My Skins Reawakening circa 2014
As I keenly await my friends finishing exams, and with precious little episodes of Orange is The New Black left I recently turned my attention to a Skins retrospective.
In my experience, actually finding myself inside a Skins story line a few times was not quite as cool as 15 year old me would have liked it to be. In this way, I feel like the show is an accurate depiction of some of the scenarios facing young people today and that itself justly warrants a parental freakout. But the purpose of this post lies in exploring how wrong it was to fetishise and idealise stuff that is the reason being a teenager can be so scary and confusing at times.
Skins was one of the first things Girlfriend Magazine ever recognised as a ‘cult show’, thus at 14 there was nothing I wanted more than for my parents to let me stay up late and watch SBS like a pervert or a foreign movie fiend. My friends with more small l liberal parents would eagerly trade the box sets and crave the day we too could stumble upon some E at an abandoned mansion party and dance attractively to strobe lights in a misunderstood way.
Everyone always used to talk about how they wished they were Effy or Cassie or Naomi, godesses of underage drinking and three episode long lesbian awakenings and my hate fire of my parent’s conservative ways burned stronger- I hadn’t even been allowed to watch the OC at 11 for godsake!
So for a few years I attempted to console myself through listening to the dreamy theme song on repeat on my sick rectangular shuffle.
Now I’m having one of those horrible moments where you look at your parents and say, ‘thankyou you were right, I’ll do the exact same thing for my daughter one day.’
At 20 I’m revisiting this show and being absolutely flabbergasted by the behaviour of those who might belong in the modern day screeching loudly on train carriages about 5 Seconds of/to? Summer or moping about on the flinders st steps.
16 year olds should not be out at rave parties swapping googs and having awkward sexual encounters! These kids need structure! Extra curricular activities! Better role models!
My god. I’m so aware too that I’m adopting the tone of a concerned member of the public making a complaint to the school principal about students behaviour at the local fish and chip shop, but having witnessed how much these characters were idolised and fetishised it’s incredibly scary that people ever wished their lives were like skins.
I don’t think the creators of the show set out to cause any kind of moral panic ala The Tenant of Wildfell Hall circa 1856 (woah what a reference). It’s entertaining aesthetically, with fabulous production values and fairly good actors save for the mind bogglingly beautiful actresses who don’t seem to do much save for looking elfin and exhaling ciggarette smoke enigmatically. There have also been some incredible guest stars, particularly British comedians before they hit the big time like Bill Bailey and THE NEXT DOCTOR or more importantly to a PR student MALCOLM TUCKER as someone’s dad.
But the fact was, this show was the absolute epitome of coolness and emulating the behaviour of its angst ridden subjects represented a real goal for a girl of 15. I would be horrified if my little sister was exposed to this kind of hysteria in only a couple of years. At least One Direction are poster boys of carefully managed khaki sex appeal, I will give them that. And at least when a couple of them are doing weed in the back of a cab it promotes an awkward conversation between parents and little girls.
But think about a group of fictional teens with thick accents as the 2007 version of One Direction (they have a lot in common anyway I guess) and think about all the salacious stuff they got up to!
I guess the show was good in that it probably introduced certain social issues and adult themes to an audience earlier than they might have discovered it in real life. Story lines around addiction, eating disorders and sexual assault may have helped to make an audience more aware of the world and offered solace in representation for those already living with such problems. But the many conversations we used to have about wanting to be ‘like Cassie’ are coming back to me and making me feel quite unsettled. Cassie was a character living with an eating disorder, but to 15 year old girls she was an it girl and her problems just made her all the more misunderstood and in need of Sid to romantically save her from her demons.
Again, it is perhaps a testament to my exit from my teenage years or the weird experience of finding myself inside a Skins storyline a few times and not quite enjoying it as much as 15 year old me would have liked me to, but lord jesus my parents were right!
I can only hope that my little sister receives her teenage awakening from something I prudishly approve of ;).