Something which really gets on my nerves these days is the ignorance of young people. I’m not going to assume that everyone is like this or even than they are ignorant about everything. It isn’t even anything particularly important or life threatening that the majority of younger girls have no idea about, but it annoys me nonetheless. The reason I am targeting younger girls in particular, namely teenagers up to a certain age, is that they do something which can only label them as pretentious and ignorant, and that is that they seem to carry around bags and various forms of merchandise with pictures of icons on them with no idea who they were or what they did!

I saw a girl the other day on the bus who had a handbag with Marilyn Monroe’s face on it and she was with a friend. Her friend turned to her and told her that she loved her bag and then questioned who it was who was on the bag! To which the bag owner replied: “I don’t know”. Being both a film studies student and enthusiast and a huge fan of Marilyn Monroe, I was infuriated – how can someone not know who she is? Okay, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t know who Marilyn Monroe is, and it’s not even important. I realise there are probably a lot of people who don’t know who she is, but it seems pretty ignorant of her to buy a handbag with a picture of an icon on it and not even know who she is. It was at this moment that I piped up and told them who it was and they immediately knew who I was talking about, even though neither of them had seen any of her movies! Needless to say they felt pretty stupid after that!

Another incident which further enraged me was again, on the bus. However, this time I had a handbag with Audrey Hepburn on it. It’s an image from Breakfast at Tiffany’s so it’s not a particularly difficult one to work out – and being a huge Audrey Hepburn fan, it’s not the only piece of memorabilia I own! This time though, a girl, probably older than the other two on the previous occasion, came over to me and told me she loved my bag, to which I replied: “Oh really? What’s your favourite movie of hers?” I would like to point out that I did not say this with any kind of distain or sarcasm in my voice, but I really did think that she might be a Hepburn fan. The girl looked at me as if I had just insulted her and asked who I meant. I must have sounded a bit odd considering the girl thought we were talking about a bag whereas I stupidly assumed we would be talking about the icon on the bag. The girl had never even heard of Audrey Hepburn or the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s and was not at all interested in anything she had accomplished other than that. She was merely interested in the bag because it had a beautiful and glamorous woman on it.