Is it me or have kids become incredibly grown up now? They look like mini-me’s. In fact, most teenagers look a) older than me, b) prettier than me, and c) a lot better dressed than me. When did this happen?
When I was a teenager, hot emo boys were a thing. You know what I’m on about. I definitely wasn’t the only person to have a folder of them on my parents computer. I wore skinny ties with white vests, and converse with neon pink laces in one shoe and neon green in the other. I also lived in an oversized Batman jumper I got from Camden, and I had something like *x_iNdIeEe_x* <3 ???? as my MSN name, and a ‘dp’ that either perfectly summed up how hard it was to be a teenager. Which was like, really hard you know?
As well as MSN, there was Myspace. It pains me to think that thirteen year olds no longer have to rush home, dial up to the internet to change their mood on Myspace. I believe a common favourite of mine was ‘chipper’. Or know how difficult it is to take the perfect picture of yourself, complete with traditional Myspace hand, without a front facing camera. Or understand just how difficult it was to choose a song for your page that represented you completely, and then use html to hide the player so everyone had to listen.
I used to wear thick, black eyeliner underneath my entire eye. I remember my dad cautiously saying something like “err that is a lot of eyeliner for school isn’t it?” to which my reply was probably something like “OH MY GOD DAD YOU’RE SO EMBARRASSING YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYTHING WHY DON’T YOU JUST STAY OUT OF MY LIFE FOREVER I HATE YOU”. Err, sorry dad! As well as various unfortunate makeup mishaps (shall we brush over at talcum powder for face powder?) there was the hair up in a low pony with two thin strands of hair framing the face, the compulsory two hair thick brows, the bags covered in badges, the odd socks and the My Chemical Romance lyrics scrawled up my arms. Among many other crimes I’ve blanked from my memory.
When I go home and see my friends, probably one of the main things we do is to laugh about these times of our lives. One of my best friends from school and I share so many embarrassing secrets we’ve sworn to take them to the grave! But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And I definitely wouldn’t trade it for the air brushed, adult lives teenagers have now. I keep seeing Instagram accounts for girls no older than 14 wearing what can only be described as slut attire, or in their PJs (aka slut PJs) and a full face of makeup captioned “in bed, so ugly without makeup”. I think teen crimes now (rather than neon laces) is to be seen on Facebook, or wearing anything that isn’t the latest Topshop release. Or having a hair out of place even though it’s raining.
Obviously I am generalising, and I know that teens now are in a completely different technological and social era than when I was a teenager, but still. If I could go back, I’d relive all my embarrassing moments and have a thousand more, and I find it sad that teens now might look back and regret not using their childhood to actually be a child.If you can’t make ridiculous fashion choices and makeup fails and general embarrassing life choices on a daily basis at fourteen, when can you?
What is your favourite embarrassing memory? And do you think kids nowadays are too grown up?
