to be hacked off with this stereotype, esp coming from the police

[becstarlitsea]

Stereotype in question - that teenage boys are criminals, that crime committed is done by 'kids', that any boy in possession of a hooded sweatshirt is a suspect.

Firstly the flat downstairs was broken into. Our neighbours told us that the police had told them it was likely to be 'kids'. The evidence for this seems scanty - it's not like the burglars left behind a set of crayons and a half finished juice box. It was a well-planned robbery, done in under 10 minutes while I was upstairs and didn't hear a thing.

Then our door was damaged in an attempted break in. The SOCO told me that I shouldn't worry as it was likely to be 'kids'.

Then last night at 2am I saw a group of five men in their mid-twenties checking how best to get over the fences of the block of flats next doors and ours and another at the back. They were a well-organised group - one checking one fence, one checking another, one of them clearly in charge telling them where to go next, pointing different blocks etc. When I reported it to the police the operator kept saying 'youths' (I'd described them as men) 'So did you see what colour these youths were?''. She was clearly used to people phoning up saying 'There is a black teenager in a hoodie standing outside our flats. Kindly arrest him immediately as he's bound to be up to no good.'

Okay, I'm so cross I need to shout. A LOT OF CRIME IS COMMITTED BY WHITE ADULTS. I shouldn't need to keep reiterating that they were white and adult over and over again to get it through to the police. And...
NOT ALL TEENAGE BOYS ARE CRIMINALS. In fact I don't believe that the percentage of teenagers who commit serious crime is higher than the percentage of adults.

It pisses me off that the minute my DS's voice breaks he'll be considered 'threatening' if he walks home from football practice with a couple of his mates.

Am venting. Bah!

But Mii, in my son's case it's an intimidated look, not an intimidating one.

It makes him less conspicuous (because it is, yes, vaguely fashionable) than his previous habit of hiding his head in his elbows and crouching into a ball, so it makes him less likely to be picked on.

Nighbynight, I design and make my own clothes.

Would you like to make any more wild and uneducated guesses about me?

Your need to assume that 'we' all think the same way is symptomatic of the confines of the society in which we live. However, some of 'us' do continue to strive for freedom of choice, expression and thought.

Walking through town yesterday, I saw a person of about 14 ( judging by height, build and gait) this person was wearing a dark grey hoody, a scarf around the bittom of his/her face and a pair of skiing goggles so that no part of their face could be seen. I wondered at the time why he/she wouldn't want to be identified and I did feel a bit uneasy, especially as the person was alone.

LL, I understand what you are saying, but when people talk about 'hoodies' I don't think they are talking about one lad on his own wearing a hooded top

They are talking about groups of lads all with hoods pulled over their faces. My DH wears hoodies all the time, the difference between him wearing it on top of his head and pulling in right down over his forehead/eyes is huge.

Ecomouse, I bet your clothes dont make you look threatening to people around you though.

As for freedom of choice - nonsense. The best any of us can get, is the freedom to choose between a range of options that's limited by when and where we live.

riven when the punk festival comes to our town, I always take the kids to look at the fab hairstyles.

Maybe the break in/attempted break in carried the hallmarks of having been carried out by inexperienced burglars, likely to be fairly young. After all the police will have a lot of knowledge and experience of the type of break ins in your area and who tends to perpetrate them. Men in the their mid twenties are fairly youthful aren't they. Maybe if you lived in an area where lots of break ins were carried out by residents of old people's homes then they would be saying "Don't worry it was probably just the oldies."

Nighbynight, you have no idea, you'd just like to think they don't.

"As for freedom of choice - nonsense. The best any of us can get, is the freedom to choose between a range of options that's limited by when and where we live."

Erm, very wrong and wrong!
Some of 'us' don't allow fear and myth to create such limitations within our lives ...and thought processes.

All creative people have to face the same fact at some point in their lives, that they are not the sole genius they thought they were, but instead are a microbe in a generation, which together produces an art typical of their time.

Michaelangelo, if he were working today, wouldn't produce the same Sistine Chapel ceiling as he did in the 1520s. Yet, you are trying to tell me that you are not influenced by your time and place?
Sorry, I dont believe you.

I get you actually, nighbynight, so many people who look a certain way so as not to conform, end up conforming to another well-trodden path instead! Few people are truly as original as they would like to think, and the ones who are, are usually a bit bonkers!
I did the pink hair and dressing in vintage from charity shops thing when I was 14 - 17, (early 80's) thinking I was terribly original, but of course I looked like every other indie kid/art student the western world over!

Nighbynight, I was discussing sterotyping and freedom of choice. I don't recall raising the subject of artistic creativity at all!

You want or need to 'blend in', I don't. Get over it.

I don't know a single person who thinks they're 'original' including myself.

But I do believe this:

"...We all want to blend in, that's why we don't go around in animal skins, or crinolines."

...can't be applied to me or many people I know. No, that's not to say we wear the same but we each tend to wear what we want rather than what is deemed socially acceptable or not, including hoodies.

But I think, even then, that we (almost) all dress in a way that sends out a message to others we identify with, and wish to attract as friends/partners, which says 'I'm on your wavelength'. This can be to do with class or social background, political, intellectual or artistic leanings, even your sexuality and whether or not you are vegetarian! We all do it subconsciously I think. Some of us are more obvious than others, and some do not conform to a type as rigidly as most, but to some extent or other we all do it.

I think there are a handful of true eccentrics who are impossible to pigeon-hole, like Vivienne Westwood, but as I said, she's bonkers!

Surely stereotypes come about for a reason?
Where I live, any crime that's committed is generally (although to be fair, not always) by teenage boys - the graffiti, vandalism, drugs etc.
If these crimes were usually carried out by elderly ladies, for example, society would start looking on old ladies in a different way, and be more wary of them.

Tiggy, I find that reasonable but still find it difficult to apply to myself. Not because I think I'm 'unique' but because my dress sense is quite chameleon (is that a type?!) it could be literally anything.

I understand why they had to ask what colour they were before I'd said that they were white. I don't understand why they had to keep asking after I'd said that they were white. But that could have been just not registering what I'd said (still shows an unconscious bias though). The operator didn't keep describing them as 'black' after I'd said 'white' she just asked what colour they were when I'd already said twice that they were white.

But I really struggled to get her to understand the concept that they hadn't been 'youths'. It was like I was using my very basic command of science to explain the Large Hadron Collider to someone who had only studied English for a year or so - I couldn't think how to say it any more simply, she just couldn't register that I wasn't complaining about teenagers.

"we each tend to wear what we want rather than what is deemed socially acceptable or not"

that's what most people think about the clothes they wear. It is untrue of almost all of us.

the point is that what you want to wear is influenced by social factors.

even the fact that you describe yourself as having a particular "dress sense" belies your claim that you are not influenced by what other people think.

I forgot to buy some football socks for my son and he had an important match in the evening.

Jumped into the car and drove to Sportsworld, hadn't had time to wash my horrible greasy hair so pulled my hood halfway over my head. ( A bit like a snood, if anyone remembers them)

Security guy on the door refused to let me in with a hood on. I'm forty bloody six.

ecomouse, I don't think you've understood what people are saying. However wild, original and changeable your dress sense may be, I bet what you put on your body still falls within a normal range as defined by society as society evolves. For example, I doubt you wrap yourself in uncured animal skin, or tin foil, or plait rows of candles into your hair.

You may choose your clothes from a wish to look 'different', but I would imagine you're still pretty recognizable as a 21st century human from the developed world, most of the time.

As far as I'm concerned, I wish teenage boys could wear whatever they liked without people stereotyping them whichever way, but I wish even more that there weren't so many people who dress in order to be smug about their own appearances.

malovitt - that would be quite funny if it were not so sad! The fact is that shops like Sportworld will have massive problems with shop-lifting of branded sportswear and trainers. Huge shops, poorly staffed, and gangs of very brazen shoplifters working together, in hoods so CCTV can't get an ID on them. Of course, common sense or gut insinct would tell a security guard that you are probably not one of them, but they MUST be seen to apply the rules evenly across all ages/races/demographics. To only target people who fit the common profile of terrorists/ criminals whatever, would be considered appalling these days, and an abuse of someone's human rights.

It is true that other people make assumptions about you whatever you wear, there is hardly anything to wear that gives a completely neutral signal to others.
However, it's rubbish that 'everyone' dresses to blend in, a fairly substantial percentage of people dress in a way that makes them stand out from the dominant group around them (the single Goth in a classroom full of hip-hop teens in tracksuits, the dreadlocked hippy in a quiet aspirational suburban street).
THough being desperate to get your appearance 'right' and 'fit in' ie wearing clothing that's uncomfortable, expensive or doesn't suit you rather than choosing what you want to wear for reasons of comfort, practicality or liking the colours is the sign of an immature, inadequate personality especially when it goes with a hysterical fear of and hostility towards anyone who isn't interested in conforming to the immediate herd.

But, solidgold, doesn't it depend on the situation? It's equally immature to pretend that your blazing individuality can be shown to everyone by the way you dress - say, if you turn up to someone's funeral in a pink flamingo suit. It's not easy for teenagers to work out when they should be conforming to the social expectation, and when not.

That would be quite funny if it were not so sad! The fact is that shops like Sportworld will have massive problems with shop-lifting of branded sportswear and trainers. - Very true, TiggyR.

Someone I knew was desperate to go in the shop Voyage. If you remember it was famous for having a very strict door policy. Novel concept for a shop. No wonder it's closed down.

Anyway, he decided to make himself appear a man of means by going in with an empty Sotheby's carrier bag big enough to get a Rembrandt in. I didn't realise Sotheby's did anything as common as a plastic bag.

Voyage turned him away. It was impossible to convince him that the main reason was that they probably thought he was a shoplifter.

Come to think of it he did have appallingly High Street tastes

the facts using the term loosely are that young people are judged by their fashion sense...some I dont understand ,some I dont like, some I think are cool, some funny...there will always be a destructive element in 'humans' more less young people...I think its unfair and immature to judge a human based soley on their appearance lest we forget our own fashion faux pas in the past...hoods do not worry me..but underwear showing I find quite unnerving

LRD: If you were close to the deceased and knew what they would have preferred, it might actually be more appropriate to turn up in something unusual to a funeral rather than conform for the sake of a few old farts who were not so close to the deceased but are obsessed with propriety, for instance.
I remember reading an interesting story in one of the proleporn mags about a squaddie who had an agreement with his best mate (also a squaddie) that if one of them died, the other had to wear a dress to the funeral. And one did die, and the other one did wear a lurid dress to the funeral - the dead soldier's family were sympathetic and appreciated it - and if any passers by took offence that would be their problem.
COnformity isn't always bad, of course, sometimes it's the easiest option in a particular situation, but people who are obsessed with making others conform are generally fuckwits.