Conformity

So, I watched this video today. I left youtube trends streaming on my Xbox and when I saw the title, I was hoping for the high pitched screaming of moronic preteens. I live for footage of overreactions to boy bands that college students will look back on in shame and horror. I was sorely mistaken.

This is just teenage people talking about pop culture. They have all the representations of high school archetypes: popular, pretty boy; hot, popular blonde (who looks exactly like the slightly prettier version of Miley Cyrus); the butch gay kid; the super gay kid; the trashy white guy who probably likes ICP; the pierced neo-scene-emo girl who moshes to high school metal bands; the fat girl who is trying to hard to make up for it and the ugly girl who is trying her hardest to stand out when all she really wishes is to be the hot blonde. Oh, and the token black girl and boy they picked out for diversity but not so overtly "black," as to put off the white viewers.

While I kind of think the hot blonde is strangely adorable, I lament that at the end she talks about some shitty, soulless music she is making.

Anyway, this is not the point, just the set up. Here's the segue which is really shitty. This girl:

...bugs the shit out of me. Throughout the video she is worried about coming off as a "conformist," or feels like she's "conforming." I absolutely hate this word in this context. It is painfully clear to every viewer that this girl is so insecure about the merits of personality and allowing someone to get to know her via conversation that she has adopted this wacky outward appearance just to stand out. What she's done instead has become the female version of Ducky from Pretty In Pink:

What's worse is that I'm pretty sure that the scene at the end of Sixteen Candles is emblazoned on her shirt. Is she hoping that this quirky shell will transform her into every character Molly Ringwald has ever played and she'll snag the popular boy by the end of her senior prom?

Focusing on not conforming so much that every move you make is calculated as to not fit in with everyone else is in itself as bad as becoming a carbon copy of the Hollister clad blonde girls she so hates. Her outside is merely a shell to cover up the fact that she's not so quirky and special on the inside. At least she admits to liking One Direction, against her own "non-conformist," desires. She clearly likes them so much more than every other girl and guy in this video as she can name the boys and their countries of origin. I'm sure she frequents fan-sites and forums devoted to the sickening "band." Yet she must be original! She's the kind of girl that will act like a buffoon, pretend to have silly addictions to things, and try to say "random," things. But when she's not on the stage for her friends or classmates, she's just like every other teenager and yearns to be something she is not.