ABSTRACT
The desire or opportunity to contest cultural codes of appearance is not evenly spread amongst citizens. One approach towards explaining this unevenness is suggested by I Welsh (New Social Movements, Developments in Sociology, Vol 17, 2000), who contrasts those citizens who are ‘bound to the treadmill of paid employment, pursuing either basic economic survival or career advancement’ with those who possess ‘the vital spark of youth [with] its wilful capacity to act now in the pursuit of the seemingly impossible’. His suggestion, clearly, is that, through either a biological lack of years or a cultural concept of youthfulness, some citizens are in a position to contest cultural codes of appearance more easily; and that the same citizens are more likely to be predisposed to direct or non-parliamentary action as their means of political participation.
