Is your teenager an emo, a poshie or a skanger? We all label each other, kids are just more inventive about it. The streets are heaving with hormonal teens flaunting their particular tribes - and, in many cases, their bodies, writes Ailish Connelly.
Do you know what a mountie is? And no, I don't mean the Canadians with the red jackets and funny hats. What about an emo, a poshie, a D4 or a skanger? Or a bogger, a scobe or a jock? If I mentioned rockers or punks, you might have a better idea. If I told you your teenager was likely to be one of the above, would you pass out peacefully or would you nod your head wisely? Maybe you've been there, done that, donned the Sex Pistols T-shirt. Most likely you kept your underwear on though, because that was the fashion way back when, even if the goalposts have moved a bit since.
You may have been a mod or a rocker in your time, or a hippie or a punk. So today's tribes are no big deal. What's so new or so different? Money, that's what. And much more acceptance of sexuality at a younger age. And the fact that there's just a whole lot more tribes now, and they are, with their delineations and their markings, a sociologist's dream. The streets of every town, village and crossroads in the land are heaving with hormonal teen groups and young adults flaunting their affiliations - and their bodies.
Our Celtic cubs have a life many of us could only dream of in our junior heyday. A tantalising life we peeked longingly at on those imported TV shows in the 1980s, and tried to ape to the best of our limited funds' ability. So you were the lone punk in your school. You were miles ahead of the rest of the no-hopers, but even you wouldn't have gone out with a G-string tied to your wrist, to show the boys you were available.
It is unclear whether the G-string rumour is true or just urban myth, but the young people I interviewed wouldn't do it either. But they did give me an eye-opening insight into what they would do, where they go and why, and lots more in between. If you thought you knew it all, sorry, but you didn't know the half of it. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. I thought I'd better start at the beginning, when our girls are getting their first taste of freedom and the awesome power of the young and the beautiful. Thirteen-year-old Rebecca Moran gave me the lowdown on her age group.
"Poshies are prettier," she tells me. They are a version of D4s, named after the postcode Dublin 4. Seems it's not only the chattering classes, but also their children, who have influence over society. "It's a look," she explains, when I inquire why such young girls would go out with very little clothing.
On a night out to Spin (a disco in Stillorgan) where the young teens of 13 and 14 hang out, "you wear your high heels, a mini, maybe hot pants, with a tutu over it. If you are wearing shorts, you pair them with Ugg boots." Skin is in.
Poshies evolved from mounties, who came from Mount Anville, a school in south Dublin.
Rebecca tells me for the big night out they also favour orange faces (her words), stilettos with ankle warmers and GHD (Good Hair Day) straightened hair. Forget curls if you want to be posh. And be blond, for Gawd's sake. Slick blonds, they start as they mean to continue. It's a look that filters right through to early twenty-somethings. They like to appear groomed. That means Mammy buys them Abercrombie and Fitch, Roxy or American Eagle on her trips to New York. You can also get it online, but the whole point is that this group can instantly recognise each other's clout - and clobber, recognise their exclusivity in their costume. Apparently poshies wear less than other tribes when they go out.
So Dunnes or Penneys are out, I venture. Not at all. According to Rebecca, it's how you put it together. You can pull that gear off as long as you have the right overall look. Poshies with extra dosh like "dubes", Dubarry deck shoes that retail at around €100 a pair. All the kids I spoke to agreed that having plenty of pocket money helped maintain the picture. But Rebecca is not too impressed with the tiny size zero figure. "Like a little girl," she sniffs.
Rebecca's mother Terry admits it's a little shocking to see what they are wearing. "But you can't stop her from being part of a group, they all dress the same," she says. "They have to belong. Much as you'd like to, you can't lock up your daughters."
She reckons that teens today are at least two years ahead of her generation in terms of what they get up to and when. The desire to be seen as grown up makes them behave as they think adults behave.
It's a fashion thing, but it's also heavily influenced by music videos, TV and the all-pervasive cult of celebrity. The girl-on-girl, part-stripper, part-poledancer look comes from American hip-hop and R&B videos. And from club influences in places such as Ibiza. Young girl power is about getting out and flashing it. Is it for themselves, I wonder, or to attract young guys' attention? The consensus seems to be that it is peer driven.
Most parents I spoke to commented on the fact that teenagers now have an awful lot more spare cash than we ever had. Money brings certain freedoms - not always a good thing. Often both parents are working hard and hand over extra cash to compensate for their time-poor lives. Which suits lots of kids just fine. From what I've seen and heard, they have very expensive tastes.
Poshies also have their own words such as "leg" (as in, you're such a legend). Ross O'Carroll Kelly is on the nail and is adored by this crowd.
The polar opposite to poshies and D4s are scobes or skangers. They are the tracksuit brigade. They're into expensive branded sportswear such as Nike and Yankee, wear hooped earrings, and scrape their hair into a ponytail. They would be the less affluent equivalent to the D4s, but not all scobes are necessarily middle class. It's so finely tuned, it offers a clear reminder that we are essentially social animals and like to hive ourselves off into easily definable groups: adults and kids alike.
Scobes wear rather more clothes than the poshies. According to Rachel McDermott (15) from Wicklow, skangers like to smoke and drink. Very uncool. She considers herself a bit of a rocker. She dresses punk, in tartan and black, but many of her friends like the mini-skirt style. She doesn't like the "slutty" look, especially not in the depths of winter, and reckons the slutty style is because of peer pressure from other girls, not from the boys. Her young male friends "don't care what the girls wear. They are more interested in the person." She agrees that is fairly unusual.
Her best friend, Ivan Sheridan (14), from Shankill, Co Dublin, says, "I wouldn't be caught dead with a D4." They are way too vacuous for him. He likes indie music and goes to gigs where crowd-surfing and mosh pits are the name of the game. Punks wear black and see themselves as intellectuals. Essential reading is Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mocking Bird and various rock biographies. As much as things change, so they remain the same. Punks consider themselves individuals and both Rachel and Ivan agree there is little bullying among their crowd of punks and rockers. Ivan says, "the girls who go out half-dressed are clones, trying to fit in and looking for attention. D4s are big into acquisition."
The D4s should fit well into our Tiger economy, then.
Punks like Ivan don't feel the need to be capitalists, and they don't respect the economic culture of 21st-century Ireland. Ivan is at pains to explain that he is not an emo (more later) and whatever class the punks of today are, they identify with the working class. He tells me lots of middle-class well-off teens copy the working-class thing, especially the dress code. It's possibly to do with following their football heroes, he suggests. They even go so far as to adopt a working-class Dublin accent so that they have "knacker" chic, he says. You couldn't make it up.
Ivan's friend, Thaddeus Challis, is a Buddhist. He doesn't like to label himself as part of any particular group. He attends a Christian school and "just stands there when they say prayers". He does chant but not as often as he should, he says.
When I inquire about spirituality in their lives, both Rachel and Ivan tell me that you don't have to go to church to be spiritual - "to each their own". That told me!
Back to less esoteric matters, Lorna Keogh (16) from Shankill proclaims that the half-dressed look is not classy and is attention-seeking. She has just started going to Bondi, a disco in south Dublin, while until recently going out to Wesley. Yep, that Wesley. Apparently they wear more clothes in Bondi - where the general age group would be 17 - than in Wesley, where the crowd is younger.
Her friend, Jennifer Connell, loves Wesley and says that "Baby Wes" held on Friday nights for third years features some kids who are into drinking and perhaps "messing around" with boys, but it's not so bad. She doesn't like revealing clothes and hangs out with lots of different types of friends.
Hannah Brennan (17) from Dublin says she has yet to see any girl with a G-string around her wrist. Such was the ballyhoo over the supposed carry-on at Wesley last summer that half the parents of south county Dublin were up in arms. Hannah was on the Gerry Ryan radio show defending Wesley. "It's definitely not like it's made out to be," she says. "Wesley is a great place to go when you are 15. Yes, there is the tiny amount of clothes, the fake tan and the hair extensions, but it's a fun place to go with your friends."
Her sister, Sally, who is in her final year in UCD, studying law, has left all the teen discos well behind. "By the time you are 18 you have developed your own style. You might flash one thing at a time, wearing, say, a short skirt or a skimpy top, not both together." The girls her age are body conscious but scoff at the size zero trend that's popular with celebrities.
Sarah Keogh (20), a student nurse and sister to Lorna, thinks short skirts are fine if you have the figure for it. "Only idiots wear high heels they can't walk in," she adds.
And so to emos (emotionals). This was a new one on me. According to Rachel McDermott, emos started with kids identifying with the likes of Johnny Cash who sang of cutting oneself as the only way to feel anything. Some are in emotional turmoil with real problems; others see it as a form of rebellion - the glamour of the damned.
Olivia Fahy (17) from Ballybrack is busy studying for her Leaving Cert. She describes herself as a bit of a rocker. She says emos are a particularly Irish, naughties version of goths. There are stories of emos drawing on their arms with red pen to ape slash wounds. Both girls say emos wear tight black drainpipes and have heavy side fringes. And that guy emos look just like girl ones.
Emos are into bands such as My Chemical Romance and Hawthorn Heights; indies prefer Arctic Monkeys and Snow Patrol, and the "plastics" (Olivia's term for poshie/D4s) like disco or pop. So music is, as it always was, the driver of the fads and the highlighter of differences between the tribes.
Then there are the jocks, like Donagh Leahy (18), who are into sports and like their girls tarty - but not too much so. He is confident that men in general like the whole over-made-up look. His honesty is admirable. He definitely prefers D4 types. Interestingly, Donagh is the one of the few teens to bring up the issue of the role of alcohol in their social lives. He says drink is a huge part of the young person's scene. It would be rare to find someone who doesn't drink, he says.
I spoke to Jack Nolan, who is 15 and comes from the picturesque fishing village of Union Hall in west Cork. He doesn't know anything about emos or D4s but he figures girls from his neck of the woods dress up in short skirts to go out - and he likes it. He doesn't go to a mixed school but has lots of female friends.
He is a sporty guy too, into golf and football, and is confident and assured in a quiet, unassuming way. His social life revolves around local discos - much like city kids - and he "hangs around the town".
His mother Kate tells me country kids aren't as much into the group/tribal thing as city kids but the same problems of under-age drinking and anti-social behaviour arise there as much as anywhere. But her son and his friends are a sound bunch of kids, she says. I ask Jack if they have a name for slick city kids, but he laughs and says they don't.
What about the under-age drinking? Olivia Fahy gives me some clues. "Oh yes, there's plenty of drinking going on. It starts about 14 or 15, depending on the kids, maybe in second or third year. It's widely accepted that you drink if you want to and just make sure your parents don't find out. It's up to the individual but sometimes there is pressure to join in."
What about drugs? "No, that's for an older crowd, alcohol is way cheaper and it's easier to access."
So, who are the boggers? Sorry all you guys from outside the Pale, yes, it's you, and it doesn't matter whether you are a townie or not. But of course, some rural teens probably have their own names for the kids from the capital. That's what teens do. That's what we all do, knowingly or not. We box and label each other. Kids are just funnier, more inventive and more honest about it.
In all of my conversations with the young adults for this piece, I am struck by their confidence and their ability to communicate. As Leslie Keogh, mother to Lorna and Sarah, says, "kids today are more encouraged, and the positivity is feeding through. In my day, we wouldn't have dared argue or disagree with an adult. Kids now have an opinion and they are not afraid to get it out there. Most of that is down to the parents."
I feel much more confident in the future after talking to these kids. Because they are lively, attractive, copped on and clued in. They don't suffer fools gladly and are well able to get their views across.
These kids are our future. So what if they are loud, and occasionally raucous, and shock us to our core? It's their job as teenagers to push the boundaries. If they don't do it then, when will they?