Though there has been an increased academic interest in ageing subculturalists, in the context of punk scholarship older punk women continue to be marginalized and academic discussions concerning ageing, gender, and punk have been limited. My PhD research which this chapter derives from sought to explore the construction and maintenance of punk identity by older women. Though not something I set out to explore, the concept of authenticity and how this was constructed by the women I spoke with emerged through the interviews highlighting an important aspect of their identity construction. If one is to take the view that identity is socially constructed then this does lend itself to thinking about questions of authenticity (Schwarz and Williams, 2020) and, indeed, this concept has experienced much attention from identity theorists since the early 20th century (Lemart, 2019, cited in Schwarz and Williams, 2020).
This chapter deals with two interrelated issues. First, drawing upon a feminist, inductivist methodology, the chapter will bring to the fore the previously marginalized voices of older/ageing punk women, focusing on how they construct and negotiate punk authenticity; adding further weight to the argument that punk needs to be conceptualized as something which is fluid and not static (Williams, 2006). The findings discussed will demonstrate how this conceptualization is shaped, and indeed sometimes constrained, by intersecting issues concerning gender and ageing; something previous work on ageing punk participants (for example, Bennett, 2006) has as yet failed to consider. The importance of understanding authenticity temporally, and not just how it is constructed in the present, will also be highlighted (Mullaney, 2012).
Second, this chapter considers the ways the fabrication of authenticity is woven throughout the actual ‘doing’ of punk scholarship itself. Despite increasing moves to engage in reflexivity within the social sciences (and in, specifically, subcultures research), such embracing of reflexivity has certainly not been taken up at large among punk scholarship; often limited to those scholars reflecting on their ‘insider’ position and/or those focused on marginalized identities within punk and/or those adopting a feminist framework. A consideration of the construction of authenticity is vital within punk scholarship, particularly when thinking about what becomes considered as empirical, methodological, and theoretical canon.
