ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the cultural purchase of scuba diving during the late 1950s and the 1960s was a facet of shifts within the composition and values of the American middle class. The growth of recreational diving and its representation in the popular media was constituent in the emergence of a new petit bourgeois faction that defined its social status and sense of cultural identity through distinctive, consumption-driven lifestyles. Their values and codes of behavior explain laying an accent on stylistic self-expression, freewheeling hedonism and self-conscious display. Dripping with exhilarating and glamorously sexy connotations, the 1960s scuba phenomenon was an ideal expression of the habitus and ideals of this new middle class, who embraced scuba diving as one of their pre-eminent lifestyle sports. The scuba diving phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s was closely allied with the rise of this new brand of leisure-oriented masculinity. It articulated perfectly the 'playboy ethic' and its emphasis on conspicuous consumption and narcissistic pleasure.
