Youth and popular culture are mainly signified by the popular genres of music of the day. These range from culture to culture and from society to society. Musicians are seen as idols by many young people, who are more impressionable and easily swayed. They then copy their dress sense and even mannerisms depending on their maturity level. Looking at our own society, in the 1980's black young people were influenced by the likes of Brenda Fassie and Macy Phakela. This saw a wave of youth starting to wear the takkies and 'bang bang' jeans that these musicians always wore, they became fashion icons and the kind of clothing they spotted became very popular. With the amount of clothing artists wear decrease by the day, what does this spell out for future youths and their dress sense?
One can be presumptuous and then assume that even the clothing industry is to a certain degree determined, or rather influenced, by the artists who sell music, therefore implying that fashion is influenced by music. At the time when i was about ten, one of the most popular South African groups was 'Boom Shaka', this saw a rapid wave of young girls wanting to dress and look like Lebo Mathosa and Thembi Seete- the leading ladies of the group. We tried to copy their hair styles, braids at the time, and some were even brave enough to try and pull off their skimpy/ unconventional dress sense ( if their parents allowed it!). We didn't only want to look like them, but tried dancing like them as well; this not being very popular with our parents. For those who do not know, their dancing was provocative and left very little to the imagination. With globalisation and digitisation however, young people almost never look to South African artists for inspiration, but tend to prefer international artists. This having being made much easier with channels like MTV and Channel O, to name but a few. The youth now look at the latest trends American artists employ, the latest Beyonce or Chris Brown look are what you need to master in order to be seen as 'cool'.
This however,is not to say that American music and artists didn't have an impact on young people before the days of DSTV- hardly so. One could not have missed the influx of 'niggas' (pardon the language) that came in the early 1990's. Boys and even men were obsessed with not only looking, but dressing, talking and even walking like 2PAC and Snoop Dog! What i am saying however is that SA artists still featured to some extent. The question therefore is, has globalisation swallowed our own sense of identity?
4 comments:
I think you raise a very valid point Londeka. I remember when i was about 11 years old, all I wanted to be was a Spice Girl, Baby Spice to be precise. My friends and I would often try to immitate each icon accordingly, reinacting excerpts of the movie at every break time. Needless to say they made a huge impression on me. We don't realise just how much influence these artists have over our identites and subconcious.
hi. i agree with what you have said in you post. i find that people are always looking to someone to identify with and its no suprise that they chose to identify with people they are continuously exposed to.like music artists. many of these artists have taken advantage of people who want to look and dress like them. they have relaesed clothing lines. such artists include JLo,P-Diddy. we also have people wanting to look just like them. the number of plastic surguries have incresed people want to have their bodily fetures.body fetures mostly asked for are JLO's butt,jolees Lips etc. what has the world come to. people just dont want to be themselves ...
I agree with you. Like Katie I also wanted to be a Spice Girl at a younger age, trying to sing, dance and dress like them became the norm. Nowdays people are influenced by more ludacris ways of fashion that their idols present. The clothes and ways of dancing are becoming more trashy, therefore having a large negative effect on the younger generations of today!
I indeed do agree with you totally. Most of the youth are so crazy about music and mostly musicians, that they aspire to clone them. They try to dress like them, act like them and even live their lives like them. The sad thing is that because of this, people (especially the youth) are losing their own ethnic identity. They are trying so much to live other people's lives that they have forgotten that these people are not out there to show them how to live, but that they are there to entertain them. I realised that because the youth aspires to their star role models so much, you find that they rebel against their elders and start wanting to do things which their elders would not find appropriate, causing them to not have good relationships with them. These quarrels are indeed usually because they want to dress in a certain manner that their elders wouldn't find appropriate.
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