I have been thinking a lot about whether I think of youth as male or female, and I must admit that most of the time I am associating youth subcultures and styles with males (except Goth and Emo subcultures).  If I reflect back to my own teen years, I recall the females having cliques, but I am not certain I would go so far as to say they were subcultures or necessarily had varying styles.

I’m thinking of focusing my project on how female youth communicate trends online, and if this is different to males.  One specific area I will focus on for this project is fashion trends, and this idea of youth equalling male has really made me think of this in a different light.  If we are constantly generalising youth to mean male youths, does that mean online use is stronger with males?  Certainly all young people are more comfortable and reliant on the internet than previous generations have been, but do the genders vary in the use of the internet?  And can something like fashion be communicated primarily online, when it has such a strong history based in print magazines? 

It is all tied up in consumerism as well, since fashion, youth, style and subcultures are all directly related to consuming goods. We read in the Savage article about teens and consumerism being linked together, and we read in Hebdige that the relationship with consumption is even stronger in subcultures in order to strengthen the style of the group.  Historically we also know that women are seen as the main consumers in society.  So who really is creating the idea/images of youth if we think primarily of males but females make up the most consumers?  And are magazines or the internet more valuable for communicating the trends of this group?

I feel like I’ve got a billion ideas running through my mind, and am hoping for that ‘ah-ha!’ moment to come soon to help me solidify this project . . .

I will have to research the current online trends taking a critical look at any differences between male and female youth.  I am also going to look up the books/articles Glen mentioned in class about whether youth means boys (Driscoll and McRobbie & Gerber) – off to the library this afternoon for some work on this!