Youth having its fling? We're too busy working

Marilyn dreams: Jessica Chastain as a ditzy bottle-blonde in The Help
12 April 2012

"Aren't our twenties supposed to be fun?" my friend asked after yet another 16-hour slog at the office. I agreed: "We're meant to be dancing on tables. Instead we are glued to our desks."

Not so long ago - as episodes of Friends inform me - your twenties were essentially your teenage years extended but acne-free, a final hurrah before children. Now they are the decade of disillusionment: spent toiling away in fear of that P45, playing peon as an intern or desperately firing CVs into the abyss.

We got the collective memo: those of us with jobs are lucky to have them. Some of us even love our careers. And yes, there are children in Africa who work even longer hours. But that doesn't make exploitation of the young something that should be accepted.

Employers scent subservient gratitude, which stems from seeing friends with equal qualifications join the dole queue. So like Boxer the horse, we take the scraps they throw, perhaps until they cart us off to the knacker's yard.

Bosses also know that child-free, there is no deadline for putting supper on the table and no sad little faces door-watching for our arrival. And that, oozing youthful keenness, we wouldn't want to be the office moaner or the one who says "no". We are, therefore, eminently exploitable.

Few careers are immune. My friends who are teachers run all the after-school clubs, organise sports days and parents' evenings while their sprogged-up elders head for the exit when the bell goes at 15:30.

Others, who work in the City, get by on Pro Plus and takeway pizza to finish that document, long after older colleagues have left for the night.
Obviously we don't take time off because little Lily or little Luke is in the school play or has come down with the flu. Yet we are still decried as slackers and spoilt. In 2005, when I was at university, the thinktank Reform dubbed us the IPOD generation: insecure, pressurised, over-taxed and debt-ridden. The recession has only exacerbated these problems.

I have a different acronym for us: Generation SAFFY (the scorned, abandoned, fatigued, fleeced and young), after the sensible daughter in Ab Fab who looks on as the parents have all the fun. We are advised to put in the hours now at work and told that it will pay off later. But when the wrinkles start to appear, I suspect that many of us will mourn our lost youth.

A triumph for the underdog

The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett's novel exploring the racism of Sixties Mississippi, premiered in London last night. Jessica Chastain, as a ditzy bottle-blonde Marilyn-alike, and Octavia Spencer as her gutsy maid Minny, are the scene-stealers, with an original take
on female bonding.

It is a double underdog film: Stockett's manuscript was rejected by publishers 60 times, while The Help celebrates women who are rarely given a voice. Perhaps that's why director Tate Taylor feels justified in its extreme sentimentality, launching an all-out assault on your tear-ducts. If you don't need tissues, you're a tougher soul than me.

How not to stay ahead in fashion

At a Twenty20 cricket match last month, I totted up the number of Superdry logos in the crowd. I counted seven. And cricket, love it as I do, isn't exactly where all the cool kids hang out on a Friday night.

The brand's owner, SuperGroup, has been one of the few British clothing chains with a jolly tale to tell during the recession. Yesterday, though, the story turned gloomy with a profit warning caused by a warehouse blunder. Longer-term, its bosses face an issue less easy to solve: its ubiquity.
Certainly, Superdry has a far more diverse range than that other famous fashion bubble, FCUK. But when you regularly spot fortysomething City types decked out in its windcheaters, young 'uns will notice and drop theirs at the charity shop. Months ago, jokers in the Square Mile rechristened the company "SuperDroop" as its shares sank. How long before customers are routinely calling the label Superdull?

Stop knocking the solo squad

"What's so wrong with needing a man?" asks an article in November's Elle, which claims we're "constantly being told that it's disempowering to feel sad about being single". Sure, by the multi-million pound dating industry, the saccharine messages of Valentine's Day and all those mawkish rom-coms churned out by Hollywood.

Just as there are smug marrieds there are smug singletons thrilled that they don't bicker over the washing up, and I suspect they are a more common breed than Elle's writer claims. The part I disagree with most, though, is that friendship is "no substitute for a relationship". My best friend and I have been through cancer (hers), break-ups and scores of fashion atrocities. A lack of romantic love doesn't have to be lonely.

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