While it is depressing that vast riches are a socially acceptable status symbol for 18-year-olds, they are no worse than more traditional ways of lording it over others.
Two of my children have recently graduated from two different British universities and tell me that to stand out, money helps a bit, though not nearly as much as being cool. This is – and was – the top way of differentiating yourself and is done by following six pernicious and foolish cool rules.
The first way to be a Very Cool Fresher is to treat with disdain everything laid on by the university, shunning all freshers’ activities and holding your own parties instead – which is hard if you don’t know anyone. Next you must act unfriendly to almost everyone, save a few people you’ve deemed cool enough. This rather defeats the point of university which is to broaden, not narrow, horizons.
The first way to be a Very Cool Fresher is to treat with disdain everything laid on by the university
Taking drugs, getting very drunk, chain-smoking roll-ups all help at being cool – as they always did – and they are still just as bad for you.Being from London is eternally cool. Being from Swansea, anywhere in the countryside, Southampton, Hull, and everywhere else in the world save a few capital cities – is eternally not cool. This is tough, since there is not a lot you can do about where your parents live.
Looking gorgeous is cool. And looking thin. So is wearing the right clothes. The first is unfair, the second dangerous, and the third a lot of hard work.
Being clever is also cool, and getting good marks in all assignments and getting a first-class degree is very cool – the catch being that visibly working hard is not. Being in the library at opening time is only cool if you’ve been up all night.
While all these rules are familiar to me, they are more lethal now as the cool bar is set far higher. On my first day at university I felt passably cool in my apple green OshKosh dungarees – but that was only because half the girls were in tweeds and twinsets. Now that everyone can buy the same clothes online, to be really cool you have to spend half a lifetime combing vintage shops.