5 Feet of Fury

Punk rock conservatism: women’s civilizing effect upon men

“That’s why The Beat invented the Beat Girl. When we used to see a lot of the skinhead fights, I said it is because the Two Tone Man hasn’t got no one to show off to other than his skinhead’s mates. You know what it is like, when you’ve got a room full of blokes showing off to each other, you end up with a broken nose contest. But if you’ve got a nice-looking girl in the room, you’ll be so busy showing off to the girl, you won’t have time to break each other’s noses.

“Within 3 months of inventing The Beat Girl, we got loads of girls in Beat Girl costumes at our gigs. With all the skinheads showing off like crazy to the girls, we hardly had any fights after that.”