Yesterday, I read this post on another writer’s live journal. It got me thinking about teens and how they are often targeted for harassment in public places. If too many of them are hanging out together, people start giving them dirty looks. If they shop as a group, they’re automatically labeled shoplifters. If they dye their hair a strange color, then they obviously up to no good.

When I was a teen, I had streaks in my hair, blue lipstick, purple eyebrows, and wore long underwear with skirts (hey, it was the eighties and the “new wave” look was the predecessor to those leggings y’all are wasting your money on then and now!). My parents decided it was a phase. And even though I thought I knew everything then, turns out they were right. My hair’s a normal shade now, and has been for about twenty years, I wear long underwear under my clothes now, and blue lipstick? Not so much. The thing is, people are generally morally formed by their teens, so I’m the same nice person I was then.

It makes me mad to hear a story like this. And I’m glad the mother complained and raised a little hell, because the store clerk didn’t even act within the law. You can’t detain and question a minor without a parent or at least a police officer (at least that’s what they told us when I worked in retail).

Were you harassed as a teen? What about now if you are a teen? How do you combat it? I chose to open doors for people and give my seat to little old ladies on the bus.