Scenario: Aaliyah is 16 and spends a lot of time with her friendship group creating playlists, planning outfits, filming dance clips and posting photos online. The group’s style is important to them, but adults often dismiss them as “just hanging around online” rather than seeing them as a real subculture. Aaliyah says the group mostly meet in each other’s bedrooms, shopping areas and cafés, not in the street.

At the same school, a group of boys are much louder and more visible. They spend time in public spaces, perform toughness, joke about fighting and gain attention from teachers and local police. Some of them admire older boys who act hard and treat masculinity as something that has to be shown in public. Aaliyah thinks girls’ subcultures are often ignored unless they become deliberately loud, rebellious or “ladette-like”.

One sociology student argues that old youth subculture studies focused too much on boys and public street culture. Another says newer examples such as riot grrrls, ladettes and skater girls show that female youth cultures can be more visible, rebellious and diverse than older theories suggested.