Bobby soxer (subculture)

A bobby soxer in Ann Arbor, Michigan, July 8, 1939

Bobby soxer is a 1940s sociological coinage describing the often very zealous fans of traditional pop music, in particular the singer Frank Sinatra. Bobby soxers were usually teenage girls and young adult women aged 13 to 25. Fashionable adolescent girls wore poodle skirts and rolled down their socks to the ankle. In high schools and colleges, the gymnasium was often used as a dance floor; however, since street shoes and street detritus might damage the polished wood floors, the students were required to remove their shoes and flop dance in their bobby socks, hence the terms "bobby soxer" and "sock hop".

Adopting (in her teenage years) an impressionable adolescent persona, former child actress Shirley Temple portrayed the type in the film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947). The 1959 Frankie Avalon song "Bobby Sox to Stockings" also referenced the phenomenon. Later, Bobby Sheen performed under the name Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans.

See also

• Teenybopper