Breakfast without a club: our cultural vacuum

By Sonia Lin

This Fluff Manifesto is written on behalf of all my collegiate peers, the unfortunate beings born at the end of the '70s, who so far have reached all their milestones in life at the most inopportune moments in American culture. My friends, I speak for you.

Consider the recent renaissance of the teen movie: Cruel Intentions, Go, 10 Things I Hate About You. Look at the hot new stars: Sarah "The Vampire Slayer" Gellar, James "Dawson" Van der Beek, Katie "Joey" Holmes. What conclusion can you draw? You guessed it—that we have all been dissed. In that tiny little time span between 1977 and 1980, apparently there wasn't enough baby-making to warrant the concentrated catering to our needs and wants during our teenage years that our counterparts today are enjoying. As a result, we missed all the fun.

When did the Teenager last rule? In the mid-'80s, teens had John Hughes movies, the Brat Pack, cool-Bad Michael Jackson, Star Wars, Material Girl Madonna, lavish use of aerosol hairspray, tights, leggings, and layers upon layers of gold lamé. Can you imagine being 16 years old at that time? It must have been wonderful. But at the time, we were learning how to tie our shoes. Our idea of cool was staying up to watch Full House on a Friday night. Our favorite album was Wee Sing Silly Songs. We had no way of appreciating the great teen-pop art movement of the day. Yeah, I watched Say Anything and Pretty in Pink—on video, 10 years later. I don't know why people our age get so excited about '80s parties—it certainly can't be nostalgia unless they were hipsters on training wheels. And what the hell is the Safety Dance?

No, we caught the tail end of the Teenage Heyday. By the time we were conscious of anything resembling pop culture, the trend had moved on and we were stuck with the imitators (Milli Vanilli) and the made-for-TV versions (Saved By the Bell). It was pathetic. At the prime of our teenage years, just as we were emerging from the two-fronted (acne and popularity) middle-school war, what did we have to aspire to? Who did they give us to rally our youthful spirits and set our teenage toes to tapping? Not Madonna—she was in her weird coffee-table-sex phase. No, we got Seattle grunge, coffee, the return of (I still can't believe it) Metallica, and Wayne's World. We were supposed to get excited about plaid flannel shirts? Lust after grizzled, unkempt, suicidal rockers? Whatever.

Speaking of "whatever," Clueless was really the one pure teen appeal phenomenon that hit us at the right time. I still remember: it was 1995, the eve of my 16th birthday. Cher and Dionne were turning 16 in the movie. It was perfect. With her uncannily adolescent whine and crushworthy frosted lips, Alicia Silverstone lifted my hopes for a teenybopper revival. I fantasized about high school dance contests and renewed mainstream respect for my age group.

But I miscalculated. I was watching for more signs of a Teenage Spring, scanning MTV and all the relevant magazines with religious regularity. I worked tirelessly to spread the enthusiasm, the anticipation, the word. But in the midst of putting together a three-pronged multimedia campaign promoting Alicia's collected works on film, I stumbled for a moment, and then, the inevitable: I graduated from high school. Got handed a diploma and forced to leave. The pain of growing up.

Now I'm hopelessly settled into College Life. Worse yet, Ivy League College Life. And who should be hip again but the Teenager. It's the time to be 15, and what are we? Old and sad at 19. Boy, am I pissed. All these pretty, packaged pop acts—'NSync, the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys. Not for us. The comeback of the delightfully obvious teen movie where love and good teeth always win out has come too late—we can no longer indulge freely in the romance without noticing, at least a little bit, the illogical plotlines and the laughable absence of all reality or relevance. We're swiftly nearing adulthood while pop culture panders to the adolescent, and it's miserable. Pretty soon I'll be 21, drinking a legal beer—but wishing that I was sneaking a sip in Dawson's rec room during a game of spin-the-bottle while the latest Jennifer Love Hewitt movie plays over and over on the big-screen TV.

Sonia Lin is a sophomore in Saybrook

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