“Disco Ladies ” – Production of Sexy Femininities Within the Yu-Disco Culture: The Example of Lokice

Abstract

This paper deals with the popular Yugoslav dance and singing group Lokice, which was active towards the end of seventies – right at the time when the local music business was adopting elements of disco. My goal is to understand how the kindred tropes of sexiness, sexuality and eroticism were employed in the production of femininities, and what these processes can tell us about the music industry in Yugoslavia, as well as its relationships with the female body. I thus wish to shed light on a specific case in which female sexuality was produced and offered for consumption, bearing in mind the specificities of Yugoslav market socialism. As a dance group, Lokice were, from the very beginning of their activities, associated with corporeality and sexiness, and their popularity grew in parallel with the expanding sexualization of Yugoslav culture. Therefore, I argue that, along with the adaptation of a commodified version of the American disco, Yugoslav popular culture also adopted the commodification of a specific form of styling and representation of female sexuality. The article offers an analysis of various television appearances, a few of the available interviews and newspaper articles, as well as songs from their album Ja sam dinamit (‘I am dynamite’).