Rebel? The Fight for Individuality

In this day and age, a sense of individuality is almost pushed off as a hot commodity for our younger generations. However, in the grand scheme of things, they may be fighting a pointless battle. Does there come a point that in the efforts of alienating yourself from the rest of society, you actually fall right in line? To put it in so many words, yes.

Disregarding any degrading terms such as "trend" and "fad", the new yearning for America's children is to have a sense of identity that is solely yours; some sort of defining feature that exclaims "Hey look, this is me, and I'm different!" Alot of this need for individuality is fueled and driven by the music industry. For example, the explosion of punk and hardcore music in the past few years has pushed many adolescent fans to only buy a certain style of clothing and wear their hair in a particular fashion. By doing this, many of today's youth are attempting to make a statement of rebelliousness, which is the original basis of such styles of music.

I do believe, however, that there does come a point in which you must figure out exactly what the majority is. We've arrived at a juncture that even visiting a thrift store, which was almost taboo in the fashion world half a decade ago, has become very popular. Stores such as Hot Topic, which began as rather exclusive stores for exclusive musical taste, can be found nowadays filled to the brim with teens and young-adults paying ridiculous inflated prices for the new punk-rock sensations t-shirt. This isn't hard to explain, particularly living in a world where bands such as Green Day carry enough sway to actually be a tool for political agendas. Bands are now being sponsored by hair salons and clothing lines.

Some lines of products actually make the claim of being based on individuality in order to garner more sales, which wouldn't make the proud owner of one of their hoodies very individual at all. It boils down to this; there are alot of easily influenced youth with alot of money to spend. The allure of going against the grain and being the James Dean of your class draws enough sales to major market forces that these "punks" and "rebels" are nothing more than clever advertising tools. Want a real sense of being an individual? Ask the guy sitting next to you in the school football jersey. He's almost more of a rebel than the rebels.