OCTOBER ESSAY: Teen Life
Last Friday night, I stepped onto another planet. There wasn’t a
cosmic equinox party or illegal substance abuse. I went to my stepson’s
high school football game in Painesville, Ohio, an eastside community
composed of farmland and many new subdivisions, built as suburbanites
flee to escape Mentor’s urban sprawl.
As soon as we paid his admission, Hunter bolted off in the company
of his 14 year-old classmates, leaving a stream of fragrant hair gel and
hormones in his wake. We pushed our way through the gentrified,
multi-generational crowd, there to see the Riverside Beavers kick tail.
Girls age seven on up were dressed for the event sporting low cut
bell bottoms, strappy midriff T-shirts, crinkly, glittery hair and
painted faces. The boys were subtle but stylish in clean baggy jeans and
shorts, preppy T-shirts, shell necklaces, high-end athletic shoes and
carefully arranged hair. Many kids carried and chatted continuously on
cell phones, possibly to other friends actually at the same game.
Conversation snippets revolved around who’s doing whom, going out with
whom or dumping whom, cars, music, clothes, and hair. Football moms and
cheerleader moms gathered and chatted, taking a quick turn in the local
spotlight. The band played a bad rendition of Queens’ Fat Bottomed
Girls while hefty, glittery-haired cheerleaders dropped their batons.
By the end of half time I was embarrassed for our society, realizing
that this scenario was taking place everywhere across America that same
evening. Ohio City living shields many of us from the materialism of
urban sprawl and those who embrace it. My generation was influenced by
mass marketing, but the advertising was limited to print , television
and radio. The marketing gurus let us live our little lives making our
own decisions and deciding who we idolized and who we wanted to be
without forcing it down our jeans, in our ears, before our eyes and in
our tummies.
I recall the preppy crowd wore Fair Isle sweaters, chinos,
button-downs, and loafers. If you didn’t like scratchy sweaters, you
could still survive happily in the school environment. There was a lot
of music and dancing, but we didn’t require individual pastel-colored
sound systems with headphones. We wore makeup, but there weren’t
special makeup kits luring us to wear eye shadow at eight years old.
Revealing clothing was saved for adults. We talked on the phone in the
evening, not on the Internet morning, noon and night where advertising
messages are constantly in your face.
The Internet and the strong campaigns for specific store brands put
pressure on teens to form a packaged identity. Can today’s teenager
survive in school without all the gimmicks or is there too much pressure
to conform to what our advertising market wants them to look like,
listen to and become? As parents we follow along with the marketing,
making sure our little angels have the latest fashions, music and
videos. It’s hard not to when the merchandise presented is so cute and
well-packaged. I’m unsure how to handle these habits as my preschoolers
turn into pre-teenagers. Will our good values and idols outweigh the
material ones? We as parents have a strong competition with today’s
obtrusive marketing companies when it comes to raising ‘tweens and
teens. Obviously, the marketing trend is getting stronger each season.
Every successful retail company has an infant , toddler , youth ,
preteen and teen line, be it furniture, clothing, hair products, books
or writing utensils. Imagine the future. By the next decade the city
planners, realtors and builders will be in on the whole scheme. A part
of the city will be positioned for teens only. Parents will build their
teens their own custom home, decorated to their child’s specifications
with the latest colors, furnishings and electronic gadgets. Prepackaged
and fast food will be delivered at regular intervals and designer credit
cards will be issued to use at teen-restaurants, charging to the
parents’ account. Teen clothing outlets, salons, electronic and software
stores will position themselves in the teen communes and readily accept
the teen credit cards. Churches will have special services for the teens
online so that they can tune in at their convenience as opposed to
getting up so early on Sunday morning. Of course, school will still
exist for social reasons, but most of the class work will be available
online. Marketing companies will have representatives that rule the teen
culture, making sure that everything is kept in line and no one decides
to go against mainstream policy. Parents will check in daily on instant
messaging and will show up on Sundays to do their child’s laundry. At
age 18, the teen will leave this ideal world, only to enter the next
marketing niche geared to the college student.
As I’m writing, I just received a call from a friend. She said she
saw an ad for thongs for young girls - and I don’t mean flip-flops. The
holidays are coming; don’t miss out!
Perhaps I’m overreacting because the target marketers for my age
group are pushing anti-wrinkle cream, St. John’s Wort and life
insurance. Moms 35 and older are no longer in the fun, hip
demographics. The Marketing department knows I’m thinking about
whitening my teeth and darkening my hair. Face it, those cute junior
fashions don’t work for us baby boomers. We’re the market for chemicals,
closet storage systems, and pants with
stretchy waistbands. And what fun is that?