Sunday, August 07, 2011

Uniforms

It often strikes me as an oxymoron that teenagers who claim to be rebelling against everything the older generation stands for will still wear the same gear as each other, effectively turning themselves into uniformed beings. They'll claim that the adults are conformist and lacking in individuality or creativitiy and yet...chunks of the boys will be wearing their trousers hanging down around their butts - almost falling off their butts in fact.

Or the girls will wear jeans that reveal almost everything - especially those awful thong things..

Other non-conformists will wear nothing but black (except perhaps hair that's dyed a peculiar colour). Another group wear hoodies and pants so sloppy that you can't tell whether they actually have legs or not.

Uniforms are part and parcel of everyday life: from the loose-fitting clothes now worn by nurses in hospital (cleaned presumably at discount scrubs) to the smarter uniforms worn by policemen or firemen (and the styled moustaches to go with them). Even businessmen and women wear uniforms - how many suits do you see that aren't black or dark blue these days?

It's quite normal, and you'd think it would be one of the things the youngsters would react against. Nope, they just go straight into whatever is the 'uniform' of the day (those listed above are all heading away from being 'in') and conform themselves into a different group.

Odd.

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