Going Places or Out of Place? Representations of Mobile Girls and Young Women in Late-1950s and 1960s Britain

Abstract

Abstract Spatial mobilities are a neglected dimension of the historiography of post-war youth and yet, as this article argues, in the late 1950s and 1960s, mobilities became integral to a redefinition of young femininity. Examining media targeting girls and young women, as well as national newspapers and women’s magazines, this article explores the popularization of the idea that girls in their teens and early twenties were on the move and that particular kinds of mobility were a feature of modern girlhood. Whether out and about, travelling or migrating to cities, mobilities were often portrayed as empowering girls and facilitating transitions to adulthood; for these reasons, girls were encouraged to embrace opportunities to be going places, even if this meant challenging personal boundaries. This empowering new ideal came at a cost: youth, and the passage to adulthood, became riskier for girls. Only a thin line separated going places from out of place, as the most transformative mobilities took girls away from the parental home and other forms of adult supervision. There were long-established dangers posed by predatory men, but also new ones posed by going it alone—sexual and domestic exploitation, loneliness; risky mobilities were often less about travel than arriving someplace else. Financial resources helped safeguard girls, but survival increasingly depended on personal resources. Mobilities became a new axis of social differentiation, dividing the girls who were going places, literally and in terms of social status and cultural capital, from those who were out of place or stuck in place.