Thursday, 2 April 2009
'Individuality', that well-known A Level French topic.
I've been racking my brain a lot lately to try and find out what people mean when they say 'individuality'. It's as hard to define as it is to touch-type, and everyone has a different idea of what it is exactly. Are those chavvy little twonks who creep out of lessons every day for a sneaky fag 'individual' because they do something that not a lot of students do, albeit because the other stupids have a higher level of intelligence? Or are they just slaves to the media, rebelling because the media tells us that it's cool to do things that you shouldn't?
Now, I don't think that I'm exactly the same as everyone else. I don't make a point of being different, by which I mean that I don't go to school in a dress made out of recycled McDonalds' packaging with 7-inch platform boots, but I don't make a point of following the latest trends either. Ugg boots will not be seen in my wardrobe nor on my feet unless someone's threatened to let their dog off the lead in my presence if I don't wear them. Which, let's face it, isn't likely. My favourite dress is my brown one with cats on, my favourite shoes are blue ankle boots and I'm quite partial to a bright cardie now and then. There are hundreds of people who dress like me. And yet they're not me.
Individuality comes down to so many things - looks, likes and dislikes, background and experiences - so with so many factors, how can you truly define it? Just because all the emos in the world look like they were born in a petri dish in a cloning factory doesn't mean that they're all the same. Emo 1 might like wearing pink bows in her hair. Emo 2 might only wear green. And emo 3 - God help him - might not cut himself. Emo 4 might have parents who are divorced, and emo 5 might live in a huge house in a little cul-de-sac with her parents and pet chihuahua. They're different. But they try to be the same. Why? Since when has it been cool to fit into a mould? We're not jelly. We're individuals. We should try to be individual.
And now for the brain-boggler. Someone once told me that if we have to try to be individual, we're not really individual. This is reinforced in one of my old school friends who suddenly decided one day that she wanted to be a 'rocker', so she got a bad dye-job on her hair and purchased a range of 'emo' clothes from Debenhams, of all places. We all nagged her, as teenage girls do, to be herself. We'd like her more if we felt that we still knew her. But no, to her being cool was just more important than we were, and eventually we all just stopped talking. I saw her recently. She's got bright red hair and has gone for the 'indie' look, and I feel like slapping her and saying 'Christ, woman, just be yourself. Avril Lavigne might be a talentless Canadian twit who wants to be American and seriously needs to stop dressing like a pre-teen harlot, but she had the right idea in that awfully catchy song of hers'.
You know that things are bad when Avril Lavigne becomes a philosopher.

So, when I'm asked in my next French lesson what I think of individuality and fashion, I shall shrug and say 'je ne sais pas, parce que, a mon avi, ca n'existe pas!', then demand cake and sit there looking like a smug git in my cat-dress and ankle boots, with poorly applied eyeliner and pitifully messy hair.

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posted by AnwenKya at 12:06 -
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Name: AnwenKya
Home: Cardiff
About Me: I am a 5ft blonde teenager with an overactive imagination, bad temper and terrifying sense of humour. Hear me roar!
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