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Building on previous work about cultural informalisation and the growing urban–rural divide in western democracies, this article studies symbolic boundary work as performed by white youths living in rural areas in the Netherlands. We conducted a micro-sociological analysis of how these youths celebrate regional festivals in the Netherlands, and particularly the meanings they attach to their affective displays of intoxication and sexuality. We show how distinction is 'done' here by many of these youths taking pride in drinking too much beer, sexual directness and impropriety, which they argue are expressions of conviviality and down-to-earthness. In doing so, they appear to be finding dignity and redemption in an image of themselves as savages and reappropriating it as part of their own 'civility', contrasting their revelry with what they perceive to be urban, middle-class snobbery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Red Hat Society (RHS) is a relatively new and international women’s network that offers “fun” and “friendship” specifically for women over fifty. Its members, the Red Hatters, are easily recognized in the streets by their red hats and otherwise purple attire, giving the RHS its unique flavor of leisure combined with expressive public performance. In this article, we use interviews and observations to study how the fun experiences aimed at by the RHS are articulated with negotiations of gender and age. Our analysis directed us toward a contradictory and multilayered expression of feminism and femininity entrenched in RHS performance. While some of the Red Hatters explicitly identified with feminism using RHS performance as a means to “undo” gender, others identified more with traditional femininity, using it to “do” gender instead. We introduce the concept of “radical femininity” to show how the Red Hatters continuously negotiate the volatile space between these two broad societal discourses that position women in contradictory ways. Furthermore, we show how Red Hatters draw upon fantasy as embodied in play to negotiate this space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its foundation in 1998 the ‘Red Hat Society’ (RHS) has become a popular international movement of women aged over 50 that is known for its distinct group performances. Red Hatters show up in public spaces wearing red hats, purple clothing and sometimes red gloves, and engage in various fun and frivolous activities. Previous studies about the RHS have found that its main appeal is that it creates an escape from women’s day-to-day life experiences. However, such outcomes ignore the fact that the RHS’s appeal is motivated also by the particular life histories of its members. To explore the relevance of these life histories, interviews were conducted with RHS members in The Netherlands. The findings show that to understand the cultural meaning of the RHS it is necessary to include a diachronic dimension in the research, articulating members’ current negotiations of femininity and ageing with those of their past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]