Chapter 11. Ageing Alternative Women: Discourses of Authenticity, Resistance and ‘Coolness’

Abstract Authenticity is a key issue in any study of subcultures or groups who define themselves as alternative. I will discuss three different stages of research about ‘alternative’ women, with interviews conducted in the late 1990s, and then return interviews with some of the original participants in 2010 and 2018. At all three stages of data collection, the participants were at pains to place themselves as distanced or marginalized from the mainstream, by choice, articulated in various ways. At the same time, they placed themselves as being authentic or at the centre, with people they termed as part-timers, newbies, tourists and weekenders existing on the periphery and at the margins. How do they measure their place in the hierarchy, and whose hierarchy is it? The chapter asks, what is authenticity in alternative subcultures, why is it so important that such marginalized groups are authentic (to themselves, as well as to outsiders), and how do they achieve it. The chapter also explores how ageing and gender impacts on the participants’ identities as alternative women.