Anti-trendies

THE ANTI-TRENDIES

Pierced tongues, cargo pants, Friday nights in coffee lounges, being a Cockney - the state of what being `trendy' in the UK today means is in a constantly evolutionary stage. But who stands to identify exactly what is and what is not at the peak of trend in British society? Of course, `trendy' is just a buzz-word for what many share in common and consider positive. For some `trend' is merely to do with taste, for others its connotations imply whatever is subject to wide popularity. (I am not here to state literary definition, but to discuss colloquial usage.) The debate continues as to what constitutes `trendy', however a growing movement, which has developed alongside the institutions of trend, is attempting to define the notion `trendy' by pursuing what I like to call the `anti-trendy'.

The `anti-trendies', an overtly self-conscious bunch, use the `trendy' as a benchmark of what not to be. In a sense, whatever is `trendy' is normal, common and in some way undesirable and portrayed as the murderer of individuality. But what has, at its genesis, attempted to be the renaissance of originality and individual self-expression has, in its guise as the `anti-trendy', come to epitomise `trend' in its blandest and most predictable form. Put simply, it has now become trendy to be `anti-trendy'. To cite something as being `trendy' has become a derogatory word. Those who are fearful that trend will somehow leap out of a big hole and swallow-up their personalities, digesting them and mixing them with bodily juices as they ooze down through the intestines, finally coming out of its rear as merely common excretion, were obviously little more than the dressed-up `caca' they were so scared about becoming if their own individualism is not strong enough to absorb a little self-assembly Ikea furniture or Japanese-character tattooing.

“Such and such has become too trendy”. “Oh, I can't buy that, everybody has one of those, I can't possibly be like everyone else!”. Do you bloody like it or not?! Are you going to let your opinions, tastes and self-expression be fashioned as a statement against the popular, or are you going to start to appreciate things that you can actually admit to liking? Society is not suddenly going to turn into an homogenous, herd-like entity if you admit that, once-in-a-while, Britney Spears does get your toes a-tapping

Unfortunately this warning seems to have come a little late as battalions of young misfits take to the streets proclaiming their differences and individual eccentricities. Its little surprise that the majority of these rebel-rousing, stud-sporting, “dispensable teens” originate from such similar environments. The white, middle-class, southerners amongst us seem to have an identity problem. Can it all really be blamed on the effect of decades of Barrett home-building and town-centre pedestrianisation that their only difference is through individual extremism and outright alienation from the norm? Youngsters have always rebelled from their parents, but now the British youth are beginning to rebel from themselves. Its not merely enough for teens and twenty-somethings to be content with being young and beautiful, young `anti-trendies' are all about trying their hardest to be what the young and beautiful aren't.

Well, I don't know about you, but there's plenty of time for being old and ugly and not enough time to find out what others like to do in order that I not do the same. And it's there that the case for the `anti-trendies' falls at its weakest. For in an effort to not appear self-conscious they go to every effort to ensure that whatever they are doing, its not want anyone else is doing, and this, to me, is the ultimate expression of self-consciousness.

So, c'mon, get off your oh-so higher-than-normal horses and let yourself be embraced, if just a little, by the `trendy'. Otherwise, the new, but utterly trendy, `anti-anti-trendy' grass-roots movement, myself a patron, will search you out, highlight you, put you in every magazine, mount you on every household mantelpiece, emblaze you on every t-shirt chest and ensure that, wherever you are, everyone will do what you do, like what you like and be just like you. On the other hand, we'll probably just sit at home moaning about you.


	THE ANTI-TRENDIES Pierced tongues, cargo pants, Friday nights in coffee lounges, being a Cockney - the state of what being `trendy' in the UK today means is in a constantly evolutionary stage. But who stands to identify exactly what is and what is not at the peak of trend in British society? Of course, `trendy' is just a buzz-word for what many share in common and consider positive. For some `trend' is merely to do with taste, for others its connotations imply whatever is subject to wide popularity. (I am not here to state literary definition, but to discuss colloquial usage.) The debate continues as to what constitutes `trendy', however a growing movement, which has developed alongside the institutions of trend, is attempting to define the notion `trendy' by pursuing what I like to call the `anti-trendy'. The `anti-trendies', an overtly self-conscious bunch, use the `trendy' as a benchmark of what not to be. In a sense, whatever is `trendy' is normal, common and in some way undesirable and portrayed as the murderer of individuality. But what has, at its genesis, attempted to be the renaissance of originality and individual self-expression has, in its guise as the `anti-trendy', come to epitomise `trend' in its blandest and most predictable form. Put simply, it has now become trendy to be `anti-trendy'. To cite something as being `trendy' has become a derogatory word. Those who are fearful that trend will somehow leap out of a big hole and swallow-up their personalities, digesting them and mixing them with bodily juices as they ooze down through the intestines, finally coming out of its rear as merely common excretion, were obviously little more than the dressed-up `caca' they were so scared about becoming if their own individualism is not strong enough to absorb a little self-assembly Ikea furniture or Japanese-character tattooing. “Such and such has become too trendy”. “Oh, I can't buy that, everybody has one of those, I can't possibly be like everyone else!”. Do you bloody like it or not?! Are you going to let your opinions, tastes and self-expression be fashioned as a statement against the popular, or are you going to start to appreciate things that you can actually admit to liking? Society is not suddenly going to turn into an homogenous, herd-like entity if you admit that, once-in-a-while, Britney Spears does get your toes a-tapping Unfortunately this warning seems to have come a little late as battalions of young misfits take to the streets proclaiming their differences and individual eccentricities. Its little surprise that the majority of these rebel-rousing, stud-sporting, “dispensable teens” originate from such similar environments. The white, middle-class, southerners amongst us seem to have an identity problem. Can it all really be blamed on the effect of decades of Barrett home-building and town-centre pedestrianisation that their only difference is through individual extremism and outright alienation from the norm? Youngsters have always rebelled from their parents, but now the British youth are beginning to rebel from themselves. Its not merely enough for teens and twenty-somethings to be content with being young and beautiful, young `anti-trendies' are all about trying their hardest to be what the young and beautiful aren't. Well, I don't know about you, but there's plenty of time for being old and ugly and not enough time to find out what others like to do in order that I not do the same. And it's there that the case for the `anti-trendies' falls at its weakest. For in an effort to not appear self-conscious they go to every effort to ensure that whatever they are doing, its not want anyone else is doing, and this, to me, is the ultimate expression of self-consciousness. So, c'mon, get off your oh-so higher-than-normal horses and let yourself be embraced, if just a little, by the `trendy'. Otherwise, the new, but utterly trendy, `anti-anti-trendy' grass-roots movement, myself a patron, will search you out, highlight you, put you in every magazine, mount you on every household mantelpiece, emblaze you on every t-shirt chest and ensure that, wherever you are, everyone will do what you do, like what you like and be just like you. On the other hand, we'll probably just sit at home moaning about you.