Teenagers are 'dummying down'

 

 

Yeah baby: One teenage clubber with her dummy

 

 

If you think only suckers follow teenage fashion, this could be just the proof you need.

 

 

 

The latest bizarre fad among Britain's adolescents is to chomp on a baby's plastic dummy.

The origins of the new trend are hazy, but it may be a throwback to the Nineties rave scene, when clubbers chewed on dummies to alleviate jaw cramps caused by taking the illegal drug Ecstasy.

But today's teenagers appear to be influenced by fashion, rather than drug culture.

The dummies they use aren't standard Mothercare issue for babies, but the products of a whole new industry offering specially manufactured dummies for teenagers, complete with flashing lights inside.

One Manchester-based eBay trader is selling them in pulsating purple, pink, yellow and blue for £1.50, boasting they are 'ideal for clubbing... a great retro item to light up your night'.

But they may be illegal.

In Manchester, trading standards officers seized more than 1,000 from street traders, saying they break safety rules because babies could confuse them with real dummies and swallow them, or be accidentally strangled by their multicoloured cords.

The strange teenage habit has even caught the attention of Radio 4's esteemed Today programme, which usually concentrates on weighty political matters.

Yesterday, Andrew Harrison, editor of clubbing magazine Mixmag, told listeners: 'It is a statement of industry offering specially peculiar individuality. It is cool in the way extremely uncool things can become cool. People often choose the most ridiculous thing and make it into a little fetish.

'You see it in the East London hip-hop culture where it is a reaction against the great moodiness of the hip-hop world. This is placing yourself in a humorous position of looking like a big kid.'

Psychologist Oliver James said: 'It is a signal which says to other teenagers, "I am not like you, I am in with the other dummy suckers."

'But, more interestingly, it is raising two fingers to the grown-ups in the crazy society they are being coerced to join. They may look backwards for a sense of authenticity in childhood.' So maybe they're no dummies, after all.

Meh.

 

Real teenagers drink real lager, not that alcohpop shite

Retarted!

oh god...

 

i think we have similar problems here as well

It's a fashion statement, so if you don't have one you will become unfashionable, so everybody wants to stay fashionable to stay with the 'cool' crowd, where the real cool people can't give a tosh about fashion.

My God!! I knew fashions came round again, but the dummy sucking one????

 

In 1992, when we went on our school exchange to Paris the in thing was little, jewellery-sized dummies in all sorts of shades of plastic!!

That fashion sucks!!:rolleyes:

I haven't seen this yet in the States....... with any luck... I wont!

In 1992, when we went on our school exchange to Paris the in thing was little, jewellery-sized dummies in all sorts of shades of plastic!!

 

I remember when almost every girl in my elementary school had one of those one their keychains, their hair ties, as necklaces..it was crazy.

I haven't seen that here in the States...

Oh man, that was totally the fad when I was in elementary school .. a bunch of us wore those pacifiers on a necklace lanyard.

 

We were so cool :rolleyes: