BRA BOYS
Daily Telegraph - December 2007

OH, those loveable Bra Boys are at it again - stealing apples from old Mrs McGillicutty's orchard, smashing windows with their slingshots and arranging for 6kg of cocaine to be imported to Sydney on a flight from LA.

Well, allegedly.

To tell you the truth, if some of the Bra Boys are importing cocaine I wouldn’t really mind. After all, advertising executives need something to fill the void and their crumbling septums are of far less concern to me than my right to go to the beach and not feel I'm going to be killed.

I really, really hate the Bra Boys. I hate them for all the usual reasons: because they're violent and intimidating and have ruined many days for many people at Maroubra, an otherwise friendly and democratic place, the last beach in the Eastern Suburbs where it's OK to have back hair.

I don't, however, hate the Bra Boys merely because they are thugs. I hate them because they don't even have the decency to be honest about their thuggishness – they’re self-righteous, moralistic thugs, full of their own importance and blind to their hypocrisies. They're like a heritage preservation society, except the bitchy old ladies all have tattoos and drug problems.

The Bra Boys are fond of portraying themselves as misunderstood and much maligned. In reality they are not nearly maligned enough and are “misunderstood” only insofar as they seem to be regarded by many as lovable ruffians who are forced to beat up people merely because some of them grew up in public housing.
You can be a tough guy or a big whiney baby, but trying to be both is just kinda lame.

If further proof were needed that this sentimental nonsense has worked, that it has granted the Bra Boys a privileged position in the public consciousness, then ask yourself whether Russell Crowe would have ever agreed to narrate and publicise a documentary about Lebanese gangs in western Sydney. Could you imagine the outcry if Maximus was seen posing for pictures with a bunch of Habibs and Hassans? For some reason it doesn't seem so cool when the crims don't surf.

The Bra Boys are part of long Australian tradition of romanticising thuggery, from Ned Kelly to Chopper Read and the Hell's Angels (an organisation who have apparently realised that giving away a few toys every year allows you to get away with murder, literally).

By exploiting dishonest redemption narratives and sentimental notions of “the battler” they have given themselves a bogus semi-legitimacy in which stand-over tactics are portrayed as local pride and violence dismissed as merely Bra Boys being Bra Boys.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008