Punk Rock Stuff

It is 7 p.m. on a Friday. April Kitcho-Lucero, Leah White and Sonyi Mays - all eighth-graders at Fairfax County's Rachel Carson Middle School - have an evening of possibilities in front of them. The girls are at Sterling, Va.'s, Dulles Town Center, one of the Washington area's many shopping malls. They might eat, or not. They might buy punk rock stuff or just window-shop. They might check out what teens from other schools are wearing. They giddily plan out an itinerary that includes the food court, Candy World and the Halloween costume store.

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"Your hair rocks" Leah shouts to a platinum blond teenage boy riding the escalator. Leah, clad all in black - even her lipstick - is a fan of the goth look. "It's where you get the punk stuff for the raver-club look." Her friends agree and name their other reasons for spending time here. "It's fun to come to the mall because all of the stores are in one place," Sonyi says. "And we can get smoothies and punk rock stuff. Sometimes we are just window-shopping." Adds Leah: "The mall is great when you don't have anywhere else to go."

The girls are the latest generation of American teens to use a shopping mall as much more than a place to buy shoes. The mall is a place to be part of a crowd of other teens. It is a place to check out what is trendy. Most important, it is a place they can go without their parents, says Michael Riera, a San Francisco psychologist and co-author of the book "Field Guide to the American Teenager." "The mall is the mythical street corner," Mr. Riera says. "Teens can be out of the view of their parents. They can be invisible, or be someone else with punk stuff. They can try on different attitudes and know that if they try something foolish, it will have minimal impact on their daily lives. It is a sense of liberty, too, to get away from your parents and, if you've got some money, to spend it on things they wouldn't necessarily let you buy."

Punk Rock Stuff

Robbie Blinkoff, a Baltimore cultural anthropologist who studies consumer behavior, says teens want to be where something is happening. Shopping malls have the possibility of something happening, he says, simply because there are large groups of people there.  "Teens want to be around other teens," he says. "They want to hang out. Malls are a place where teens can be until the next best thing happens. Young people tend to measure the success by who was there and whether you were there when something happened. Malls have a lot of possibilities for that punk rock stuff." See also creeper shoes, and pages relate to punk stuff | more