In 1945, a new social group for teenage girls, the “Sub-Deb Club,” exploded in popularity, especially in the midwest.
Gotta Coppa Poppa: Sub-Deb Clubs in the 1940s
Series: Archive Fever
Visual essays, photos, and ephemera from youth cultures.
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An American Summer Camp in France
In 1925, educator Donald MacJannet opened an American-style summer camp for French and American students on the shores of Lake Annecy in southeastern France, near the Swiss border.
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Youth Film Distribution Center, 1971
New York’s Youth Film Distribution Center was founded in 1969 as a platform to exclusively showcase 16mm sound films by young filmmakers aged 14 to 20.
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Tomorrow’s Defenders of Liberty
The Victory Corps was an educational program for teenagers that ran from 1942-44, training high schoolers to become “tomorrow’s defenders of liberty.”
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The World’s First Selfie
Long before the Myspace and “duck face” rose to prominence, teen girls with cameras were already taking photos of themselves and sending them to loved ones.
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The Birth of Skateboarding
Legend has it that skateboarding was born sometime in the mid 1940s when some inventive Californian teenagers tried to figure out a way to surf when the waves weren’t big enough.
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Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American movie star.
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Los Angeles, World Capital of Teen Fandom
Teenage is screening today at ArcLight Doc Fest in Los Angeles, so here’s a chronological compilation of LA teens doing what they do best — fawning over entertainers of all kinds in the entertainment capital of the world (the above photo is a Bee Gees concert in 1979!).
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Who Were the Teddy Girls?
Writer and Teenage Blog reader Eve Dawoud saw our previous post on Teddy Girls and wanted to share with us selections of interviews she’s conducted with some of the real people in the photos — Mary Toovey, Elsie Hendon, Iris Thornton and Ted Burton — for an ongoing research project.
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How To Be a Mid-Century British Teen
In the years that followed the birth of the “teenager” in 1945, British and American adults had no choice but to come to terms with the cultural and economic power of this new group.