ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 illustrates the different forces at work behind the process of Geordie de-linking from low class and coming to index coolness. It shows the press’s attempts at branding Cheryl as a particular stereotype of working-class youth, the chav side by side with the singer’s efforts to resist this label, constructing a different identity for herself, renegotiating her working class ‘belonging’, re-orienting and steering it into a ‘milder’ form of working-classness, where she would inhabit a poor but certainly not deprived background. In so doing, she did not simply claim authentic membership in the pre-existing category of Geordie, but contributed to reinscribing the category.
