Lowrider culture is usually linked to the defiant machismo of L.A.’s Mexican American pachucos during the city’s racial unrest during World War II, who, faced with aggressive discrimination, donned cartoon-like zoot suits to flaunt their contempt for their Anglo tormentors. They also modded their rides to hover inches above the pavement; the mantra was “low and slow,” and a phalanx of lowriders creeping down a boulevard was both entrancing and intimidating. As the hot-rod craze—elevated chassis, revved-up engines—grew during the ’50s, the pachucos of East L.A. went right on dropping and chopping while festooning their Impalas with fantastical pinstripes, vainglorious personal oaths, and lifelike renderings of familia—Facebook profiles before the internet.
But as photographer Kristin Bedford discovered while spending five years with today’s lowriders, the subculture is now populated with a substantial number of women who are just as passionate about their rides and what they represent, both as larger cultural signifiers and as empowering accessories of their feminism.
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