A neo-Marxist model was developed to explain the emergence of youth subcultures after World War II, based on a cultural studies approach. While there is much to commend in the cultural studies model, the model is deficient in explaining the emergence of youth subcultures and the seemingly inordinate degree of policing directed at regulating the behavior of young people who participate in subcultures. The model's most obvious limitation is its mistaken search for the origin of youth subcultures in conditions of postwar capitalism. In addition, a body of feminist cultural studies has taken issue with the content of youth subcultures, their theorization within cultural studies, and their usefulness in explaining female participation in youth subcultures and delinquency. Both neo-Marxist and feminist variations of the cultural studies model rely heavily on totalizing concepts of power, policing, and social control in order to account for the degree of social concern directed at participants in youth subcultures. The problem is that these totalizing concepts provide few of the conceptual tools needed to analyze the actual policing of those who participate in youth subcultures. 13 references and 1 photograph