Bobby soxer

Bobby soxer was a term coined in the 1940s to describe the overly zealous, usually teenage, fans of singer Frank Sinatra, the first singing teen idol. By the 1950s, fashionable teen girls wore poodle skirts while rolling their socks down to ankle level.

In schools, gymnasiums were often used as dance floors. However, since hard-soled shoes and street detritus would scar polished basketball floors, students were forbidden to wear street shoes and instead danced in their bobby socks, thus introducing the phrase 'sock hop'.

Shirley Temple portrayed this type of impressionable adolescent in the 1947 film, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer.