Puppets on a String: an autopsy of femininity in 1960s British Pop

Femininity was of key importance in the construction of the public identities of female pop stars in 1960s Britain. Utilising the work of Gender historians, who have established the malleability of gender and how it is crafted in the establishment of public identities, this essay will discuss the varied ways the femininity of 1960s female pop stars was presented to the British public.^[1] Through the careful analysis of the careers of Sandie Shaw and Marianne Faithfull, I will illustrate how the diverse constructions of femininity were employed not only as a marketing tactic but also as a tool to assert proper codes of conduct for women in 1960s Britain. Furthermore, the evaluation of their careers exhibits the significant anxieties surrounding gender in post-war Britain and the manner in which societal discourses influenced representations of femininity in mainstream popular culture.

Figure 1: Sandie Shaw, 1960s.

Sandie Shaw rose to fame in 1964 following the release of the single ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me’ and garnered further success with the singles ‘Long Live Love’ and ‘Puppet on a String’, the latter winning the 1967 ‘Eurovision Song Contest’. Shaw became known for her theatrical style, her habit of not wearing shoes, and her romantic yet childlike songs. Femininity was a central component in the formation of Shaw’s identity as a musician, and in the way she was discussed in the media. Upon the outset of her career, Shaw was marketed as familiar and embodying a feminine paradigm that was relatable to the young women and girls of the 1960s. This is illustrated clearly by Tom Hutchinson, who wrote in the Women’s Mirror that Shaw was ‘a girl in a million, because she’s a girl like a million’.^[2] Shaw was marketed to young women as someone they could relate to, but more pertinently, as an exemplary model of an acceptable feminine paradigm that could be replicated by young British women. This phenomenon has been identified by feminist scholars, such as Valerie Walkerdine, as a form of social conditioning that coerces women into expressions of femininity that are deemed appropriate within patriarchal societies. Within the context of post-war Britain, this was typically through representations of girlhood and womanhood in popular culture output (such as magazines, music and television). This can be seen within the aforementioned quote by Hutchinson, which champions Shaw’s admirable normalcy alongside her femininity. Born into a working-class family in Dagenham, Shaw worked in a factory before being discovered in 1964.^[3] This origin was routinely emphasised in the press surrounding her, establishing her as an ordinary teenager whose success was possible for other teenage girls.^[4] Alexandra M. Apolloni illustrates that Shaw was presented as a ‘real-life Cinderella’ who, despite her success, remained representative of the majority of young British women.^[5]

The repeated emphasis on ‘normality’, and indeed of the mundane, in the marketing of Shaw’s image was reflective of the rapid social change occurring in post-war Britain.  Therefore, considering Shaw’s public persona was marketed as representative of the experiences of the majority of young British women in the 1960s, we can perceive the tensions and concerns surrounding femininity reflected within it.  When analysing the discourses surrounding Shaw and, indeed, how she represented herself, the tensions between conservative and liberal attitudes surrounding gender in 1960s Britain are evident. The lives of working-class women were rapidly changing. For example, the traditional occupation for working-class women, domestic services, was on a steady decline, and the traditionally middle-class and male-dominated office work was now the vocation of 40% of young women between the ages of 15 and 17.^[6] Furthermore, educational opportunities for women had significantly transformed in the post-war period, with 30% of British university students being women in 1962.^[7] However, as Andrew August argued, conservative gender roles were still significantly present during the 1960s, as evidenced by the average age of marriage, which dropped from 24.6 in 1951 to 22.6 in 1971.^[8] Women’s experiences of 1960s Britain were therefore complex, navigating a society that was simultaneously offering newfound freedom, all the while still championing patriarchal structures that sought to limit said freedom.

Such a dichotomy is notably present within Shaw’s public image. This is exemplified by a 1967 television performance of ‘Puppet on a String’, which focuses on Shaw singing alongside a swimming pool that has children playing within it.^[9] Upon first glance, Shaw appears to be the epitome of ‘swinging culture’, dressed in a crocheted mini-dress and walking around barefoot (Fig. 1).  In the performance, Shaw is sartorially presented as a distinctly modern and liberal woman, with her bare feet and sheer dress signifying anti-establishment sensibilities. However, as the performance progresses, she moves towards the playing children and begins to playfully splash them as she sings (Fig. 2).

Figure 2: : Sandie Shaw performing ‘Puppet on a String’ on an unidentified television show, 1967.

Figure 3: : Sandie Shaw performing ‘Puppet on a String’ on an unidentified television show, 1967.

Therefore, while Shaw’s dress is evocative of anti-establishment sentiment, her actions within the performance place her in a maternal role. This is emphasised by the set, which is a recreation of a suburban garden, directly placing Shaw within the domestic sphere. Shaw’s rebellious fashion, contrasting the domestic setting, illustrates well the manner in which her femininity was employed to represent the inherent tensions that were felt by young women in the 1960s. This is made all the more evident by the lyrics of ‘Puppet on a String’, which Shaw was obliged to sing following a 1967 public vote.[10] While Shaw disliked the misogynistic content of the song, Apolloni argues that she was convinced to accept the vote due to public concern surrounding her perceived subversion of acceptable gender expression.^[11] This concern originated to Shaw being cited in the divorce proceedings of TV executive Douglas Murdoch, who was alleged to have engaged in an extramarital affair with her.^[12] This resulted in significant public outrage and a smear campaign which castigated Shaw as ‘a manipulative femme fatale who deliberately disrupted the marriage’.^[13] Her role as an icon of attainable femininity was jeopardised as Shaw was perceived to have subverted this feminine paradigm and contributed to the widespread anxiety surrounding the sexualities of young women. Such widespread moral outrage is indicative of the societal anxiety surrounding sexuality that was engendered by the increasing autonomy allotted to women by such innovations as the 1961 introduction of the birth control pill.^[14] While it is not explicitly stated, it is evident that the song was a part of a wider effort to reframe Shaw’s femininity in reaction to her transgression of acceptable gender roles. The lyrical content of the song further confirms this argument as it places Shaw in a distinctly subservient and patriarchal role. The lyrics to ‘Puppet on a String’ are markedly dissimilar to those of her prior hits. While songs such as ‘There’s Always Something (There to Remind Me)’ and ‘Girl Don’t Come’ follow the pattern of love songs of the era, a protagonist longing for emotional fulfilment or dealing with heartbreak, they still assert agency for the songs' female narrators. This can be illustrated by ‘Girl Don’t Come’, which is centred around a man’s disappointment at having been stood up on a date. The song is not judgmental of the woman for standing her date up, and instead focuses on the man’s feelings of romantic rejection. More broadly, this normalises women’s autonomy within their romantic life, presenting it as unremarkable. However, following Shaw’s perceived breach of acceptable behaviour for women, it became necessary to reject Shaw’s previous image of relative autonomy by depicting her in a significantly patriarchal manner. The lyrics to ‘Puppet on a String’ are markedly patriarchal, with the song’s narrator declaring that she will be ‘like a puppet on a string’ for the man she loves.^[15] The song’s childlike melody is bolstered by lyrics of ‘merry-go-rounds’ and ‘fairs’, consequently ‘infantilising’ Shaw and depicting her as needing the control of a man.^[16] 

The varied representations of Shaw’s femininity demonstrate how femininity as a concept was integral to the creation of the stage personas of female singers in the 1960s. The singers themselves were utilised as expressions of femininity that reflected the lived realities of women, therefore ensuring their marketability. However, when this curated image was jeopardized a traditional and patriarchal image of femininity was enacted to keep them within the confines of respectability. This further illustrates that while the 1960s saw definite progress for women’s rights, it remained a distinctly patriarchal decade in which a woman’s worth was inherently associated with the reproduction of an acceptable feminine paradigm.

Figure 4: Marianne Faithfull, 1960s.

Another key example of popular singers being utilised as symbols of femininity in 1960s Britain is the career of Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull’s early career, which saw success in 1965 with the release of ‘Marianne Faithfull’, was characterised by a significant focus on her expression of femininity. Much like Shaw’s career, Faithfull’s femininity was distinctly politicised and came to symbolise the wider political climate of 1960s Britain. However, unlike Shaw’s attainable image and working-class origins, Faithfull came to represent ‘a galvanizing idea of feminine sexuality and class’ that was reliant upon her presentation as a symbol of the white upper-class English woman, reflecting the class anxieties of the period.^[17] Faithfull’s mother was ‘Baroness Erisso’ of the defunct Austro-Hungarian nobility, and these aristocratic origins were of key significance in the construction of her femininity.^[18]  Faithfull’s aristocratic pedigree was intentionally emphasised: in a 1964 press release, she was described as ‘a poetry reading sophisticate’.^[19] Such descriptions were aided by Faithfull’s notably upper-class singing voice, sonically expressing to listeners her aristocratic heritage. Unlike Shaw, whose interviewers largely asked questions about domestic or trivial matters, such as lifestyle and leisure, Faithfull’s education was emphasised. In a 1968 interview with the BBC, Phillip Jenkinson asked her a broad spectrum of questions ranging from contemporary psychology to her belief in the afterlife.^[20] The attention given to her superior education served to assert Faithfull as an intellectual and distinctly aristocratic woman. This was similarly expressed through her music, often exhibiting her upper-class education by singing in French or setting poetry to music.

The marketing of Faithfull as a paragon of upper-class womanhood was inherently racialised. Scholars have noted that it served to ‘cast her as the apotheosis of English womanhood, a symbol of racial purity’.^[21] While Faithfull’s aristocratic heritage was Austro-Hungarian, her received pronunciation and ‘haughty’ manner were evocative of a distinctly English tradition of nobility.^[22] Faithfull’s whiteness, and particularly her blondeness, were central to her image as the ultimate example of English femininity. The aforementioned 1964 press release described Faithful as ‘lissome and lovely with long blonde hair’.^[23] Music mogul Kim Fowley further illustrates this point when describing Faithfull as a ‘big-titted Aryan Goddess, the peak of wet-pussy goddess’.^[24] Fowley’s deplorable racism and misogyny exemplify that Faithfull’s white Englishness was fetishised and held up as a racialised symbol of a mythic sense of English femininity. This image was not solely interpreted by those who interacted with Faithfull’s music but was, in fact, propagated by Faithfull and her management. This is not to say that Faithfull viewed herself as a paragon of white femininity; rather, her music catalogue helped reproduce this image alongside the wider political landscape of post-war Britain. This argument is exemplified by Faithfull’s 1966 album ‘North Country Maid’. This album consisted of covers of contemporary and traditional folk songs, with 6 of its 12 tracks being renditions of traditional British and Irish folk ballads. While folk music is a diverse music genre, the work of scholars such as Caroline Lucas demonstrates how modern British folk music can ‘produce whiteness’, and, that ‘English folk music can be understood as encoded with racialised meanings which reproduce whiteness within the nation’.^[25] This is particularly true in the case of British folk music originating in the 1960s, which Julia Mitchell argues ‘echoed anxieties’ concerning immigration.^[26] These anxieties often manifested in a mythic idealisation of an older Britain that was divorced from modern contemporary reality and often explicitly white.^[27] Therefore, Faithfull’s recording of traditional folk ballads in ‘North Country Maid’ can be seen alongside such discourses. Faithfull’s musical output is inherently English, with numerous covers of iconic songs from English history, such as her 1964 cover of ‘Greensleeves’. While Faithfull herself certainly wasn’t a white supremacist, notably opposing Brexit and its racist underpinnings, the construction of her femininity as inherently white, alongside her recordings of historically English songs, was symptomatic of a growing English nativism and a racist cultural nostalgia. In fact, Faithfull’s anti-racist viewpoints exhibit how little agency musicians had in the construction and reception of their own image. The cultural anxieties of the period, such as feminine agency in the case of Shaw and racist anxieties in the case of Faithfull, were projected onto them by the public and their own management.

As was perceived in the career of Shaw, the femininity of women pop stars in the 1960s was malleable and altered in response to social concerns and public scandal. Regarding Faithfull’s career, the widespread outrage following her 1967 arrest for drug possession, alongside her boyfriend Mick Jagger, stemmed from the emphasis on female purity and whiteness within her early career. Following the arrest and during the very public trial, Faithfull was acutely vilified for supposed corruption.^[28] Apolloni astutely argues that this vilification of Faithfull is illustrative of a supposed breach of her racialised feminine archetype, as her romantic relationship with Jagger was representative of the corruption of her white femininity.^[29] While Jagger is white, scholars of music history have demonstrated that rock music was explicitly racialised upon its introduction to the British market and was seen to be a potentially corruptive influence due to its association with black culture.^[30] As Lee Marshall demonstrates, ‘the Stones explicitly aligned themselves to black music and black musicians’, consequently establishing themselves in the minds of white Britons as an example of the increasingly multicultural music industry, and more broadly British society as a whole.^[31] Their appropriation of traditionally black musical styles, such as soul or r&b, established a sonic association between the white band members and black culture. To those who upheld the racist notion of racial and cultural corruption stemming from increased contact with black people and black culture, white men like Jagger appropriating black cultural output were perceived as evidence of white cultural decay at the hands of increased cultural contact. While he was never viewed as anything other than a white man, his cultural output made him a symbol of cross-cultural contact, and as Riley summarises, threatened ‘the exclusivity and whiteness of British identity’.[32]

With this racist notion in mind, Faithfull’s arrest alongside Jagger was perceived as a transgression of her established image as a symbol of white femininity and further evidence of the perils facing white women in a multicultural Britain. This is best exemplified in a letter sent to Faithfull during the trial, which stated, ‘the sooner you leave this island with your long blond hair floating in the sea, it will be a cleaner place’.^[33] The writer is evidently of the opinion that this feminine paradigm has been sullied, as they illustratively describe Faithfull as being a pollutive influence on British society by stating that Britain would be ‘cleaner’ in her absence. Its description of Faithfull’s blondeness makes the racialised facet of her identity plain; what she was once celebrated for was now used against her due to perceived transgression. Through this letter, it is evident that Faithfull’s arrest was perceived, at least by some, as evidence of the corruption of her established feminine paradigm, which was inherently associated with a racialised understanding of English womanhood. Unlike Shaw, who released her greatest hit ‘Puppet on a String’ in response to a gendered public scandal, Faithfull’s 1960s career did not recover. Following the trial, she descended into drug addiction and experienced homelessness before her meteoric comeback in 1979 with ‘Broken English, released 12 years after the arrest.

Through the analysis of Shaw and Faithfull’s femininities, it is abundantly clear that the femininity of pop stars was presented in varied ways that were reflective of their own personal histories and the wider societal discourses surrounding gender, race and class. Shaw’s presentation was indicative of a societal tension between traditional gender roles and the increasing opportunities that were available for women in 1960s Britain. Depictions of Shaw’s eccentric and mildly rebellious femininity were still entirely dependent on the reassurance that she was acting within the confines of traditional gender ideals. This is evidenced not only by her performances, which contrasted her eccentricity with the domestic, but by her acutely patriarchal depictions following her perceived gender transgression. Faithfull’s femininity was similarly politicised; however, hers was dependent on a racialised notion of English womanhood that allowed her to be presented as an exemplary model of white English femininity. In the same manner that Shaw’s presentation of femininity was indicative of wider discourses surrounding gender, Faithfull’s emerged from the racist discourses surrounding the ‘exclusivity of Britishness’ that arose in post-war Britain. However, as was witnessed with Shaw, Faithfull’s transgression of this racialised view of English femininity resulted in widespread condemnation. Both women’s presentations of femininity arose from the complex dialogues surrounding gender and race in 1960s Britain and were central to the construction of their public identities.

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^[1] Namely Judith Butler and Alexandra M. Apolloni.

^[2] Alexandra M. Apolloni, ‘Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop’ (Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 51

^[3] ‘Sandie Shaw (MBE) - Dagenham’s Eurovision Superstar’, East End Women’s Museum, 13 May 2022 <https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/2022/5/11/sandie-shaw> [Accessed 7 May 2025]

^[4] Apolloni, pp. 49.

^[5] Apolloni, pp. 49.

^[6] Andrew August, ‘Gender and 1960s Youth Culture: The Rolling Stones and the New Woman’, Contemporary British History, vol. 23, 1 (2009), pp. 79-100 (pp. 81)

^[7] August, pp. 81

^[8] August, pp. 81

^[9] Sandie Shaw Channel, ‘Puppet on a String 1967’, December 24 2024 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uot2CpkEb8Q> [Accessed 28 April 2025]

[10] Apolloni, pp. 63

^[11] IBID.

^[12] IBID.

^[13] IBID.

^[14] Vicky Iglikowski-Broad, ‘Just a pill: 60 years of the contraceptive pill on the NHS’, National Archives, 4 December 2021 < https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/just-a-pill-60-years-of-the-contraceptive-pill-on-the-nhs/> [Accessed 2 May 2025]

^[15] Sandie Shaw, ‘Puppet on a String’, from Puppet on a String (Pye, 1967)

^[16] Apolloni, pp. 65

^[17] Apolloni, pp. 196

^[18] Apolloni, pp. 196-197

^[19] Apolloni, pp. 202

^[20] Phillip Jackson, ‘1968: MARIANNE FAITHFULL Talking | Film Review | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive’, Youtube, 31 January 2025 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwG55RBL89g&t=729s> [Accessed 5 May 2025]

^[21] Apolloni, pp. 206

^[22] Apolloni, pp. 203

^[23] Apolloni, pp. 199

^[24] Apolloni, pp. 203

^[25] Caroline Lucas, The Imagined Folk of England: Whiteness, Folk Music and Fascism, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, vol. 9, 1 (2012), pp. 1-19 (pp. 1)

^[26] Julia Mitchell, ‘Postwar Politics, Society and the Folk Revival in England, 1945-65’ (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 80

^[27] Lucas, pp. 1

^[28] Apolloni, pp. 209

^[29] Apolloni, pp. 209

^[30] Apolloni, pp. 170 and 199

^[31] Lee Marshal, ‘The Greatest Rock and Soul Band in the World? The Rolling Stones, genre and race’, Popular Music, vol. 73, 1 (2024), pp. 72-87 (pp. 83)

[32] Riley, pp. 150

^[33] Apolloni, pp. 210

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Bibliography

Apolloni, Alexandra M., ‘Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop’ (Oxford University Press, 2021)

August, Andrew, ‘Gender and 1960s Youth Culture: The Rolling Stones and the New Woman’, Contemporary British History, vol. 23, 1 (2009), pp. 79-100

Brocken, Michael, Derek B. Scott and Stan Hawkins, ‘The British Folk Revival: 1944-2002’ (Taylor & Francis, 2017)

Hodgkinson, Mark, ‘As Years Go By: Marianne Faithfull’ (Omnibus Press, 2013)

Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky, ‘Just a pill: 60 years of the contraceptive pill on the NHS’, National Archives, 4 December 2021 < https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/just-a-pill-60-years-of-the-contraceptive-pill-on-the-nhs/> [Accessed 2 May 2025]

Lucas, Caroline, The Imagined Folk of England: Whiteness, Folk Music and Fascism, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, vol. 9, 1 (2012), pp. 1-19

Marshal, Lee, ‘The Greatest Rock and Soul Band in the World? The Rolling Stones, genre and race’, Popular Music, vol. 73, 1 (2024), pp. 72-87

Mitchell, Julia, ‘Postwar Politics, Society and the Folk Revival in England, 1945-65’ (Bloomsbury, 2019)

Riley, Charlotte Lydia, ‘Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain’ (Random House, 2023)

Staubmann, Helmut (ed), ‘The Rolling Stones: Sociological Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2013)

Walkerdine, Valerie, ‘Femininity as Performance’, Oxford Review of Education, vol. 15, 3 (1989), pp. 267-279

Websites

‘A summary history of immigration to Britain’, Migration Watch UK, 12 May 2014 < https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/48/a-summary-history-of-immigration-to-britain> [Accessed 10 May 2025]

Agence France-Presse, ‘J.K. Rowling and other celebrities mourn Brexit vote: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever wanted magic more’’, Raw Story, 25 June 2016 < https://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/j-k-rowling-and-other-celebrities-mourn-brexit-vote-i-don’t-think-ive-ever-wanted-magic-more/> [Accessed 2 May 2025]

Phillip Jackson, ‘1968: MARIANNE FAITHFULL Talking | Film Review | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive’, Youtube, 31 January 2025 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwG55RBL89g&t=729s> [Accessed 5 May 2025]

‘Sandie Shaw (MBE) – Dagenham’s Eurovision Superstar’, East End Women’s Museum, 13 May 2022 <https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/2022/5/11/sandie-shaw> [Accessed 7 May 2025]

Sandie Shaw Channel, ‘Puppet on a String 1967’, December 24 2024 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uot2CpkEb8Q> [Accessed 28 April 2025]

Music

Faithfull, Marianne, ‘Come My Way’ (Decca, 1965)

______, ‘Love in a Mist’ (Decca, 1967)

______ , ‘North Country Maid’ (Decca, 1966)

Shaw, Sandie, ‘Girl Don’t Come’, from Sandie (Pye, 1965)

______ , ‘Puppet on a String’, from Puppet on a String (Pye, 1967)