Teenage Girls.

With the looming of my Twenty.. hmm... second *cough cough* birthday, i can safely say that i have well and truely survived my teenage years. In retrospect, they went by in a blur... just simple daily troubles and even simplier pleasures. I cannot really recall my teenage years as being particularly traumatic, or soul searching, or self-defining... though i'm sure they are in there somewhere.

Recently, i read an article in a back issue of UK Vogue where the author interviewed 8 London teenagers (many of them the children of the rich and famous) and delved into the lives and psyche of the 'modern teenage girl'. Honestly, i dont remember it ever being like that (oh god i think i sound like a grandma!). When i was in highschool (omg i should really not use thsi phrase to preface my sentences) i was happy with samples of CKOne Perfume from Myers, stuck into my school diary, and these girls were concerned with being seen prancing around in a seaform coloured Balenciaga Le Dix even before it hits the hot (and skinny) little hands of Sienna Miller or Kate Moss.

Perhaps in today's society fill with technology which can rejuvenate and invigorate mature skin, the gap between the teenagers and the thirty-somethings is getting smaller and smaller (and the twenty-somethings? well, we are just getting squashed.. and sung about by Jamie Cullum). I mean, walk into any local shopping centre and you are bound to find mum's and daughters wearing matching hot pink terry-towel trackies from Supre. Worst still, walk into any Supre store, and you are bound to find a 12 year old spotting a "M.I.L.F. in training" t-shirt. And more likely than not, you'll find a pack of them, wearing matching denim mini ra-ra skirts.

But reading on in my article, teenage girls really cant help it but be clones of each other. As Quentin Crisp argues "the young have always had the same problem of how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents, and copying each other". So, the next time you see a bunch of teenage girls wearing the same cropped boob-tube as a mini skirt - refrain from making nasty remarks and eye-rolling, and simply take pity for their teenage predicament.