this dashing sartorial selection is inherently coupled with the a similarly consistent personality.Bad boy looks are rarely immune from bad boy attitude. And with that attitude comes some less than satisfactory relationship behaviour.
We should learn from the prolific cultural and fictional profiling of the bad boy that we are destined to fail. A lone agent, he is not bound by the conventional laws we apply to ourselves, and is in fact this difference we find so appealing.
However, we maintain the delusion that we can ‘change’ the bad boy, using our feminine wiles to bring him under our spell and eradicate the bad boy, but maintain that sex appeal.
Not possible.
Do we care? Not really… we just keep going back for more. I mean let’s face it- he’s a little deranged, certainly a little dangerous. And we love it.
However of course, we could always adopt the Teen Vogue definition of ‘bad boy’. I don’t even know who Nick Jonas is, but he sure as hell doesn’t look threatening to me.
Image thanks to girlwithasatchel.blogspot.com
I’ve spent the last half an hour wandering through this blog and it perfectly captures a moment on the cusp of internet history between traditional media and algorithm generated hyper content which is so distinctly millennial. I see in this blog so much of my own temperament (a disposition to love things like the mighty boosh and LCD soundsystem, walking into brief and passionate romances, a will to write and dispense a list of steps of getting over a breakup). in reading this blog I feel I’ve begun to understand a small corner of cultural history/a zeitgeist which feels so alien to the current social and political mood, (and I’ve felt understood!). I’m not sure if you’ll ever get this notification but I’d just like to say thank you for writing this.
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