For youth, the disco was a space apart from everyday life for work on the self.

For youth, the disco was a space apart from everyday life for work on the self.

It was not a space to display who they were, but who they wanted to be.
It allowed young people with no skills to pretend they were players, to pretend they were glamorous.
The act was a fantasy, but it was also a fantasy with propsects, a rehearsal for the real selling of the self in the marketplace.

For many young regulars - like the hotel maid and other service workers - their entire stock of human capital was their image. Image-building and display were therefore particuarly rewarding and meaningful forms of play. Furthermore, the disco idealized and glamorized the market's best possibilities.