Bellbottoms, beads, bare mid drifts, ginghams, fringe leather vests, long flowing hair–these were the looks of high schoolers, 1969. Shot similar to todays ‘street style’  photography, Arthur Schatz captured the hip youngsters in their native environments—pep rallies and school yard lounging. Three cheers.

via LIFE 

The Lollipop Generation is the first feature film by the Canadian artist and musician G.B. Jones.  It follows a runaway teenager named Georgie (played by  Jena von Brücker) and three friends as they encounter a world of punk and perversion while roaming North America.  Shot on Super-8 and video, The Lollipop Generation is equal parts fictional diaristic narrative and a document of the underground characters who Jones met while travelling.  Vaginal Davis, Calvin Johnson, Jen Smith and a bunch of other awesome performers, musicians and artists make guest appearances.  It was composed over a period of 13 years, stopping and starting whenever the director could afford to buy another cartridge of film.

This may be the only pageant where contestants are required to know how to butcher a sheep—Miss Navajo. The first pageant was in 1952 and has now become a honored tradition, highlighting the knowledge, beauty and talents of young Navajo women.

previous Miss Navajo winners via Miss Navajo Council 

Jeremy is a seventeen-year-old football player living in one of America’s most conservative regions.  He is also gay and the author of Standing Up Speaking Now, a semi-anonymous blog where he speaks frankly about being a closeted high school athlete.

“I’m a good student who goes for those ridiculous AP schedules, and I’m an athlete. Yes, I play sports, and yeah… I’m into dudes. At any given time of the year, you will find me either: running track or playing football.  That being said, fighting for what I believe in, has become super important. I know certain circumstances arise, and you find yourself barricaded in internal struggles, but sometimes, just speaking up can make all the difference.”

Jeremy is one of several young athletes who are vocal on the internet about the difficulties they face being gay in such a homophobic community, many of whom remain closeted in their every day lives.

As I began to accept myself, I came across several blogs on the Internet of other gay high school athletes. It finally hit me that I wasn’t alone and that really helped. I’ve been in contact with the guys from “Walk The Road” and “Sam I Am” and have evolved more in the past few months than ever. After being inspired, I started my own blog, “Standing Up Speaking Now,” in December to rant about the happenings of my life.

To say that my life has changed since I started the blog would be an understatement. So much has happened to me that I feel like a new person. It first started with unending desire to come out to someone. I was on the verge of going insane, simply because I couldn’t be “me” around my best friends.

Read Jeremy’s whole post from OutSports here.

images via here and here.

Thanks to Ed Halter for the tip!

In April 1968, NBC aired a one-hour long documentary called Youth 68.  Produced by a pre-Sesame Street Jim Henson and directed by Jon Stone, the film is part screenplay, part video collage.  It shows young people all across America talking about love, religion, drugs, music, and war.  The film included young activists next to conservative squares, and everyday teens alongside members of The Mamas and the Papas and Jefferson Airplane.

Billed with the tagline “Everything’s changing… Or maybe it isn’t”,  the film is a telling snapshot of the 1960′s.  Clips from Youth 68 are currently on view at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York for the exhibit, Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.

Thanks to Benjamin Graves for the tip!

In 1928, LeRoy Pollack penned a thoughtful note to his sixteen-year-old son, Jackson.  That same year, Jackson Pollack was introduced to modern art while studying at Manual Arts High School.

Pollack family eating watermelon in Arizona, 1914

Dear Son Jack,

Well it has been some time since I received your fine letter. It makes me a bit proud and swelled up to get letters from five young fellows by the names of Charles, Mart, Frank, Sande, and Jack. The letters are so full of life, interest, ambition, and good fellowship. It fills my old heart with gladness and makes me feel ‘Bully.’ Well Jack I was glad to learn how you felt about your summer’s work & your coming school year. The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life. I do not think a young fellow should be too serious, he should be full of the Dickens some times to create a balance.

I think your philosophy on religion is okay. I think every person should think, act & believe according to the dictates of his own conscience without too much pressure from the outside. I too think there is a higher power, a supreme force, a governor, a something that controls the universe. What it is & in what form I do not know. It may be that our intellect or spirit exists in space in some other form after it parts from this body. Nothing is impossible and we know that nothing is destroyed, it only changes chemically. We burn up a house and its contents, we change the form but the same elements exist; gas, vapor, ashes. They are all there just the same.

I had a couple of letters from mother the other day, one written the twelfth and one the fifteenth. Am always glad to get letters from your mother, she is a Dear isn’t she? Your mother and I have been a complete failure financially but if the boys turn out to be good and useful citizens nothing else matters and we know this is happening so why not be jubilant?

The weather up here couldn’t be beat, but I suppose it won’t last always, in fact we are looking forward to some snowstorms and an excuse to come back to the orange belt. I do not know anything about what I will do or if I will have a job when I leave here, but I am not worrying about it because it is no use to worry about what you can’t help, or what you can help, moral ‘don’t worry.’

Write and tell me all about your schoolwork and yourself in general. I will appreciate your confidence.

You no doubt had some hard days on your job at Crestline this summer. I can imagine the steep climbing, the hot weather, etc. But those hard things are what builds character and physic. Well Jack I presume by the time you have read all this you will be mentally fatigued and will need to relax. So goodnight, pleasant dreams and God bless you.

Your affectionate Dad

Jackson Pollock, No. 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)

via here and here

In the mid 1900′s Arni and Reg Park were over-indulging in oils and tanning lotions in order to get ready for their next Mr. Universe. Meanwhile, these boys were flexing and squeezing elsewhere, showing off for the camera without a bottle of baby-oil in sight!

Images from here and here.

Classic teenage scene: get your pals together and wear the same look, at the same time, maybe cause a ruckus—Beaver and his friends buy fad “monster” sweatshirts and agree to wear them to school on the same day…

Leave It To Beaver, the ‘Sweatshirt Monsters’ episode.
via Partners & Spade

Pussy Riot is an anonymous, all-female punk band and part of a larger movement of young Russians who are unhappy with the current political climate.

Formed after Vladimir Putin announced his intention to return to the presidency in March, the band’s eight members sing punk-rock songs that call for “Revolt in Russia!”  They keep their identities hidden under neon balaclavas and hold surprise performances all over the city, from the Metro to the prison roof.

In December, the group held a series of performances on Stoleshnikov Lane – the epicenter of Moscow’s luxury boutiques and status culture.

In January, they were arrested after minutes of performing in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. The members were taken to Kitai-Gorod police station nearby and charged with public order offenses and disobeying the police, which carries a fifteen day sentence.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqcmldeC7Ec

One member, who goes by “Tyurya,” told the Guardian:

“A lot of us couldn’t sleep after [the] announcement, so we decided, damn it, we need to do something. We always went to protests and things, but it seemed to us we needed to do something more.”

The girls met at previous demonstrations surrounding the right to assemble after Gay Pride parades were banned in Russia.

“We understood that to achieve change, including in the sphere of women’s rights, it’s not enough to go to Putin and ask for it.  This is a rotten, broken system.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZUhkWiiv7M

“We wanted to create a new form of protest – maybe not such a huge one, but we compensate for that with the bright, provocative and illegal nature of our performances.”

As for now, Pussy Riot is taking suggestions for protest sites and revolutionary performances: pisya.riot@gmail.com

via The Guardian, NPR, and here

Rank press photo of Janina Faye in the CinemaScope and Eastman Colour horror film “The Day Of The Triffids” (1962).

Janina Faye (born 1949) was a popular English child actress of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She appeared in a large number of films including: Dracula (X- certificate, 1958); The Day of the Triffids (X-certificate, 1962) and Don’t Talk to Strange Men (certificate 12, 1962).  Her most controversial film was the 1959 Hammer production Never Take Sweets From a Stranger, another X-certificate film released in 1960 that dealt with the then very taboo subject of child molestation (the Greek word “paedophile” meaning “child lover” in English, was not in general use at that time as it is today).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ircGOx-rjC8

The cinema-going public shunned the film and it flopped at the box-office. Only recently has it been released on a Hammer Region 1 DVD box set under its American title Never Take Candy From a Stranger.

Unlike many child stars, Janina made a success of her adult life and is still going strong at the age of 63.

Thanks to TheBrinkswayBoy at flickr.