h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No i don't think so and i didn't really mention the concept of a fashion victim. I just think that, as opposed to the progress gained by; the suffragets, the working women of war times, the advancment of freedom in the 60's with the pill and the unrestrained 70's, the youth of today are not advancing the freedom of cultures, peoples, races etc, but exactly the opposite. Races and countries are beoming more segregated, less accepted and all because the media says it should be that way. We're going backward not forward. It's acceptable to be in fashion, ware maycup, have intercourse with who ever you want, swear and spit in the street. These things are not forward thinking - they are stale, stagnant ways of thinking. How are we letting this happen?

It's not acceptable to everyone!

In a strange way, the children wearing fashionable clothes & makeup is harking back to the past when children were dressed as minature adults. What is disturbing is when children are encouraged to behave as though they were adults.

Hailing from the part of the world where my fellow students really do talk like they're from Southern California (because, of course, they are) it doesn't seem to me like they're trying to be something they aren't. Most teenagers, it's true, follow trends and try to conform to fashion and what's cool and all that sort of thing. But I know these people - these are the people I'm in contact with every day of my life - and I respect them all as individuals. Whatever their levels of intelligence, whatever their amount of wish to 'try new things' or whatever anything else, every person is different. Bouncy may have said that it's sort of like quoting Monty Python ('Yes, we are all individuals!'), but I think that everyone really does have their own character. While on the outside teenagers may dress the same, act the same, be interested in the same things, each is very different inside. What unifies them is the desire to fit in - the traditional mark of the insecurity of those transferring from childhood to adulthood. I think you've got to give credit to the teenagers who make it through high school without becoming total washouts. It takes a lot of strength and moral fortitude to resist falling into the pit, to keep your grades up, all of that.

I'm not (I don't think) one of these people who really does conform to fashion. I'm a girl, yet wouldn't be caught dead in tight jeans and low-cut shirts. My idea of cool is boys' clothes or my kilt. But I'm just as guilty of doing things to fit in. In fact, my original adaptation of boys' clothes and my cutting my hair shorter were factors in my attempts to be accepted (although undeniably female) as a member of a certain group of really intelligent boys. It has, to some extent, succeeded - and one may note that, while my outside appearance has changed from the flowing skirts and hippie look of my last fashion trend, I am still essentially the same person. I have the same interests and loves and obsessions, and no wish to just get on in life will make me lose my passions for learning, for Academic League and for music. It's true - I don't have many friends and my social skills suck, so I really shouldn't be one to talk. But with all due respect, I think I (and the other teenagers here) have a greater right to speak authoritatively on what we see every day. We are a part of it and we know how it feels to just be trying to find your place in the world. Adults don't, I think, really remember what it's like.

That's a good reason to write all this stuff down now. My fellow teenagers - definitely keep a blog or a journal or something, because when you're old you're going to want to look back at what you said and thought and who you liked and what you wore so that you can remember that you were a person then too, and not just one of 'today's youth' who lacks all aspects of culture.

Nobody denies that every teenager (like everybody else) has his own personality. And of course there are exceptions, I've never worn fashianable cloths and never was part of the crowd. Still you can't deny that the crowd exists.
And you said it yourself: The clothes you wear can show to which group you belong.

And now don't tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm 20 years old.
And of course it's not "today's youth", it's always been like that, that's what I said the whole time.

'forgot the comma (,) after THINK'

It gets worse; I contrived to misspell 'John Stuart Mill'.


I'm starting to get the impression some of us are thinking in terms of multiple people _choosing_ to adopt certain patterns of behaviour, for experimental or whatever purposes, while others are thinking of herds of zombies sweeping somewhat less than majestically across the plains of pretty much everywhere.

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I agree. And I have to say that I think by far the vast amount of teenagers adopt the former pattern of existence.

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I agree with you "not confused"... as a teen I was pretty much the same, not following fashion trends (unlike my sisters). I was insecure, probably, but it manifested itself differently - I was never a follower of fashin, certainly not linguistically!