The Kidults Are Alright

(A Youth Culture Manifesto, Of Sorts)

Armchair sociologists like to argue that bourgeois culture in the Philippines encourages a kind of prolonged adolescence -- that our selfish aspirations towards Western creature comforts, branded lifestyles, and hyper-consumerism are in direct conflict with the economic realities of a Third World nation. As a result, we're doomed to a terminal state of dependency, unable to meet the financial conditions necessary to satisfy our teenage kicks, short of blowing away the resources inherited from our parents' generation. Cynical? Maybe. But if this argument were true, we'd be too caught up in our solipsistic decadence to give a shit, anyway.

In fact, this blog raises a snotty middle finger at the nay-saying directed towards youth culture. That is, we're unabashedly, shamelessly obsessed with the aesthetics of youth. We came of age in the wake of the "re-democratization" process that began with the original People Power revolt in 1986. With the advent of the Philippines' foray into the global marketplace, we exposed ourselves to a boom in available media outlets: glossy mags, cheesy films, paperback serials, and TV programs, to name just a few.

This new youth culture framed the experience of being a teenager as a discernable stage of life, with its own set of tropes, themes, memes, and motifs. Some of these appear relatively timeless: parental expectations, dating anxieties, the beginnings of young lust, and the insecurities of the high school caste system. Others are considerably more a product of their era: fashion trends, popular media, and the changing role of various communication technologies in everyday social interaction.

Often, youth culture wouldn't speak directly to our life experiences. In fact, to be perfectly honest, it frequently represented the most uncritically Americentric, consumerist desires possible, with regards to gender, sexuality, race, and class identity. But we loved it, in spite of all its flaws. We bastardized it, internalized it, and made it our own. And now we're being given the opportunity to celebrate that youth culture, in words and images. If that means we're permanently stuck in the "in between days" of young adulthood, then so be it.

We know the real score, anyway. Our embrace of teen aesthetics is not a disavowal of the responsibility that comes with day jobs, and billing statements, and (eventually) mortgage payments. Nor is it an abdication of our duties as productive adults. We’d rather think of it as a refusal to allow the routinized system of workaday labor to snuff out the fires of creative thought, imagination, and play time -- all of the hallmarks of a child-like openness to new possibilities.

Besides, let me fill you in on a little secret: the "high school mentality"? It never really goes away. The cliquishness, the petty back-stabbing, the unrequited crushes, and the self-conscious insecurities... they all find their way into board meetings, cocktail parties, office functions, and just about every other 'adult' space one can bother to name.

This blog is our aesthetic response to the media that shaped our view of what it means to 'grow up' or 'become adult', in the first place. We may have the outward appearance of emotionally stunted, pop-damaged ephemera junkies, but that's just our personal reaction to the culture we grew up in. Believe us when we say it: the kidults are alright.