Beats, bad girls and rock and roll

I found myself relating to the ideas presented in the Breines article, The other fifties: Beats, bad girls and rock and roll. The women in my family had consistently bought into the quintessential stay-at-home-mom role, and those who went on to higher education worked for a short time as teachers, and later, as substitute teachers or paraprofessional teachers. The male influences in my family worked mainly in the military in some capacity, and my dad dabbled in art, which was always one of my intense interests. Rock music, particularly alternative rock music, was a major influence beginning in my pre-teen and teenage years. Breines highlighted many reasons why music with “black” R&B influences impacted young beatnik women’s choices in music, fashion and romantic interests. These girls’ interests and choices seem to parallel my own music and fashion preferences as a young teen. Alternative rock music offered access to important issues affecting humanity that I craved, illustrated with such a range of emotion that I identified with. The musicians behind the music represented potentials dangerous, grown men, who actually posed no threat to me in reality. These musicians, however, represented the kinds of men that my father rejected, especially as the sorts of men that I should look toward as examples. Breines identifies the complicated reasons why teens of the 1950s looked up to musicians of their time for reasons of independence, rebellion, and to learn about serious issues, and these reasons do not seem so different from the reasons why I had such an insatiable thirst for alternative rock of the 1990s.