Bedroom Cultures And Subcultures

Think of your bedroom, how it represents who you are, and how you’ve curated it throughout the years. Everyone’s bedroom is some sort of representation of who they are. While most adults have an entire apartment or house to show their style and personality, teens have only their bedroom as a space of pure selfhood.
Bedroom culture has been defined in many ways. One of the first times that the term was used was in the essay “Girls and Subcultures” published in 1977 by Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber. In this essay they took a critical look at the masculine centered way that subcultures had been studied. The way that they used the term was to describe the culture that girls created, and subsequently were sold through media, when left out of greater subcultures. They argued that bedroom culture was one of fantasy and respite from the public sphere. McRobbie and Garber describe different activities that adolescent girls might do in their rooms,
Hanna was the lead singer of pioneer riot-grrrl band Bikini Kill. She recorded and produced almost the entire Julie Ruin album by herself on a thrifted Casio keyboard. Hanna later stated about the album in a documentary about her life, The Punk Singer, "It sounds like bedroom culture. It sounds like something a girl made in her bedroom. . . but didn't just throw it away or it just wasn't in her diary. She took it out and shared it with people." Another female musician that had something similar to say was Kim Gordon. In her autobiography, Girl in a Band, she discusses her teenage years living in Southern California. She describes listening to Joni Mitchell, knowing that they lived in the same area, “I was in my room a few miles away, painting, smoking pot, and getting sad listening to her.” This want to connect bedrooms is also a large part of modern bedroom culture. With social media, we are able to share all of our projects, big and