Whatever happened to individualism?

There’s a facebook note doing the rounds at the moment encouraging people to share with their friends how many books they have read from a set list put together by the BBC.

It’s mainly spurring one of two types of comment from people; those gloating that they’ve read a lot of the books on the list and those apologetically admitting that they’ve only read a few.

Shouldn’t it be the other way round?

Before we read a book we all go through the same process, all be it subconsciously: We ask ourselves what our frame of mind is, what the many options available to us are and what we, personally, would get the most out of reading at that specific moment in time. To end up reading a classic or something from a best seller list seems like the lazy ‘one size fits all’ option when there are limitless choices available. After all, one of the great things about life is that there is no required reading list.

I guess a lot of people are insecure and use technology such as facebook and Twitter to reinforce that they are OK i.e. normal. Some people get comfort in the fact that they have the same opinions as others and knowing that other people agree with them – and have read the same books as them. Lovely. But where is all this mass appreciation getting them except further into the depths of mundanity?

Since the launch of the free papers, so many of us are reading the same crap in the morning and after work, communicating on Twitter and facebook during the day then coming home and reading a book that most of our friends have read.

It’s so disappointing when women especially wait to see what the general consensus is about something before voicing their own opinions. No one dared say a bad world about Cheryl Cole a few years ago and now suddenly she’s being slagged off at water coolers across the country: But only since some magazines and newspapers deemed it OK for that floodgate to open and a new comedy show started taking the piss out of her. No wonder poor Cheryl’s getting worried: She’s looked up into the sky and glimpsed the massive switch, that controls most female brains in the country, begin it’s flicking process.

Just look at the ridiculous bandwagon reaction to Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks. You could almost hear the same thought rippling around female heads everywhere: ‘Ah, so it’s OK to be plump and ginger now.’ And since the announcement of the royal wedding apparently girls throughout the land are asking their hairdressers for the ‘Kate’ hairstyle. Putting all other issues to one side, it’s just long hair isn’t it?

Why do we need to follow an image or reading list deemed OK by the masses?

Why can’t we just be the beautiful individuals we were born?

Posted 07:07 PM on Sat Dec 04 2010

By Wedding Belle

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