The Straight Edge movement has been making a revival recently among teenagers. Popular in the 1980's a new generation of youth seems to have picked up on it. For those uninitiated to the term, to be "straight edge" means to live a clean lifestyle (no drugs, etc). It is basiclly a hip way of saying that you are straight laced. I had a respect for this for a long time. I mean, hey, it is pretty darn cool to see highschoolers declair that they will stand up, without shame, against certain behaviors. It's refreshing to see teenagers willing to take the moral high ground. So what if it gets tiresome seeing xXx or sXe (shorthand for straight edge) scribbled all over the place. The sentiment is admirable.
I, however, don't think it is so cute anymore. These same teenagers are slowly undermining the power of the statement. What used to be a declaration of purity is now no more powerful than those tiresome D.A.R.E. (Drug Awareness and Resistence Education) t-shirts we used to wear in elementary school. I think my personal respect for the phrase was severed when a girl who's promiscuity is a known fact among her friends (though she thinks she has hidden it from her family) still declaires that she is dedicated to the Straight Edge lifestyle. This same girl goes on to brag about her occasional bouts of underage alcohol consumption. It would be more precise to say that she doesn't do drugs. However saying she is Straight Edge, I'm sure, makes her feel more virtuous.
To those of you saying "Teenagers are teenagers. What do you expect?" I say, if we never expect anything more than promiscuity and debauchery, then they don't really have a reason to strive for it do they? Let's raise our expectations first and maybe someone will rise to meet them. I for one think it is more offensive to brand teenagers as incapable of virtue. They are capable of it, someone just has to give a damn first.
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