This document discusses how notions of respectability in the night time economy (NTE) are based on social characteristics like gender, class, race, age, and religion. It argues that the NTE is a complex space where multiple aspects of identity intersect and inform what is seen as appropriate or disrespectable behavior. Specifically, it examines how the NTE is often sexualized through gendered expectations around women's alcohol consumption, dress, and interactions with men. It also explores how class and gender shape what types of people and behaviors are seen as respectable in certain NTE spaces. Finally, it discusses how factors like race, age, and religion also constitute ideas of respectability regarding behaviors like drinking. The document concludes that understanding individual

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Concerns about the sexualisation of the night time economy are based on
highly classed, sexed and gendered notions of respectability. Discuss.
The night time economy (NTE), or night cultures (as articulated by Bianchini, 1995) refer to
the collective activities, spaces and people that operate during evenings and nights, including
restaurants, bars and clubs. The NTE has been argued to represent a space of ambivalence and
transgression (Chatterton, 2002), where people may negotiate between the legal and illegal. Such
thresholds are partly informed by particular notions of respectability that delineate what and who are
deemed appropriate as well as where and when this is the case. These norms are enforced by various
actors, such as security staff, police or parents. Consequently, people who do not fit normative
constructions are routinely excluded from every-day (or in this case ‘every-night’) participation (Sibley,
1995). Chatterton (2002: 25) argues that such norms tends to favour “highly mobile, cash-rich youth
groups … and wealthier sections of the student, gay and female market”, and produce narrow limits of
acceptance and respectability. As such, bodies engaged in the NTE are inscribed with, among others,
“gendered, classed, aged and sexed meanings” (Hubbard, 2005: 121) which collectively constitute a
person as either belonging to a particular space – such as a club – or not.
This essay examines how different social characteristics construct particular notions of
respectability, focusing on examples of sexualised, gendered, classed, racialized, aged and faith-based
respectability to demonstrate that the NTE is a complex time-space in which myriad axes of social
difference intersect. Therefore, the first part of the essay will comment on ways in which the NTE is
sexualised, with a focus on the sexualisation of women through two different examples: alcohol
consumption and dress. The second part of the essay will examine how certain social characteristics –
class and gender – interact with the NTE and form particular notions of respectability. The third part of
the essay will extend the argument to include race, age and religion as social characteristics that also
constitute particular notions of respectability in the NTE. Attention will be paid to young people’s
engagement with the NTE (specifically with alcohol consumption). Whilst it is acknowledged that
young people are not the only age group to engage in the NTE and in alcohol consumption (Holloway
et al., 2009), and that alcohol consumption is not the only activity undertaken within the NTE
(Bianchini, 1995), these two ideas are pertinent to many studies of night cultures. The essay concludes
by arguing that the pluralistic nature of respectability in the NTE must be taken into account when
exploring individual experiences of this time-space.
The NTE is often associated with alcohol consumption, and sites of consumption are
themselves gendered in that drinking in public places such as pubs or bars is argued to produce
hegemonic forms of masculinity (Holloway et al., 2009). Masculinity is also generally associated with
public drunkenness and alcohol-induced civil disorder, including violence (Hubbard, 2005). This
gendering of alcohol consumption is intimately tied to a sexualisation of drinking and ‘going out’ (Waitt

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et al., 2011). Anderson et al. posit that “sexuality is a routine component of performed masculinity”
(2009: 307). Men enact ‘hypermasculine’ identities within the NTE partly through their negotiations of
female bodies. For example, flirting, catcalling and dancing with women in clubs are ways in which
men reinforce their masculine identities in ways deemed ‘appropriate’ by their peers (Anderson et al.,
2009). Additionally, emotions such as fear and sadness which are traditionally associated with weakness
and femininity are repressed in order to conserve masculinity. On the other hand, women also negotiate
sexualised notions of drinking. Waitt et al. (2011) argue that, in ‘patriarchal drinking cultures’, women
are less likely to be subjected to moral judgements when drinking with friends. Women drinking alone
were “understood as sexually promiscuous” and of a lower social class by participants in Waitt et al.’s
study (2011: 260). Therefore, the NTE is sexualised through the ways in which men negotiate women
both emotionally and corporeally.
Another way in which the NTE is sexualised is through ‘respectable’ notions of dress, which
consequently affects access to difference spaces, such as clubs (Waitt et al., 2011). Women often feel
under scrutiny from men when entering bars or clubs according to physical attributes such as their
breasts (Young, 1990 cited in Waitt et al., 2011), and their clothing. Exposed skin is generally
encouraged and thus the female body is inscribed with particular sexualised meanings, generally by
men. This sexualisation brings an important conflict with it, because women are forced to negotiate
between notions of respectability tied to their access to different places, as well as respectability towards
their families, friends, media and even themselves. This ‘double standard’ is explained in another way
by Holloway et al. (2009), who argue that despite women drinking less on average than men, they face
harsher criticism than men when they do drink. When applied to this negotiation of respectability,
women are caught between a rock and a hard place, where they are sexualised in order to gain access
to certain places, but in so doing risk being marginalised for engaging in ‘disrespectable’ behaviour,
such as wearing little or revealing clothing.
Having demonstrated that the NTE is fraught with concerns of ‘sexualisation’, the essay will
now consider how such concerns are based on notions of respectability which are themselves informed
by social characteristics – namely gender and class. Gender is one such characteristic that is intimately
tied with the sexualisation of the NTE. Academics writing about the NTE have argued that the city is
constructed as a masculinist space by neoliberal urban policy. Such urban renaissance leads to a re-
inscribing of “patriarchal relations in the urban landscape” (Hubbard, 2004: 666). Thus, city centres are
often sites of corporate leisure in which male alcohol consumption is considered appropriate.
Elsewhere, drinking practices amongst women have been found to be stigmatised and considered as
inappropriate given the traditional associations of women with the care and nurture of children and the
home (Allamani et al., 2000). The gendered assumptions that underlie the NTE have not gone
unchallenged however. One social phenomenon which contests traditional gendered assumptions is the
‘bachelorette party’ (Montemurro, 2003). Developed as a counterpart to traditional pre-marital bachelor

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parties, the bachelorette party challenges traditional gender relations in that women often engage in the
NTE through practices embodying notions of sexual freedom. Women take part in activities aimed at
sexualisation and empowerment, such as adorning the bride-to-be with phallic objects and sexualised
encounters with male strippers or strangers (Montemurro, 2003). Such performances of gender identity
subvert traditional assumptions that women have something to gain in marrying another person
(typically a man), and instead mirror the idea that, through marriage, men lose their sexual freedom. In
so doing, women are able to contest established gendered notions of respectability.
Another social characteristic bound with notions of respectability in the NTE is class.
Chatterton and Hollands (2003) posit that the NTE is changing to cater for specific types of people
through processes of gentrification. They argue that ‘rebranding’, through high-pricing strategies and
stylistic codes, produces a new, exclusive clientele typically composed of white, middle-classed young
people. Therefore, spaces such as bars and clubs become classed, resulting in the marginalisation of
others, such as working-class youths who cannot necessarily afford such expensive outings. Class-
division in the NTE is demonstrated by Nayak (2006) who argues that working-class ‘charvers’ in
North-East England experience a displacement by being excluded from mainstream drinking venues
due to associations with crime, violence and drug use. Their identities as ‘chavs’ are socially constructed
as being inappropriate and disrespectable in particular places, and they become economically-
disconnected from certain spaces due to expensive entry and drinks prices. Nayak also observes that
respect within these class-specific groups is gained and maintained through particular performances of
masculinity, such as fighting and sexual conquest. This demonstrates that while notions of respectability
in the NTE can be class-based, they also intersect with notions of gender and thus are pluralistic in
nature.
The third part of this essay will extend the title by considering how race, age and religion also
constitute particular notions of respectability within the NTE. The section begins by considering race.
Certain night-culture spaces used predominantly by people of black-African origin are associated with
criminal and dangerous behaviour, leading to social stigmatisation of these places and of the people
who frequent them (Talbot, 2004). Such stigmatisation affects the ways in which people negotiate these
spaces. For example, Talbot and Rose (2007) document the changes in Southview, an area of London,
and argue that white ‘tourists’ in such spaces often move between venues in taxis, sealed off from the
activities occurring on the street in order to avoid contact with the predominantly black resident
population. This produced a ‘safari-park’ atmosphere in which the local residents were perceived as
wild and dangerous by visiting revellers. Other responses to stigmatisation of particular places and races
include increased policing and legislative regulation which result in a ‘pathologisation’ of black culture
(Talbot and Rose, 2007) and have caused venues associated with black culture in places like Southview
and Manchester to be closed down. Therefore racial difference can produce particular notions of
respectability in spaces of the NTE, based on perceptions of criminality and danger.

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Age represents a further axis along which notions of respectability within the NTE can arise.
Young people (especially male) tend also to be associated with crime and uncivil behaviour (Pain,
2003), which can often be induced by alcohol and drug consumption that commonly occurs within the
NTE. Kraack and Kenway (2002) argue that fears of such behaviour arise from particular,
intergenerational constructions of respectability. Studying a small town in Australia, Kraack and
Kenway observe how young people (aged 13-16) are demonised by parents and elderly residents. One
way in which respectability is constructed is through the consumption of alcohol, which amongst youths
is consumed in large amounts in order to become intoxicated. On the other hand, older residents (again,
mainly male) reported drinking as a reward for the physical exertion endured during a hard day’s work.
Young people in Kraack and Kenway’s study negotiated identities that they chose to adopt, as well as
those projected onto them by older residents, and therefore were subject to different, aged constructions
of respectability.
Finally, religion can also produce particular notions of respectability related to the NTE. Certain
faiths, such as Islam and branches of Christianity, promote cultures of abstinence from drinking alcohol
and pre-marital sexual activity. These faith-cultures are based on traditional notions of respectability
for oneself, parents and elders and therefore young people may not drink, or attempt to hide drinking
habits from friends and family. Valentine et al. (2010: 12) argue that, amongst Pakistani Muslims living
in the UK, alcohol is regarded as an independent agent which can induce uncontrollable, loud and
disrespectable behaviour that “runs counter to cultural expectations of modesty and embodied
respectability”. Valentine et al. also state that patterns of consumption among Muslim youths are
“gendered and generational” (2010: 13), which again demonstrates how multiple axes of social
differences intersect and produce complex notions of respectability which are articulated in the context
of drinking and the NTE.
In summary, the NTE is a complex time-space in which conflict occurs between social
characteristics of gender, class, race, age and religion and the notions of respectability they each
embody. Concerns of the sexualisation of the NTE have been presented in the first section of the essay
according to two themes: alcohol consumption and dress. The second section discussed notions of
respectability in relation to two specific social characteristics – gender and class. Whilst these represent
some concerns of the NTE, the third section elaborated on this by introducing race, age and religion as
also producing particular notions of respectability. The myriad axes of difference presented here
demonstrate the complexity underpinning notions of (in)appropriateness, (ab)normality and
(dis)respectability. While it is clear that social characteristics play important parts in how people are
perceived, stigmatised and responded to in the context of the NTE, the multiple ways in which they
intersect must be taken into account to understand individualised experiences of the NTE.

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Main body word count: 1998
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