Draft:Bikini boys

Bikini boys

Bikini boys queue outside the Iluzjon Cinema in Old Mokotów, 1955.
Years active	1940s-1950s
Country	Polish People's Republic
Major figures	Leopold Tyrmand
Influences	Tombakowa młodzież
Influenced	Gitowcy

Bikini boys, known as bikiniarze in Polish, were members of a subculture that originated among youths in Warsaw, Poland, in the 1940s and 1950s. From the capital the movement spread to other parts of the country and provoked a moral panic from the communist authorities.

History

The subculture is sometimes considered to have begun amongst the youth of the intelligentsia in Warsaw however it soon spread to other urban areas of the country such as the Tricity and notably Nowa Huta.

The height of the subculture's popularity has generally been seen as reaching a peak in 1952. As the Polish thaw led to a liberalisation in the cultural sphere the bikini boys petered out with some elements becoming absorbed into the cultural mainstream.

Notable bikini boys include the novelist Leopold Tyrmand, who helped popularise the subculture in his writing, and the film director Roman Polanski, who has referred to himself as an adherent of the bażant style, as a youth in Cracow.

Moral panic

In 1951 a court case involving four youths from Falenica, originally accused of theft, was dubbed the ‘trial of the bikini boys’ when they were additionally charged with espionage and two of the group were subsequently sentenced to death. Following the trial the bikini boys subculture became the target of an anti-American moral panic. The group of youths were derided on the pages of Sztandar Młodych as servants of American Imperialism. In a bulletin of the Polish Film Chronicle the actor Andrzej Łapicki attacked the bikini boys for their apparent drunkenness, anti-social behaviour, and the vacuousness of their Westernised fashion.

Władysław Matwin, the chairman of the Union of Polish Youth (ZMP), called on his members to form themselves into ORMO platoons to physically confront bikini boys in the streets. Fighting between bikini boys and zetempowcy (a nickname derived from the acronym ZMP) became increasingly common with the former being targeted at dances and even having their hair and ties cut off. As a former member of the ZMP, the dissident Jacek Kuroń has said that activists were encouraged to physically confront bikini boys, and has recalled seeing such an assault perpetrated against a bikini boy who had attended a music event at Plac Komuny Paryskiej in the early 1950s.

Etymology

In Polish culture the term bikini boys has developed similar connotations to the English language term beatnik, the label was first applied by the communist authorities before being adopted by the subculture itself.

Various theories for the origins of the subculture's name have been proposed.

Female members of the subculture were known as kociaki.

Other names for the subculture included the derogatory bażant (pheasant), and regional variations such as dżoller and biglarz in Cracow and Wrocław respectively.

Style

Towards the latter 1950s the style of the bikini boys became more refined, emulating the perceived sophistication of the Parisian Rive Gauche. This look was to be deemed acceptable and promoted in the magazine Przekrój.

Analysis

Analysing Tyrmand’s attire as a symbolic form of resistance the poet Agnieszka Osiecka described it as a declaration of individuality that acted as "a charter of human rights."

While the writer Marek Hłasko described the youthful rebellion typical of the bikini boys as inherently political, there has been some dispute over what politics exactly the bikini boys did represent. Some historians have portrayed the bikini boys as an anti-communist movement others have argued that they were, in fact, often enthusiastic supporters of the communist project. In this latter regard the subculture can be understood as a reaction against traditional social hierarchies, analogous to their British contemporaries the Teddy Boys for example, rather than the Stalinist system itself.

See also

• Stilyagi
• Teddy Boy
• Tombakowa młodzież