Matthew Gates 3m 625 #teenager
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Once upon a time, I was a teenager in high school. Although I don’t have too many fond memories of high school and hardly remember any of it, it was probably 4 years I could have done without. I never went to prom, never had a date, never even dated, never even had a girlfriend, and certainly was never involved in any activities.
When it comes to high school, I can only say this: If I knew then what I know now, my high school years would have been a lot different. It wasn’t until college that I actually learned to make the best of my situation and learn how to appreciate and experience everything, especially people and moments.
If there is anything I do remember in high school, aside from struggling to get through a busy hallway to my next class,
wishing I were home asleep, even skipping some classes to drive to the mall parking lot to sleep upon getting my license, and nervously standing up in front of a class trying to give a lousy speech, it is definitely some of the faces I saw. Years later, I’ve run into several people from high school.
Can’t say that I remember a name at all, but I hardly forget faces. Those faces had a youthful expression, lacked any aging lines, and to those many who were not really sexually experienced – mostly innocent and without regret.
When I was growing up, there were shows like Happy Days, 90210, Party of Five, The Secret World of Alex Mack, Dawson’s Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Saved By The Bell, That 70s Show, 7th Heaven, Moesha, Sister Sister, Roswell. There were also plenty of movies featuring teenagers like Grease, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Clueless, She’s All That, Bring It On, Mean Girls, John Tucker Must Die, Napolean Dynamite, etc.
For many of these movies and shows, the actors and actresses were mostly close to the age of who they were portraying. It seemed pretty natural that teenagers would play teenagers and adults play adults. Most of the teenagers in these shows and movies certainly looked and acted the part. It is not hard to act like a teenager. Sometimes, the actors look younger than they really are and can certainly portray youth in high school with daily teenage drama. In the world of acting, however, there are only so many teenagers who are actually actors. The rest are often in their late teens and twenties.
As I get older and more television shows and movies come out, directors, producers, and filmmakers still think they can use older actors and actresses, but there is now a difference: I notice the lines in the faces of the actor. Lines that I never had as a teenager that I developed later in my face as a twenty-something, are also on those same people. While makeup does a great job of covering it up, the mature face cannot be hidden for long.
There is only so long that a baby face maintains itself and there are plenty of people who are lucky enough to have it through most of their twenties and possibly even their thirties. There are still plenty of actors and actresses who pull off acting as a teenager or a young adult and do it very well. It is not so for everyone, and plenty of people just do not belong in the part of acting as a teenager in high school. For them, it is time to grow up. For the producer or director that casts them, it is time to realize that their potential to act as a teenager has come to an end. Welcome to acting like an adult!
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