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I’m guilty of filling out those mind-numbing Myspace surveys. After all the huge decisions your 20s pose, there’s something satisfying in breezing through 50 self-defining questions for the entire Web-world to see.
In a mere 15 minutes, every bored soul browsing Myspace has a clear idea of who I am and what I’m all about.
The surveys would be a much different experience if the questions were, instead, important - What job do you want after college? What kind of person do you want to be? How do you feel about global warming?
In college, we’re so quick to package ourselves. There’s such a rush to determine every detail of our future that we can’t help but to seek solitude in simpler decisions. Long after the days of high-school cliques, we still find comfort in belonging to a certain group.
I, for example, “hate” country music, but find myself suppressing enjoyment to the umpteenth million songs my country-loving friends force upon me. Why do I hate it? Because I genuinely do, or because I feel that I am supposed to because it doesn’t fit my chosen image?
Growing up in the South forces you to either embrace its stereotypes or to explicitly reject them. Until high-school graduation, I made sure everyone knew I was getting out of this small town and doing better things. Once I began living in New York City, though, I missed the South tremendously. It turns out people there don’t often hold doors open for you, strangers don’t ask how you are and $20 barely lasts you an hour. So, I found myself back where I started, eating my words day after day when asked the question, “I thought you moved to New York?”
I’ve never been able to stick to one classification - I have been a cheerleader, an academic, a hard-core feminist, an aspiring fashion designer, an avid reader, a die-hard ‘N Sync fan, a Jew, an agnostic - the effort to define myself has been bumpy and inexhaustible.
We don’t really know ourselves that well, it seems. Imagine having to sum yourself up with one measly description - check Box 1 for all-American, 2 for intellectual, 3 for party-animal, 4 for anti-conformist - the decision is obviously far from being that straightforward. Somehow, certain stigmas have become intertwined with certain “genres” of personalities; if you’re unconventional, you hate anything mainstream, if you’re a so-called-typical, beer-loving, party-going college student, you steer away from anything deemed too taboo or cerebral. How can we evaluate what we really like or don’t if we’re so quick to pass judgment?
Author Bill Vaughn writes, “If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity.”
Rebellion from the mainstream has become a version of conformity in itself. Those trying desperately not to appear as sheep end up following a rule book all their own; the “anti-conformist” has almost become less original than your “average,” pop-music-loving, Lindsay Lohan-emulating 20-something.
I thought originality was for its own sake.
I thought escaping the mainstream was so you could deem what’s good or bad based on trial-and-error. But then again, I also used to think ‘N Sync was God’s gift to the earth.
See, here I am falling prey to what I’ve been writing about all along. To this day, every time I hear ‘N Sync’s “Bye, Bye, Bye,” I sing at the top of my lungs, dance my heart out and love every second of it, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
