A thought for the afternoon.
Don't hate the hoodies
Something about teenaged cool lends itself to being misappropriated by the middle classes. Bear with us and we'll explain, although we can't guarantee a complete lack of pomposity. Ten years ago, when we and our readers were hanging around in parks desperately trying to look fashionable, hoodies weren't common. They were, in fact, the mark of a 'grunger', which in our day was someone who didn't wash and wished Kurt Cobain were still alive and squawking.
For years this didn't change, and most hoodies were adorned with angsty slogans such as "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me", "I'm so emo I'm dead" and various other things that our grandparents wouldn't understand. Simply wearing one of these things was an incitement to bullying, and the kind of people who wore them were more likely to get trounced in the playground than do any beating of their own.
But at some point between now and then two things have happened. Firstly, the hoodies have been appropriated by the kind of kids who used to hate them. This most versatile of fashion items is now twinned not with leatherette trousers and a greasy goth haircut but with Nike trainers and a switchblade. Secondly, our parents and other members of the middle classes have finally understood an aspect of 'young' culture. They even know the word for it, and spell it correctly (thumbs up to the Daily Mail editorial team). As such 'hoodies' are now blamed for everything from stabbings to shoplifting, ASBOs to alcoholism. It's baffling.
And so we would like to point out that you can ban 'hoodies' if you like, and you can harass the bollocks off them until they get fed up and go home to play Xbox, but as soon as hoodies become unfashionable again you'll have to leave this word alone and expand your vocabulary in the fight against crime. Glitterditch hopes that the next fashion item to be appropriated by the knife-wielding gangs is something a little more tight fitting, but life doesn't tend to be that pretty. Sigh.
Adorable picture courtesy of ohoski on Flickr.
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1 Comments
Think we have some different breeds of yob these days. To be honest I think the Daily Mail editors are a little confused. One day they were walking along, felt threatened by an image of something like a knife on a hoodie. Goths have had the scary 'image' covered for ages, it's just cooler now. Everyone knows the really dangerous people wear football shirts...
Sadly, you can still get beaten up for looking different...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7291985.stm