What’s cool anyway?

Have you noticed how almost everyone these days tries really hard to be cool and unique? Just take a walk around Cape Town City Centre and you will see young people donning some…ahem…very interesting outfits and hairstyles. Thanks to Rihanna and Willow, the long Mohawk has become a must have “cool” hairdo and the City Centre looks like a set of Marilyn Manson’s music video.

It seems as if everyone is on some quest to appear unique and cool but what is the actual definition of the term “cool”? Below are three definitions of cool that I came up with deriving from my observations of the cool crowd

1. Putting on weird clothes because a certain celebrity is doing it.
2. Colouring your hair blood red because it sets you apart from the rest.
3. Hanging at certain places because all the cool people frequent those places.

Someone told me that dressing like a drag queen has suddenly became cool because of Lady Gaga [gasps]. So I suppose you can use definition 1 above for “cool”. So far I have seen three girls with red hair extensions. This is of course after the release of Riri’s latest album, LOUD (refer to definition 1 & 2).

Some of my friends are willing to cough up a cool R200 cover charge to hang out at ZAR Lounge because the Kardashian sisters have been there, Julius Malema parties there and the owner, Kenny Kunene, made it look cool to eat sushi off naked women (see definition 3).

I don’t understand how Julius Malema made it to anyone’s cool list though, but this cool madness must come to an end before people start acting tjatjarag.