In my ever-present existentialist ponderings, I’ve started becoming ashamed of my inherent need for self-expression. Who the hell am I to write all my thoughts publicly, hoping someone will read them? How arrogant can one person possibly be? It’s narcissism at it’s finest and frankly, it’s pretty sickening to me. 

And then I took a look at our society as a whole and I realized that it seems EVERYONE is too busy trying to showcase themselves to pay any attention to the expressions of anyone else. Facebook and MySpace and Twitter are bad enough (all of which I subscribe to, by the way), but even outside the realm of cyberspace, people are constantly trying to express to you everysinglething about their entire being by wearing it on their sleeves constantly. There’s no mystery anymore. 

For example, what is the deal with people trying to express their entire lifestyle on their back windshield? I’m not just talking about the tree-huggers with cars covered in Coexist, Obama ‘08, and other stickers of general tree-huggery, either. Even suburbanites are jumping on the bandwagon these days by putting little caricatures of their wholeentirefamily (even the dog!) just above a magnet of what school they attend next to a sticker of what church they frequent just below a sticker of their political leaning right above three or four trendy ribbon magnets that show that they support the troops and hate autism and countless other icons of their social relevance. It’s like they’ve created traffic-friendly MySpace pages for each other while they’re waiting in line to pick up their kids. Does this actually work for social networking? Does one soccer mom look at the Dodge Caravan in front of her and note that she has the same USC Class of ‘84 sticker as the mom in front of her and think, “Goodness! I should go introduce myself!” Is my refusal to partake in this sort of public ridiculousness going to hinder my relationships with other mothers when Chloe starts school or are there still people out there who want to get to know each other the old-fashioned way?

And I really do “get” where all this is coming from. For centuries, children were told to be “seen and not heard” and to obey their elders and conform and all that propaganda. So, it’s understandable that when we were finally given permission to finally express ourselves, we went a little nuts with it (hence, the Hippie-Counterculture-through-Punk-Rock Eras… Sorry, I just relate the best with music in social contexts.) We were no longer being forced to be a “Silent Generation” like that of the 1950’s, but were given voices, politically, artistically, and socially.

But this great movement of freedom of expression is a history that the youth of America simply can’t remember. I’d venture to say that the youngest people who remember these sort of mainstream revolutions were those who graduated high school in the early 90’s (”Gen X” as they’re reluctantly referred to) and were an active part of both rap and grunge music being forced into the mainstream (among other things.)

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that there aren’t revolutionaries and great artists, politicians, and thinkers that exist today. Of course there are revolutions and great happenings still going on - just look at our new president. What I AM saying is that this need to express everything about ourselves loudly, publicly, and vehemently in hopes of being “unique” is more than just a little outdated. It’s not shaking people to the core anymore and moving society that people “are just being themselves”. It’s not launching the times forward when someone tries to express themselves to stand out from the crowd. If anything, it’s even more stereotypical and boring to hear young people sitting around obsessing over the image they create of themselves. I mean, yes, fitting into a “goth” or “emo” or “prep” label has always been juvenile and outdated to anyone older than 16, but now it seems like everyone is so busy trying to “redefine” things that we all end up looking like the same exact scrambling, narcissistic, rebel-wannabes that we hate about those participants of adolescent pigeonholes.

I personally used to roll my eyes at the self-prognosed “Goth” kids in high school stating, “Yeah yeah, you’re an ‘individual’ just like eeeeverybody else in your little group.” Slowly I’ve realized I’m sitting in the pot, too. Except this time there are no walls of one singular academic building holding us all in. It’s all of us, running around grappling for Truth and having to show every second of it to the world/cyberspace in hopes that this will finally validate ourselves, our ideas, our mistakes, our attire, ourselves… Not even considering that this constant self-exposure may be making us even more stereotypical and identical. That, in always “speaking our minds” and blogging our feelings and always showing off our lives and deeper selves [shamelessly] to the public, we’re still desperately clinging on to these rigid ideals that most of us were trying to escape in the first place. We are just calling it by a different name which doesn’t redefine ourselves, but only redefines what it means to “conform”. Suddenly, the unabashed thoughts and unrelenting “expression” of us as a generation becomes pretentious, meaningless blathering as we flood the market with our own “unique” personality traits and we become as predictable, boring, and irrelevant as Madonna’s changing identity.

Kinda makes me want to disappear into obscurity forever, really.