So I've had a little concept for a character but I don't know what to call him.. In the 50's there were subcultures of greasers, sharpies, bodgies, teddy boys and they gave way to skin heads and punks... they were all considered to be bad boys and parents wouldn't want their daughters dating them, they had specific looks.. But what would be the bad boy of now? What would he look like and what subculture would he fit into? Having only son's, I don't have the problem of what boys I don't want them to date.. do girls even date now?
I'm pretty sure girls still date. A really bad boy here in the US would be a gang member. Less troublesome would be one that had a different religious or political ideology from the parents.
Hipster, no parents want their children to date hipsters. All kidding aside, there isn't really one bad boy group. Bikers, Rappers and goths are what I can think of at the top of my head. With rappers I suppose you could say people who are perceived as urbanites but that gets into a bit of controversial waters. But hey if your willing to address that in your story more power to you.
Off the top of my head: -skinhead/white supremacist/neo-Nazi -survivalist (like a basement-nut level of survivalist, not a prepper) -gangbanger -satanist (possibly plays bass in a band like Gorgoroth or early '90s Mayhem) In the UK, maybe a football hooligan?
Subcultures of "bad boys" - if you throw in racial profiling, that should probably do it. Every country has their own. The Brits dislike Muslims and Pakistanis (no one would say it though). The Germans dislike the Turks. The Hong Kongers dislike the Mainlanders. The Czechs dislike gypsies and Russians. As far as I'm aware, none of these nations like black people very much - the Brits might be the most open amongst them.
Wouldn't that be like "I don't want my daughter to date that guy 'cause he's [insert ethnicity]". Might as well be a nice guy, an honor student, valedictorian, whatever, the nicest, bestest guy in the world, but 'cause he's of "wrong" ethnicity, parents wouldn't approve of him? But then there are "bad boys" who make bad (depends on the POV) choices in life. No matter what their ethnicity, they'd still be rejected by the parents 'cause they don't adhere to the same moral code or are in some other way unworthy or suspicious, like are part of a sub-culture that has a bad rep among some adults (like if he happens to be a metalhead). Although, I guess especially to the father, no guy is good enough to date their lil girl.
You're right, but I guess I said what I did cus the first thought that came to my mind was, racist though it sounds, "someone black". And really, some of the subcultures that we think of are also associated with colour, right? Rappers and gangsters - the automatic image is someone who's black. Black girls are profiled as troublemakers sometimes because of their appearance and eager behaviour. Or maybe it's just my own prejudices that need to be worked on... lol Tattoos would be another thing that could get profiled into the "bad" category. Piercings too, beyond your regular ear piercings. Hoodies in the UK, worn with the hood up. Eccentric hair (style or colour).
Yeah. Finland is still quite homogeneous, so the badboyness has to be achieved via unruly behavior. Petty crime, driving a motor bike without a helmet, skipping school, tattoos and piercings as you mentioned, possible affiliations with the far right etc. I wonder if it's similar in other less ethnically diverse ideas (there're pockets like that in the US, I've heard).
Thank you firstly for all your responses they have been really great. I'm in Australia. So we don't really have an issue with gangs as America does.. Our gangs tend to be kids from Vietnamese decent, and then they tend to only date within their own culture.. I agree with the tattoos, but it is becoming so normal in Australia to have tattoos, that I'm not sure that, that's enough to declare them bad boys.. I was thinking about those boys that drive the pocket rocket cars, the "Fast and the Furious" boys, they are the closest I could think of that is the modern day "Greaser" or "Sharpie"... I'm old so I don't find that sort of thing as appealing but I can see how a young girl might.. but I'm not sure what they are called, and that's even if they have a name...
An activist for aboriginal rights. We were watching a TV show with a character whom my (28-year old) daughter identified as a hipster. SHE was almost frothing at the mouth with how bad hipsters are. I thought he was quite a nice guy, a bit eccentric.
OK - lets be a little more real here. First off, hipsters are generally an upper-class movement so they're not going to be in that "problem" subculture. I live in a hipster neighborhood - they're all nice rich-ish kids who like craft beer and hip restaurants. I'm 28 so I'm a bit out of the "young crowd" and my subculture knowledge is about 10 years behind. But I'm sure some of it still applies. For me the modern day equivalent of your "greasers" and "teddy boys" - who I'm going to classify as "bad boy" subcultures within the predominant culture without stirring in the added element of race - are going to be your rockers and metal-heads. Modern day middle class white parents aren't going to be worried if daughter shows up with a beardy indie-hipster with a specialty coffee habbit. They are, on the other hand, going to freak out when their daughter shows up with a head-shaved dude wearing ear gauges, all black, and a t-shirt for some underground swedish death metal group. (And yes I'm sure my streotypes are outdated here). Back in my day you also had a lot of Juggalos but I get the feeling that crowd has aged a bit (google that sometime). Of course you also have the hard-core elements of the hip-hop/rap culture which may or may not add a racial dimension. (Meaning if daughter shows up with a white boy who still dresses and acts like a wannabe rapper, mommy and daddy still have problems). Those are the two overarching groups I can think of painting with a REALLY broad brush. Based on where you're starting from - the whole greaser 1950s bad boy thing, I would do some research on modern heavy-metal subcultures (they are prettty good a subdividing into sometimes ridiculously specific subgroubs), and you'll get the effect you're looking for.
Granted the whole metal scene may be a bit on the wane (again - I'm 28 and therefore an old fogey). But if I'm doing this the kid is probably into the "Black Metal" brand of this stuff. There's still some of that around and it's a reasonably extreme variant that would definitely scare the pants off mommy and daddy.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_metal#After_the_second_wave
Well and if you're in Australia you also have a bigger issue with bikie gangs than we have here in the States (that's bikers for Americans). But drag racing culture is also something you could look at. That's your DIRECT descendant of the whole 1950s muscle car thing.
About the hipster thing, that was more of a joke. A lot of people just do not like hipsters for some reason. The death metal stereotype was more popular in the mid naughts, but there are still people like that. If you don't want to address race, that's fine. And yes I largely agree it doesn't matter the race of some wannabe rapper. What are the parents like? Are they religious, and if so to what degree? Are they younger or older? Do they typically keep their kids on a short leash (figuratively) or are they fairly lenient?
You never know... Wow! This is a lot of stereotyping and a very negative view. I'm sure it's not the case at all. Err, anyway. As for bad boy culture. I know my mom would not want me to come home with a drug dealer or addict. Skater culture? Goths and chavs are a thing, "council house and violent" Why not make up your own subculture if nothing fits?
You'd be rather surprised... Islamophobia is pretty real and that definitely gets associated with Pakistanis, a large minority group in the UK. I went to a school where the Muslims and the rest of the school were pretty segregated (by choice) and property prices dropped steeply whenever Pakistanis start filling the streets (eg. buying up houses - that happened to the street I lived in). In my school, Pakistanis wore certain types of what I can only assume is perfume - and I've heard comments from my English friends whispering about how they smell. As for Hong Kong vs Mainlanders - you should see some of the comments left beneath news articles that report on their local conflicts. There're mainland Chinese students targetted with slander and widespread public humiliation via posters and Facebook because they wanted to run for president of a student union at a HK university. Hostility between the Mainland Chinese and Hong Kongers is well-known. I've had Hong Kongers tell me the moment they even hear a Mandarin accent, they no longer want to bother getting to know the person and would rather walk away. An item made the news when a Mainland couple let their child relieve himself on a bustling street and a Hong Konger in his rage started to film the child, because Mainlanders peeing and pooing on the street has become very common and the Hong Kongers are tired of their habits. I once saw a clip from a HK drama that portrayed a Hong Konger's annoyance at the invasion of simplified Chinese in Hong Kong (a sketch related to reading the menu - traditional Chinese is taught in Hong Kong whereas simplified is taught in Mainland China, hence the perception of it being an "invasion"). Czechs and Russians and gypsies - I currently live in Prague and my husband's Czech. My Indian friend, by virtue of looking like a gypsy cus of her skin colour, has been discriminated against multiple times. She's even heard people say, "Watch your bag, there's a gypsy here," when they saw her. I was talking to my Czech friend about how no one regrets being raised bilingual or trilingual, and my friend's immediate response was, "Well, I might regret it if it's Russian." German culture I know a lot less about - far less - but my ex, who is German, was the one who told me. On my recent trip to Munich when I stayed with a few German acquaintances, the guy told me how there's this area that was basically a "mini Turkey" and there's not a single German shop to be found there. I said that's kinda cool that there's such things available from another culture. He said no, it's not, but didn't expand. Of course in none of these cultures is everyone that way. Of course not. But that is the prevailing mindset currently as far as I've observed. Currently the UK is extremely hostile to immigrants/immigration, and as for the Czechs, just last night I was looking into getting my permenant residency and read how the Foreign Police automatically assumes any mixed race couples (a foreigner and a Czech together) is a relationship of convenience and fake. In fact, my husband and I have already been invited to attend an official interview where they're gonna verify the legitimacy of our marriage. Never mind that we've been married 3.5 years and I'm bearing his child... Never mind also the fact that I could stay as long as I like regardless seeing as I'm British (part of the EU). But in any case, I think the interview has become a matter of course these days.
Many of these groups are unrelated or even opposed to each other, but they share the common theme of being judged negatively by significant portions of society. The extent of this judgement varies, though. Illegal drug users (though weed is becoming somewhat accepted). White supremacists and black people (because life is funny like that). Poor people. Muslims. Atheists. Bisexuals. People with far-left political views. People with a bunch of tattoos and piercings. Gangsters (Bloods, Crips, etc.) Metalheads would at one time have been placed here as well, but I'm not sure how people think of them these days.
Bikie gangs don't really have so much an issue here, girls don't just start dating a bikie in Aus, they have to sort of be born into that world... I guess there would be parents who would have an issue with Aboriginal boys... my first boyfriend was Aboriginal.. my parents thought it was cute, so I guess I never thought down that line.. Metal heads!! yes I had forgotten about them.. especially the punk ones with their stretchers in their ears and bull rings in their noses...
Politics is the new rock and roll... apparently... again. The person I've found it most difficult to accept is my sister's choice in Tory Boy husband. Do you have that awful faux subculture thing too? I guess it would be faux-bogan in Aus, but in the UK it's faux-chav... the advantaged choosing to mimic the stereotypes of the worst of the disadvantaged. Yeuch. There's a lot of ugly in the world though... and it's diversified! I don't think it's as easy as pinpointing one widely feared subculture anymore, because there isn't one visibly dominant system to rebel against.
Yeah that's certainly taking it to a (potentially fun) extreme - but if you look at the link below where I did a basic google search for "Heavy Metal Fans", you can see that there's obviously a good amount of variation and a good number of people who look reasonably well-adjusted and only mildly-countercultural (which again is a lot like your greasers in the day). BUT there is a definite counterculture element that can look scary - the long hair, the makeup, the overuse of black, etc. That'll definitely give the parents some pause, especially if their little girl comes home wearing overdone eyeliner, dyed-black hair, black leather, and talking about getting her eyebrow pierced. https://www.google.com/search?q=Heavy+Metal+fans&biw=1394&bih=666&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=DdJMVcuUBcO0sASR54HICQ&ved=0CCgQ7Ak The other thing is that if you do that you have to be careful not to conflate punks and metal-heads. You could definitely use punk culture in the exact same way, and I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it, but punk and metal are very different from each other. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punk_subculture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_subculture Punk is going to be more lefty-political, brighter colors, more urban, a bit younger, more skaters, sometimes a flair of revolution - the base feeling there is more active anti-AUTHORITY. Metal is darker, all-black, apolitical, distanced from society, a bit resentful, no skaters, more lyrical focus on violence for it's own sake - the base feeling here is more passive anti-SOCIETY . And yes - I'm painting with a super-broad brush. I'm neither a punk nor a metalhead (I'm a nerd who grew up listening to country music) - and I'd certainly defer to any actual punks or metalheads on the descriptions of the base ethos. I'm sure a lot of my stereotypes are bleeding here as we're talking about groups I've always had trouble understanding.
Well... there's quite a few pieces of the underground I guess I could pry up. Industrial: Seen a person with almost a foot long piercing coming out of this or that? More studs than a stud farm? Probably in the industrial scene. They're not afraid of violence. At all. Ravers: Heavy drug use, common ODs, shady parties where rapes happen Street Kids: Can vary from nice to dangerous. There's the ole peace and love dirty hippies or the violent have knives and guns strapped on them types. Bath Babies: These are the kids who take bath salts. Run around and tear a motorcycle apart with their bare hands. Break through a window, get smashed in the head with a pipe, and just look confused because it's not their house. Terrible, terrible, group. Floaters: Kind of like river-rats, but instead of just living on a river they break into houses too. Could be an interesting story, not really common to hear about them though. Wanna-Be-Dealers: These are the teenage/early twenties drug dealers who think they're the shit. They buy a bunch of weapons and gear, but don't know how to use it. Just as likely to blow themselves away as someone else. Normally they sell weed, but almost always jump into cocaine and pills. They tend to believe they can rap and try to fund their own albums. Often they caught or are used to ferret out bigger fish since they're so stupid about how they operate. You'll always find them at college housing, so it's easy to see a girl dating one. Honestly, I think you should go with a street kid story. They're homeless, but they don't care. They have a sort of free lifestyle, but you can make the character whatever you want. I know the greaser has the whole cool leather jacket and slicked backed hair with a nice car thing going on and all. A street kid would have a guitar and dog with him 90% of the time. Long hair and it's not like they're THAT dirty. Well, most at least. They can actually be interesting people, they're just kind of like American-gypsies in a way. They don't want a job, so they'll play music on a street corner. They get tired of where they're living? They'll walk or grab a bus ticket and just leave. They have nothing holding them back and while I'd feel grimy without my morning hygiene routine, it is a free life. You trade your set of modern worries for a more primal, base set of worries. Hell, if I wasn't paid as well as I am I might even do it myself some day. Oh wait... I don't have a dog or a guitar. Darn.
There are some great suggestions!! I am writing at the moment a story set in the 80/90's in Melbourne, where I grew up. Its sort of a mix of my life, people I knew's life and people I heard of's life. But I have been wanting to write a story aimed at teen's, hence my question... I remember as my own teen, watching American movies with greasers, and thinking there was nothing more sexy ha ha, so I wanted to evoke the same emotion from my story.. So there have been some really fantastic suggestions that are helping me to go with a character... love it!! Thank you!!
Football hooligans are seen as very late 70s to mid 80s really. 90s would be more rave culture / pill head types. Now days I would go with a chav (white trash type thing) or an Emo / Goth type.
Ugh, chavs... Btw, is the British movie Hooligans at all realistic? Granted, the main characters were older, mid-twenties.
