I am cringe, but I am free.
The Teen Wolf tv series. Billy Joel songs. Telling my friends and family how much I care about them…out loud. Bridget Jones’ Diary (the book AND the movie).
These are the examples I can think of where cool is not a factor but cringe is. I have historic examples of cringe from my childhood and adolescence, but this is more about the ability to free oneself from the trappings of being “cool.” Being cool is the most important thing in the world when you hit middle school, exposed to a sea of kids who have already drawn the battle lines between things that are cool and things that suck.You wanted your coolness to be established before you entered high school, the ultimate litmus test of coolness as a teenager. The sad thing is you had no idea that you had to be cool until then; life was a series of activities and pop culture you genuinely loved with no awareness that someone out there would find fault with your choices.
Enter: high school.
High school is a toxic combination of education and Lord of the Flies (except no one dies, hopefully). It’s where we learn to be self-aware as burgeoning adults because there are so many eyes on what we look like, what we listen to, what we read, what we watch. There are unspoken rules everywhere. If you’re someone who has older siblings, you have an idea of the gauntlet you too will run. The clothes you wear will suddenly have an importance they never had before. You will view your beloved stuffed teddy bear with suspicion, imagining teenagers you have not yet met mocking your beloved childhood toy.
This may well shock and surprise you: I was not one of the popular kids in high school. I wasn’t a pariah nor was I bullied, but I was more or less ignored by the popular kids. The true sting was when girls you had been friends with in middle school suddenly decided that they did want to be popular and all those invites to sleepovers were forgotten. I cast my lot with the weirder cliques of the day: the Goths, the neo-hippies (I am “the Grateful Dead were still touring when I was a high school freshman” years old), the band and theater kids. All of us would gather in the auditorium or stairwells at breaks or lunch, a brief respite from the chaos. That is where I first came into contact with sci-fi novels and RPGs, Morrissey records and patchouli oil. Interests like those marked us as uncool, as weirdos. But, irony of ironies, us weirdos were still subject to other rules about being cool…amongst ourselves.
Humans like to create hierarchies; it’s just what we do and we enforce it. RPGs and sci-fi novels were cool in our circles, but liking Top 40 pop? Whoa, not cool, that’s for those popular kids who mock us and fuck them, remember? Anything that was mainstream was for the popular normies, not us proud unique rebels.
I wanted to be cool; I wanted to be popular. But the idea of popularity at that time isn’t much different from the idea now: brand name clothes, pop star adulation, certain TV shows. Well, my family didn’t have money for the clothes, my sister had the pop star adulation on lock, and I just wasn’t interested in Beverly Hills 90210 or Melrose Place. I navigated my way through what was cool and what wasn’t in my alternative circles: Nine Inch Nails yes but only Pretty Hate Machine, Anne Rice yes but only the vampire and witch novels, black clothing yes but ordered from brand name big-city approved labels (okay, that part is the same as the normal popular kids). Whatever black clothing I had I thrifted or bought at department stores, hoping the cut/fit/vibe wouldn’t get me ostracized.
Trying to be cool or be seen as cool is exhausting.
If only the desire for coolness ended as soon as you graduated! Adulthood was a whole new set of coolness markers to comprehend: art house films yes but not blockbusters, indie bands yes but not if they were on a major label, Vice magazine yes but not gossip rags. All these boxes I tried to squeeze into, and sometimes they fit just long enough for me to cope, but eventually I just wanted to enjoy superhero movies and David Lynch at the same time. I want to say that I accepted my own flavour of weirdness once I hit 30, but I’ll level with you. I did not. It is only the past decade where I learned that I love what I love, I enjoy what I enjoy, and if you think I am lame for enjoying the song “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass, by all means, go ahead.
It’s taken a lot of therapy and time–but mostly therapy–to find joy in myself. To accept the odd little quirks and the stubbornness that I enjoy a catchy pop tune or cheesy movie. It’s always fun to see that your friends have come to the same conclusion: yacht rock actually slaps, 80s action movies are a hoot, and we all feel comfortable in our own skin for once. I can share that I was a rabid NKOTB fan when I was a tween; my sister was too, and somewhere in my mom’s stuff, there are pictures of us in our fan t-shirts in front of our NKOTB posters. I would have never mentioned that to anyone in high school or as an adult. If I did, it would have been to sneer and go, “What a fucking dork I was.”: Maybe I was, but I was a dork enjoying the sweet sounds of “Please Don’t Go Girl” and thinking of Joey McIntyre’s baby blues. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of innocence at that age.
The sort of freedom I experience with myself now is the kind I wish I had been able to conjure for myself as a kid. I still did my own thing, but I did worry about what the cooler weird kids thought. Acceptance is the name of the game at that age and we watch our peers warily for any clues as to how to get it. If we’re lucky, we grow out of caring what other people think of our taste in, well, anything.
I encourage folks to dispense with the idea of “guilty pleasures” or “junk media.” Does it spark joy Marie Kondo-style? Do you turn up a Top 40 bop? Love some Real Housewives? Then join me, my friend: for we are cringe, but we are free.