skinhead was indeed a working class youth movement, born from hard
mod and influenced by jamaican
music which was born, and as far as many are concerned, died, in the late Sixties. As in every subculture, its adherents fetishised the sameness of their "difference", underlined this attitude by wearing a strict uniform, detailed exhaustively in other posts, and by adopting a very limited lifestyle and mindset- commonly xenophobic and espousing violence in the absence of an ability to THINK AND ACT INDIVIDUALLY OR WITH INTELLIGENCE. The very particular set of social circumstances which led to the birth of skinhead, or
mod, or any of those retro boys' clubs, are gone now, but dense, insecure, defensive, uneducated spoiled
lazy kids with chips on their shoulders who claim to be "working class" do love to dress up and look scary,
don't they? Drinking
massive quantities of lager goes a long way to drowning the niggling fear that they're all just try-
hard wannabe losers who would sooner punch someone's teeth in than reason things out, and drunkenness gives them a great excuse to do this. Combing one's hair is just too much like hard
work and requires too much imagination, so they shave it all off. Though the whole hyper-macho scene is blatantly homoerotic, skinheads tend to attract sad
fat girls, it's true, with no self-esteem who secretly want to rescue them. Good luck, ladies.
Skinheads are cranky and defensive all the
time because deep down, they realise that they are worthless and that nobody likes them. (We all
go through that stage, but normal people grow up). They tend to blame blacks, gays, jews, tories...well, anyone else but themselves for this state of affairs. Their friendships and associations are based on
beer, mutual assent to brutality and a "skinhead code", and, thusly, do not qualify as true friendships at all. No wonder they're crabby, chauvinist twats.
