Overthinking #1: Deconstructing James Dean

"But what can I say, I like bad boys." - A conversation overheard on the 94 bus.

I spend a lot of time on the bus, at least 8 hours a week. I overhear a lot of conversation snippets. It's not that I'm nosy, or even that I care, but when you're packed in like sardines you can't help but overhear things.

This, I must say, confused me a little bit.

What constitutes a 'Bad Boy' these days? The James Dean archetype is sorely outdated; what was considered 'bad' in the 1950's seems mild by today's standards.

I've had no experience with Bad Boys. I've known people who have few redeeming qualities, rude people, cruel people, liars... but never once have I encountered a 'Bad Boy', not really.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm too forgiving or maybe I don't get out enough.

So I started to think about it, (I had a whole 45 minute bus ride ahead of me) what on Earth did that poor girl mean?

Is a bad boy someone who drinks?
Perhaps in the traditional sense, when 'teenager' was still a new concept and forging an identity meant not doing what mum and dad told you to. These days, though, it's hard to find someone who doesn't drink. And honestly, I'm pretty sure someone can be thoroughly terrible without swigging from a bottle of spirits.

Is a bad boy someone who does drugs?
It may be a matter of opinion, but I have no interest in what people choose to put in their bodies. They're just that, theirs. And in the same way that I don't expect anyone to tell me how to live my life, I would never tell anyone how to live theirs.

Anyway, does recreational use make someone a bad person?
Of course not, I've met plenty of drug users who are Mummy's boys.

Is a bad boy someone who uses people?
Perhaps, but then I have met people, terribly nice people, who don't have the best record. In fact they burn through girls faster than they do cigarettes. Bad experiences and casual relationships, fear of commitment and something as simple as difference in opinion, it happens.  Having a bad track record does not an awful person make.

I'm not sure I really know what makes a bad boy, or if it's a concept that ever really existed, at least not in anyway that is genuinely attractive.

James Dean as an archetype is all well and good, the desire to make them good, put an end to their renegade ways, bring them to hang up their leather jackets.

The Brooding Poet is attractive too, a soulful young man whose just had his heart broken one too many times. A bird with a broken wing, something to heal, to show him the beauty of the world again.

Still, these archetypes are the refuges of fiction. Real people are infinitely more deep and complicated, with ticks and habits, likes and dislikes beyond the facade presented to us by the media.

Those brooding boys in perfume ads, they aren't real. Real men are more complex, more intricate and so much better.

Katie x