Walking past Junior College during school season always feels like entering a graveyard of memories. It’s not the location itself that has me experiencing an A Christmas Carol-like host of ghosts because I didn’t even attend sixth form there, but it’s the clothes.
I can’t believe I’m old enough for the fashion cycle to have gone full circle when I don’t feel much older than the teens I see, but the baggy, low-rise tracksuit trousers and crop tops tell a different story.
The other day, I sat down at one of the nearby bars for a quick tea before going on my next errand, and I marvelled at how everyone seemed to look the same and dress the same.
Yes, there were a few people with dyed mullets and baggier clothes than the rest, but for the most part, it was like there was an unspoken uniform. I suppose, on some level, it made me a little sad that there weren’t slightly more experimental looks in an age of so much sartorial choice.
It’s in moments like these where I feel that perhaps social media has done more harm than good. People have become so scared of being laughed at and of their Instagram stories being shared hundreds of times for all the wrong reasons that they don’t want to take risks anymore.
Adolescence should be a time of self-expression and discovery of who you are and what you’d like to be, a time of “mistakes” and heartbreaks, but the overarching feeling I get is that our young are more interested in safe, sanitised perfection.
Unlike my generation, they were born with a camera pointed at them and have had to perform ever since. The pressure must be enormous. The 20-year gap between my adolescence and theirs seems to have made all the difference.
I got this feeling that I suppose only older people get, of climbing on the table I was seated at and shouting at the top of my lungs about how they need to enjoy this time and feel free enough to express themselves – before the adult world swallows them up and a million and one responsibilities start to pull them in every direction.
But, instead, I was snapped out of my reverie by a small group of girls on the table next to me staring and giggling as a tall boy walked past the sixth form gates.
Perhaps things haven’t changed that much after all.
