In the early 1970s, the British pop charts were dominated by male performers dressed in outrageously effeminate outfits. Glam rock was all about performance: for the most part, it didn’t pretend to be authentic or sincere. It was undeniably camp, and perhaps also postmodern – and yet it has largely been neglected by cultural critics and researchers. In this essay, I attempt to describe and define glam, and consider the broader issues that it raises; I look at its sexual politics, and discuss how we might understand its fans, the so-called teenyboppers of the time.
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David Buckingham 