AS A TEENAGER, you have one concern. Being cool. It’s all that matters, it’s all you think about, and it’s certainly all you care about.
Your parents don’t care and they certainly don’t understand the things you do to fulfil whatever ‘cool’ brief has been designed by your generation, hence the arguments arguments associated with adolescence.
Lest you are losing contact with that innate desire for coolness, here is a swift reminder of 19 things you did as a teenager to make you think you were cool.
Wore snappy tracksuit bottoms
Even though they were hideous, and you knew someone was going to pull all the snaps open.
Bring your lunch to school in a fancy bag
So that everyone would know you shopped there of course! No matter if you’d bought the cheapest thing in the shop.
Roll your school uniform’s skirt up as much as you could get away with it
If you were fancy you might even whip out some Wonderweb.
See also: Ripping holes in your jumper cuffs/bunching your socks around your ankles/refusing to tuck your shirt in.
Second from the left is definitely not regulation length. Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland
Wearing a denim jacket to school
Even though you knew you’d get into trouble because it wasn’t uniform.
Used a massive amount of hair product
Maybe you were going for the Ross from Friends wet look?
EMPICS Entertainment
Wore UFO parachute pants
You can still buy them y’know.
Worked hard to learn all the words to a tricky song
Usually by fast-forwarding and rewinding a cassette you recorded from the radio a hundred times. Songs like Bad Touch, Let’s Talk About Sex and Gangsta’s Paradise were very popular for this carry on.
(See also, making up dances/learning dances to specific songs.)
Flickr/jagaland
Joined a band even though you had no discernible talent
Flickr/deanfotos66/Creative Commons
Got a hair wrap when you were on holidays
It had to be a foreign hair wrap though, if you got it in the nearest city it wasn’t cool.
Flickr/Liz Henry/Flickr
Pulling your hair back in a sleek tight ponytail
Then yanking two bits out from the front so they hung lankly either side of your face.
Melanie C has a lot to answer for in relation to this.
John Mather/EMPICS Entertainment
Forcing a centre part in your hair
Even if your hair didn’t grow that way.
Nick Tansley/EMPICS Entertainment
Makeup. SO. MUCH. MAKEUP.
Flickr/mandyxclear/Creative Commons
Pretending to fancy people you didn’t fancy because all your friends did
Maybe Louise Nurding wasn’t your favourite member of Eternal!
AAD/EMPICS Entertainment
Wore your school bag on one shoulder
Even though it was always slipping off and one of your shoulders is slightly sloped now.
If you saw someone doing it these days you’d think they were a right eejit.
What an eejit. Shutterstock
Wrote bands names on everything you owned
School bags, pencil cases, homework journals etc. It didn’t really matter if you hadn’t actually heard the music.
Changed your name or the spelling
Having posters of the right famous people on your walls
Didn’t matter if you didn’t know who they actually were (e.g. Paul Nicholls).
Attempted to dye your hair at home
Often using things other than hair dye (markers would do) or packets of hair dye from the chemist which cost £2.
via Ebay
Pretending you’d kissed more people than you had
By the by, all the photos available on the internet of teens kissing paint a much more romantic picture than the reality.
Cutting slits in your jeans so they’d cover your shoes
Never mind that every time it rained you were saturated to the hip.
Via Shopbop