Widgie

The bodgies and widgies represented a new teenage culture, with an emphasis on fashion (long hair styles for the boys, gabardine skirts for the girls), street presence, dancing, and rock and roll music. From 1950 to 1959, the phenomenon of the bodgies and widgies captured the imagination of the media.

In Toowoomba, Magistrate Kearney was up in arms over the bodgies and widgies in town – those dressed-up teenagers with their spruced hair and polka-dot dresses who loitered around the city streets. They were seen as a threat to society.

Nevertheless there was a distinctly gendered dimension - one which demonised the bodgie as delinquent and widgie as sexually immoral. Stratton (1992) attributes the emergence of bodgies and widgies as Australia′s first post-war working class youth culture to a number of historical changes in the Australian economy.