bobby soxer

bobby soxer

In the 1940s and '50s, a teenage girl or young woman known for being a passionate fan of pop musicians (particularly Frank Sinatra) and for wearing "bobby sox" (white ankle socks that were very trendy at the time). Look at how cute my mom was as a bobby soxer back in the day.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

bobby soxer

A typical teenage girl of the 1940s and '50s. Fashion for teenage girls of those decades dictated short white anklets with turned-down tops. Absent any record of an eponymous Bobbi (short for Barbara or Roberta), the best guess about the name is “bob” in the sense of “cut short.” Girls who wore them were known as bobby soxers. When they weren't swooning over Frank Sinatra, they congregated at malt shops or rode in their boyfriends' hot rods. Watching a rerun of the TV show Happy Days will put that era in focus.
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • sweet young thing
  • cute as a bug's ear
  • (as) cute as a bug's ear
  • cute
  • give (one) the eye
  • give someone the eye
  • give the eye
  • flash (one) a look
  • flash somebody a smile, look, etc.
  • friend
References in periodicals archive
He also reports the colourful criticisms that greeted them, such as this from Max Kozloff: 'Art galleries are being invaded by the pin-headed and contemptible style of gum chewers, bobby soxers, and worse still, delinquents.'
Folk tales: a history of Pop presents a persuasive new account of its origins
In the 1940s, so-called "bobby soxers" went crazy over Frank Sinatra.
How kids badgered their folks for One Direction tickets
Granger recalls his studio-manufactured fan magazine romance with June Haver, and points out how MGM's Van Johnson, although a homosexual, "worked nonstop and soon became the darling of the bobby soxers," yet was continually pressured by Louis B.
What happened in Hollywood ..
However, at the height of his fameas the bobby soxers' pin-up, Bobby put the brakes on his career and became an activist.
Culture: Spacey revels in Darin do; Alison Jones hears about a career spent in the shadows
Of course since then I remember Sinatra starting off, Elvis Presley, Bobby Soxers, the 50s, 60s, and 70s music, and being a jiver and loving dancing.
LETTERS: your views
Swenson was not the first to link many of these artists in print, a distinction belonging to Max Kozloff in his unsympathetic Art International article "'Pop' Culture, Metaphysical Disgust, and the New Vulgarians," a diatribe that called their work "sinister" and lamented the invasion of galleries by "the pinheaded and contemptible style of gum chewers, bobby soxers, and worse, delinquents." Swenson himself almost seemed to concur, writing, "There is something impudent in these works, something so simple-minded and obvious as to be unexpected." Yet his great critical insight was to recognize the "impudent" and "simple-minded" as potentially interesting aesthetic qualities.
Banned and determined: Scott Rothkopf on Gene Swenson
And to celebrate the charity event, Bobby soxers Lisa Kennedy and Katrina Noble hitched a ride with three loud and proud hot rods.
Beauties and some beasts
Vogers audacious concept traces the polarities of today's political climate to stereotypes that reached their apex in '50s B-movies, when girls were classified either as perky bobby soxers sipping sodas or leather-clad bad girls with loose morals to match their tight skirts.
THE MINEOLA TWINS