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View as: GRID LIST

WHO’S IN THE COOL GANG?

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When I was growing up I was obsessed with coming of age films where the characters were nothing like me and my peers but at the same time everything like who we thought we were. My favourite was Pretty in Pink. My favourite because Andie, the lead character, was a misfit and an outsider. And that is how I saw myself.

Think of the most uncool, geeky kid at your school and you could be thinking of me. Big, bushy, wavy hair that I couldn’t control so it lived in a high ponytail, big round glasses that filled my face, greasy skin, spots, hiding

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underneath oversized jumpers, and being painfully shy. That was me.

Thankfully, I left her behind some years ago ( although my hair is still big, bushy, and wavy when left to its own devices) but I haven’t forgotten her and she shapes the way I think about a lot of things in my life and how I look towards the future my daughter will have. Lots of questions mainly. Will she be like me? Will she by shy? Will she be confident? Will she find comfort in a secure group of friends or will she, like me, sit on the fringes of groups hoping to get a place

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soon.

I look back now with beautiful hindsight and wish I could shake my former self and tell me to handle things in a different way and tell all the bullies where to shove it. But when you’re so young, with little life experience, you don’t have the life strength necessarily to manage that.

Strange I don’t seem to have the same worry for my son yet but that is perhaps natural gender bias on my part; I know what it was like growing up a girl. And I think I seemed to notice the shy, geeky girls more than I did the shy, geeky boys.

I find the

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whole notion of acceptance, ”fitting in”, and being ”cool” fascinating because it seems to have stood the test of time and never gone away.

We see cool largely as being an attribute fitting to younger people and it was something I strived for when I was young. Incidentally I never got there but hey ho. Win some lose some.

For a time, it seemed that society quite liked the idea of not being cool. Think Bridget Jones, Napoleon Dynamite, think being clumsy and bumbling and not getting the guy/girl think ”the geeks will rule the world”. But we

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seem to always go back to liking cool eventually.

Recently my husband’s cousin turned eighteen and we went to see her to say happy birthday, just a few hours before she was hosting a pretty large shindig with 30 friends to celebrate. My eighteenth was fairly sedate by comparison. Still fun and lots of drinking, but not involving epic numbers.

And as I sat with her, I thought to myself, I have now become part of the older generation that my peers and I used to ignore. I’m only 34 but I reckon to an 18 year old I would be perceived as a grown

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up/adult with no possibility of relating to them.

If I thought I was uncool when I was younger, I’m massively uncool now. And it’s funny because now I’m probably the happiest and most confident I’ve ever been. Which is a pretty cool thing in itself. Maybe ’cool’ isn’t really what we think it is when we’re young?

So i guess it is a cycle that will always go on… but the message to my children I’ll pass onto my children is that they should be whoever they want to be, that the older generation aren’t all has-beens, and sometimes it’s

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actually pretty cool to be uncool. Here’s hoping.

Motherhood is different for all of us… if you’d like to share your thoughts, why not join our Network & start posting?

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- 29 Jan 15

When I was growing up I was obsessed with coming of age films where the characters were nothing like me and my peers but at the same time everything like who we thought we were. My favourite was Pretty in Pink. My favourite because Andie, the lead character, was a misfit and an outsider. And that is how I saw myself.

Think of the most uncool, geeky kid at your school and you could be thinking of me. Big, bushy, wavy hair that I couldn’t control so it lived in a high ponytail, big round glasses that filled my face, greasy skin, spots, hiding underneath oversized jumpers, and being painfully shy. That was me.

Thankfully, I left her behind some years ago ( although my hair is still big, bushy, and wavy when left to its own devices) but I haven’t forgotten her and she shapes the way I think about a lot of things in my life and how I look towards the future my daughter will have. Lots of questions mainly. Will she be like me? Will she by shy? Will she be confident? Will she find comfort in a secure group of friends or will she, like me, sit on the fringes of groups hoping to get a place soon.

I look back now with beautiful hindsight and wish I could shake my former self and tell me to handle things in a different way and tell all the bullies where to shove it. But when you’re so young, with little life experience, you don’t have the life strength necessarily to manage that.

Strange I don’t seem to have the same worry for my son yet but that is perhaps natural gender bias on my part; I know what it was like growing up a girl. And I think I seemed to notice the shy, geeky girls more than I did the shy, geeky boys.

I find the whole notion of acceptance, “fitting in”, and being “cool” fascinating because it seems to have stood the test of time and never gone away.

We see cool largely as being an attribute fitting to younger people and it was something I strived for when I was young. Incidentally I never got there but hey ho. Win some lose some.

For a time, it seemed that society quite liked the idea of not being cool. Think Bridget Jones, Napoleon Dynamite, think being clumsy and bumbling and not getting the guy/girl think “the geeks will rule the world”. But we seem to always go back to liking cool eventually.

Recently my husband’s cousin turned eighteen and we went to see her to say happy birthday, just a few hours before she was hosting a pretty large shindig with 30 friends to celebrate. My eighteenth was fairly sedate by comparison. Still fun and lots of drinking, but not involving epic numbers.

And as I sat with her, I thought to myself, I have now become part of the older generation that my peers and I used to ignore. I’m only 34 but I reckon to an 18 year old I would be perceived as a grown up/adult with no possibility of relating to them.

If I thought I was uncool when I was younger, I’m massively uncool now. And it’s funny because now I’m probably the happiest and most confident I’ve ever been. Which is a pretty cool thing in itself. Maybe ‘cool’ isn’t really what we think it is when we’re young?

So i guess it is a cycle that will always go on… but the message to my children I’ll pass onto my children is that they should be whoever they want to be, that the older generation aren’t all has-beens, and sometimes it’s actually pretty cool to be uncool. Here’s hoping.

Motherhood is different for all of us… if you’d like to share your thoughts, why not join our Network & start posting?

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I am mum to my little chicks, Aisha, 6 and Abel, 4. Originally from Yorkshire, UK, I now live in a little town in the North West. By day, I work for myself as a freelance PA. By night, I indulge my passion for writing.

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