Redland High Evening Post Reporter's Column

Following a recent competition in school Year 11 Rosalind Russell's article about the media's perception of teenagers was featured in the Bristol Evening Post's teenager column and we hope this will become a regular slot for Redland High students.

Rosalind's article is featured below:

How many adults cross streets to avoid teenagers?

Friday, October 16, 2009

Cheryl. I understand how you feel. No, I am not The X Factor's secret fifth judge. No, I am not a footballer's wife. No, I am not the sixth member of Girls Aloud. I don't have the cute Geordie accent, the fast cars or the Louboutins, and no, I am not traffic-stoppingly good looking.

But I know how Cheryl feels, opening the newspaper at the breakfast table and coming across yet another false, hateful, untrue story about myself. I am not Cheryl Cole; I'm something much more fearsome. I AM A TEENAGER.

Yes, dear reader – I am your worst nightmare. The one you've all read about. The one who skulks the street with hood up at night, wearing dark, threatening clothes, with numerous body piercings and a menacing hairstyle. I scream and shout and push over small children and steal shopping and hide in doorways. Or so you have been led to believe.

The week before I (gasp) became a teenager, I got a phone call from my little cousin. "How old are you going to be?" Thirteen. "Oh!" Anguished pause. "Would you like a can of spray paint then?" Being completely unartistic, the kind of person who makes Jackson Pollock look like da Vinci, I was baffled by what I would do with such an item. Ewan hastened to explain, in a hushed whisper: "For the graffiti. You're going to become a teenager."

Now Ewan is not stupid, and I've known him since he was born. For him genuinely to believe that, waking up on my thirteenth birthday, I would magically transform into a feral, hoodie-wearing, wannabe Banksy… well, that's some serious brainwashing.

This is by no means an isolated incident. How many of us have seen adults crossing the street to avoid a group of teenagers? Are they expecting to be surrounded, taunted, even mugged? Just like the media build up stories that Cheryl Cole is a) pregnant, b) suing for divorce or c) depressed, the way they hype up the 'dangers' posed by teenagers is little short of breathtaking.

In 2005, Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent banned hoodies and baseball caps; the property manager Helen Smith was "concerned that some of our guests don't feel at all comfortable" around people wearing such items of clothing, adding that "Bluewater is really a family environment". When the said families and guests find their day ruined by seeing someone wearing a particular garment, we know we have a problem.

Admittedly some people may have had bad experiences with teenagers. But these isolated incidents do not deserve the headlines "TEENAGE YOBS: GET OFF OUR STREETS" or "HUG A HOODY? NOT ON YOUR LIFE". Most of the teenagers on street corners have a perfectly good reason to be there. We might be wearing hoodies because the sun's gone in and it's a bit nippy out.

A hooded sweatshirt and a nose piercing do not an automatic Asbo make. Next time you see a group of teenagers on a street corner, don't cross the street to avoid them. Walk past and smile, and who knows? It might make our day.