Airpods: Check. Phone in hand: check. Absolute disregard for anything around you: check. After walking to my Nutrition 201 Lab this afternoon, I realized that absolutely no one knows what direction they’re going–both physically and in life. It appears as though this generation of students is obsessed with being the same and fitting in. They have used the basis of social media to promote normalities that some will refer to as ‘basic’. We as a generation have jumped from trend to trend and if you aren’t on it, you become the person that can’t be bothered to make an effort. I find that despite the growing movement to love yourself exactly the way you are, there is still a mass consensus that we all need to be the same. This essay is not meant to attack anyone or any style, this is to bring awareness of the uniformity that we find ourselves in.

I think we can all agree that the 70s and 90s styles have certainly taken control of today’s society. Things we made fun of our parents for wearing are now what we pull out of the attic to update our wardrobe. My mom laughs at the fact that we should never get rid of our clothes because they’re bound to come back into style eventually. What does that even mean? Is it really that we can’t see it in ourselves to actually create something new, to be something new. Must we really rely on the past to define what we want to be? I don’t want to believe that: I don’t want to believe that a chunky white sneaker, bell-bottom jeans, and scrunchies are really the best that we can do. Don’t get me wrong, I own two out of the three items on that list, I admit that I’m part of the problem. I admit that I’m too scared to wear some of the clothes I buy just because I know that no one else would be wearing this. 

I would like to emphasize the fact that we as a society are too comfortable. We do not challenge ourselves, and it’s because we are scared too. We don’t want to be the first to start something, we wait for those god-damn self-proclaimed Instagram influencers to tell us that we should be doing this. We don’t put in the effort, and it’s a shame. I bet each of us in this classroom has something we take so much pride in but we are too scared to show it. I challenge you, the listener, to scream that passion to the world. I want nothing more than to hear someone talk about something they love and to be someone they love. But the first step is understanding that different is beautiful.