Skinhead style magically resolved hidden contradictions in working-class culture

Evidence

Such combinations of sexual transgression and racial authoritarianism complicate a simple reading of the meaning of skinhead style. The important point to be stressed here is that the outward rigidity of white chauvinism often masks variegated and dissonant combinations of subjectivity. These might be carried and resolved by individual people; Healy argues that the growing public awareness of gay skins has corrupted the association between skins and a conservative, white racist straight masculinity. It is interesting that the skin quoted above invoked the association between skin style and gay London through the Creole homophobic epithet “Batty Man.” The fear of being identified as gay is augmented here because these associations are being directed at white skins from a black location. As skinheadism is being globalized, its association with a hypermasculine straight image is being decoupled at “home.” However, this may well be confined to London and there is little evidence to suggest that skinhead style has lost its currency as sartorial racism elsewhere in Britain (see Nayak, 1999). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2989 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The aesthetic of the illicit made dark skin fashionable and profitable; Skinhead style fuses sexual transgression with racial authoritarianism in contradictory combinations — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2989; Formal decorative patterns can encode and dream real social contradictions they cannot consciously grasp — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 741 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Skinhead style fuses sexual transgression with racial authoritarianism in contradictory combinations #expands (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2989