‘We can Get Everything We Want if We Try Hard’: Young People, Celebrity, Hard Work

Abstract

Drawing on 24 group interviews on celebrity with 148 students aged 14–17 across six schools, we show that ‘hard work’ is valued by young people in England. We argue that we should not simply celebrate this investment in hard work. While it opens up successful subjectivities to previously excluded groups, it reproduces neoliberal meritocratic discourses and class and gender distinctions.