I work in a job that is a minefield of contrasts. I mean, the fact that I can have days, hours, minutes even where I will absolutely love it and still end up hating it (and vice-versa), sums up the contrast nicely. But that’s teaching for you. For all the fun of showing off in front of a room full of kids – because that’s really all it comes down to – there’s the sheer hell of marking thirty essays, or worse still, pieces of creative writing. For every moment of breakthrough you have with a fantastic, thoughtful answer from a student there’s a terrible moment of realisation that there’s yet another meeting to go to.
And yet, as I’ve gotten older my job has revealed another area of contrast that is both a delight and a curse. I’m finding that working with young people both keeps me young – not literally, we’d all be flocking to the profession if that was actually the case – and makes me feel old. Very, very old. Because the older you get, the more detached you get from younger people and what’s actually current.
‘Meanwhile you’ve been attending foam parties…and accruing a debt so monumental that it would rival that of some Pacific Islands.’
I’m not sure that this is the case for every teacher. I feel sure that there are entire swathes of my profession that were middle-aged when they started out as teachers and always will be middle aged. Again, not literally. Some people are just old at heart. In many ways it’s the nature of the teacher. I mean, you can’t tell me that at 22 and fresh out of university you have a great deal more life experience than the teenagers in front of you. In your early twenties, having only just emerged blinking from the cocoon that it higher education, it could be argued that you know absolutely nothing. Some of your peers have been to war, held down steady jobs, are married, have children, pay bills and have genuinely struggled through the years since their own education ended. And boy have they learned a lot. Meanwhile, you’ve been attending foam parties, sleeping through lectures that you turned up late for and accruing a debt so monumental that it would rival that of some Pacific islands. And you most likely won’t pay it back. And still, often in my job, people at that age are stood in front of classes of teenagers lecturing them on life experience. And in many cases it’s because they’re almost born to the profession. They’ve little experience, but are often old before their time.
The thing that prompted this blog was a recent in class conversation. I was asked what watch I had. Now, I’m used to being asked what car I drive or even what label my suit is. But what watch? Who cares! Well, it turns out that boys care, that’s who. It’s vital if you’re going to carry off the right image. The boy in question was wearing a big watch. You know the kind; buttons everywhere, oversized face, more hands than it knows what to do with and the odd (fake) jewel or two attached. I’m describing the watch, by the way, not the boy.
The boy clearly saw having the right kind of watch as some kind of status symbol. I think the young folk still refer to it as ‘bling’. But what status can a watch give a 15-year-old boy? The answer is, I don’t know. Does it scream fake designer label? Does it say nice Christmas present? Does it say show me respect? Or does it really just say, I can tell the time? I still don’t know. Needless to say though, he wasn’t very impressed by my spanking new Casio digital watch. I pointed out that they made great calculators. He didn’t get the irony. Or the joke. I told him it had a stopwatch. He wasn’t impressed. I told him it had little circles on it and I was yet to figure out what they were for. He was blank-faced. In fact, when I played my trump card and told him – while also demonstrating – that it had a light on it – he still wasn’t at all impressed. In fact, he seemed almost personally affronted. And he still hadn’t got the joke.
‘He still wasn’t impressed.’
I pointed out that my watch (Casio, £10, reduced from £20, Argos) was purely functional, that I had a nice watch, but that for now I wanted one with a stopwatch and that wasn’t valuable to wear for when I was coaching football. He still wasn’t impressed. And this got me thinking about how middle age has made me quite comfortable in my own skin. I no longer feel the need to rely on a designer label or the right pair of trainers to make me feel good about myself. Yet I do worry about getting a beer belly or a double chin.
Meanwhile, on Planet Youth, what you wear on your legs, body, face and even your wrist still says something about you. And the more I hear about it the more confused I become. As I mentioned previously, it has the power to make me feel young and old all at the same time. Young, because in a way, I can still kid myself that I’ve got my finger on the pulse but also because sometimes it’s just quite amusing to be kept up to date with all that’s trendy in the world. Imagine my 12 year-old daughter’s confusion as dad is able to regale her with tales of Stormzy, high-waisted jeans or better still, tell her that I too love that track on Capital, because it’s “sick”.
‘…Stormzy makes no sense to me.’
Yet I also get to feel old, because I want to tell my students that it doesn’t matter what watch you’ve got or who your clothes are made by; there’s a lot more to being a well-rounded, respectable human being than any of that! The constant talk of which watch to wear, which music I should listen to, which shoes I should wear can grind you down and wear you out at my age! There’s also the fact that Stormzy makes no sense to me – I mean you can’t even hear the words – I’d look daft in high-waisted jeans and that I really, really can’t stand Capital radio.
Recently though, I’ve heard and discussed what we’ll refer to as image issues (because they’re not strictly ‘bling’ and I can’t believe that people still refer to ‘bling’) that have disturbed me greatly and led me to wonder what on Earth could be going on with our younger generation.
The first instance came during a lesson that I was teaching. I say teaching; I wasn’t. Once a week classes have access to laptops and some vocabulary building software, so they work while I ‘supervise’. This mainly takes the form of asking them to stop getting the laptop to say the names of their peers in its ‘hilarious’ voice and making sure that they’re actually doing what it is they’re supposed to be doing.
It was while I was doing the latter and policing the screens that I caught sight of something deeply unsavoury on the screen of a boy at the front of the room. And no, it’s not what you think…it’s worse. I had gone to the back of the room – you’d be surprised how much this will flummox even the brightest of classes – so that I could get a better view of the screens. All of a sudden my attention was grabbed by the fact that one screen was clearly on Google. Google Images, in fact. And what was he Googling? Rudey ladies? Naked men (it’s an LGBeeGeesandTs friendly classroom, after all)? The kinds of fast cars that he dreams of? No. No, he was in fact Googling pictures of Crocs. Crocs, innit?
Now Crocs have had a bad press. And you know what? It’s fully deserved. There can be absolutely no defence of this type of footwear. Don’t give me the line about comfort, either. Crocs are ugly…fugly in fact. And when did comfort come into things for young people? My dad – 79, corduroy and checked shirt wearer, keen gardener, grower of prize-winning leeks and other vegetables – wears Crocs. Argument over. He’s not channelling some young rapper, he’s just got no shame anymore. No offence internetless dad who has literally 1% chance of ever reading this.
The Crocs thing got worse. I drew attention to it, hoping to shame my young friend into realising that when we’re meant to be learning new vocabulary, we should do just that. But he felt no shame. Don’t get me wrong, he quickly shut the page down and returned to what he should have been doing, but rather than turning a particular shade of crimson, he actually tried to justify his Croc-search. Apparently, Post Malone wears them. Well that’s alright then.
‘Here we have a man at the cutting edge of popular culture…’
I’ve never felt so old and confused in a long time. Now, I’ve heard of Post Malone. My daughter informs me that he’s ‘sick’ on a regular basis. I wish he was. Might shut him up. Post – I’m imagining not the name he was christened with – is launching a new range of Crocs. And this is what I simply don’t understand. I’m sure that money comes into it, but really…Crocs? Here we have – so I’m led to believe – a man at the cutting edge of popular culture – setting the trends, providing the soundtracks for thousands walking to and from school, making memories for his generation who years from now will listen to him being played on a Friday night, after work on Absolute 10s and think, ‘Wow, I loved that track’. And then he spoilt it all by teaming up with Crocs for a chunk of money.
However, while feeling old about Post, with his ludicrous name and endorsements for ridiculous footwear for gardeners, I also realised that it made me feel young at the same time. Because while I feel entirely negatively about Crocs and, however much thought I give to it, will never understand their attractiveness, I can see why the herd are following. This kind of thing makes me feel young simply because it takes me back to my own youth and some of the ridiculous trends that were followed then too.
I was born in the 1970s. This meant that adolescence and early adulthood, and all of the bonkers decisions that one makes at that time, hit in the late 80′ and early 90s. And to borrow a phrase that used to be popular, ‘what a time to be alive’! In terms of what we’ll loosely call style, here are some of the major influences of the time.
‘…granddad shirts, batwing jumpers, Ra-Ra skirts, mullets and perms.’
In the 1980s we had the back end of punk and the start of the New Romantics, as well as Ska, Mod and, as the decade ended, the first real seeds of dance music. Among other things this influenced fashion trends like day-glo socks (often worn odd – and orange and a green one, for example), drain pipe jeans, baggy jeans, baggy trousers, granddad shirts, batwing jumpers, Ra-Ra skirts, mullets and perms. Then the 90s brought us indie music and bands like Oasis and Blur, as well as grunge and dance music and the emergence of the superstar DJ. And again, this influenced our style, bringing with it more neon, check shirts, loose fit jeans, leggings, Global Hypercolour t-shirts and anything that a Gallagher wore.
As terrible as it all might have looked, we all wore it. Me, with two hairy pipe cleaners for legs, wearing baggy jeans. Why? Because of fashion, that’s why. Same with loose fit jeans in the 90s, because after all, The Happy Mondays told us that it had to be a loose fit. I’m sure I still looked like a right tw*t though. I had a wedge haircut in the 80s and thought I looked amazing. And if you’re laughing, imagining me with a wedge, just wait. It gets worse. When the footballer Chris Waddle, who was at my beloved Newcastle at the time, had the back of his hair permed, I very quickly followed suit. That’s right; a back perm, as it was known. In my head I looked just like Chris Waddle. On my head, once again, I looked like a right tw*t.
‘…someone else told him they’re fashion/bling/peng…’
So my point is, that I kind of understand why a 14-year-old boy might be pricing up Crocs on the internet in my lesson. It’s because someone told him that they’re fashion/bling/peng and, bless him, he’s young and doesn’t realise how ridiculous he’s going to look if he actually buys and wears them. I do feel like I should have a word though, because in ten years time when he looks at photos of himself wearing them, he’s going to think he looked like a…well you must know what comes next.
The final style subject that made me feel old, young, happy and sad all at the same time happened in another of my lessons. We do actually work, by the way, it’s just that sometimes kids talk. Anyway, a student was discussing hair. Not exactly a shock, right? I mean when you’re young hair and its varied and often experimental styles are one of the main things that make you stand out. However, this wasn’t any old chat about hair. The boy concerned is the type who likes to feel popular. He hangs around with what are probably the wrong crowd and the right crowd all at the same time. And he’s very image conscious. But he wasn’t concerned with hair styles, as such. Here we had a 16 year-old boy asking about the availability, price, risks and everything else to do with hair transplants! Already, so early on in life, the worry of looking just right had stopped him in his tracks. No doubt he has the watch, the shoes, the trainers and everything else that he feels he needs to feel comfortable with himself and his image, but, such is the importance of the way we look these days, that this lad is already so concerned about losing his hair that he’s making plans to stop the rot. Unbelievable.
Needless to say, I didn’t really come out in sympathy. In fact, I told him that in order to have a hair transplant a surgeon had to slice open your scalp, like one would open a tin, before sewing the bits of hair in from underneath and then putting said flap of scalp back complete with new hair. It’s amazing what kids will believe if you keep a straight face.
‘Just for beards alone, there were 38 products available…’
I decided to conduct a little research to help understand the problem of image these days. I was astounded by what I found. Whilst doing some Christmas shopping online I was struck by the sheer amount of products available. I decided to investigate male grooming on the Boots website. Now, I haven’t got one, but I believe having a beard – and looking rather like a Geography teacher from 1982 – is de rigueur these days amongst young men. I even teach kids with beards, something that years ago, when I entered the profession, I would’ve never imagined possible. Just for beards alone, there were 38 products available, including stubble cleanser, beard balm, brush-in colour gel and a beard starter kit, which I thought we were all born with anyway. It’s just that some take longer to start than others.
If you then look at the category of male grooming in its entirety things become staggeringly complex. Unbelievably there are over 1500 products available on the Boots website alone! 1500 things for men to groom themselves. I still feel a little bit camp on the rare occasions I apply moisturizer, but imagine having that many things to choose form with which to make yourself like just right, imagewise. It beggars belief. Now I understand that some of these products will be in several different categories, but even allowing for a lot of that there are still probably well over 1000 male grooming products available on one website! These included 101 washing & bathing products, 162 men’s hair products, 54 male hair loss products, 497 aftershaves (497!) and even 115 male incontinence products, which frankly, made me want to wet myself a bit. This is all before you get to looking at things like Crocs and watches.
So while I can sit here, all rugged and handsome with my Casio watch on and possible wearing a t-shirt bought in a supermarket, it’s actually not that hard to understand why today’s young men can get so concerned with looking just right. I mean we haven’t all got my natural pizzazz, right? But still, the idea of sifting through over 1000 products to groom oneself before you even get dressed or are able to tell the time makes me feel like we might have gone a bit too far with this whole image thing. The right timepiece, the right car, the right shoes, the right tattoos – seriously, watch the point?
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