AS I WAS SAYING
The case against Bratler
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE
Curious to see for myself what beguiling bait Nicholas Coleridge had devised to catch new young readers, I bought a copy of Tatler on my way home and, unlike the ladies of fashion, found its new teenage supplement mildly depressing. While the contents were not quite shocking enough to have required ladies of fashion to turn their backs on the publishing supremo, I would have thought they deserved at least a cold shoulder rather than all those indulgent pats on the head.
For highlighted in the new glossy supple- ment is an article listing '25 things' which any teenager with pretensions to sophistica- tion might be expected to have done before reaching the age of 18, none of which by itself struck me as particularly outrageous by the standards of the 1990s, but which in aggregate, I would have thought, even ladies of fashion might regard as tempting, or even challenging, their teenage children if not to take the road to ruin then unques- tionably to set off far too early down the primrose path.
Here are a few of these obligatory experi- ences: to have got laid; to have tried out soft drugs; to have had a pregnancy scare; to have become an atheist or renounced religion; to have used an F-word in front of your parents; to have admitted to mastur- bating; to have crashed your parents' car and spent the night in a police cell. Also in the supplement is an article in defence of shoplifting: 'Why hand over £60 for a Joseph shirt when you could just walk out of the shop with it?'
Not exactly a rake's progress, I agree. Nothing to get too hot under the collar about. Indeed it could well be, I suppose, that the ladies of fashion were fawning not out of approval but out of relief. Heaven knows, the list could have been so much worse. It could have included hard drugs rather than soft drugs; abortions rather than pregnancy scares; a proper prison sen- tence, in the Darius Guppy fashion, rather than a mere one night in the cells, or, worst of all, murdering your parents, in the fash- ion of the Menendez brothers, rather than just using the F-word in front of them. After all, in the 1960s, American fashion magazines, perhaps ones owned by Conde Nast, were not only urging their young readers to get laid but to get laid by a Black Panther. By the transatlantic standards of yesteryear, therefore, Bratler's recommen- dations are very small beer indeed. Well done, Mr Coleridge, you deserved all those congratulations, which were a reward not so much for Bratler's irresponsible excesses as for its unexpected moderation.
No, I am not being ironical. Compared to the fashionable radical chic tone of the 1960s, which combined sexual permissive- ness with political subversion, Bratler's tone is indeed relatively harmless, aimed more at putting up circulation than bringing down capitalism. After all, Mr Coleridge is a Machiavellian, not a Marxist, concerned to chronicle cleverly what he thinks his young readers need to know if they are to get on in society, rather than fill their heads with silly ideas about how to reform society. His speciality is to sniff the fashionable breezes and follow where they lead and the last 'thing' he would ever want to do is unleash a whirlwind. Exploit evil, make money out of immorality, even encourage youthful depravity, all those things I can imagine him doing if the market so dictat- ed. But with equal skill and brilliance and here we come to his redeeming virtue and blessed harmlessness — he would, to please the market, do exactly the opposite, i.e. exploit virtue, make money out of morality and encourage youthful respectability.
Which brings me to the point. Truth to tell, Broiler's real fault is to be behind the fashion rather than ahead of it. It is marred by too little sophistication rather than too much. That is why Daily Mail-type accusa- `Fortunately the borders are still closed.' tions that it is depraving the young are so wide of the mark. For the telling charge is not that it will deprave the young so much as bore them; switch them off rather than switch them on. Not all, of course. Teenage plodders will no doubt carry on doing all the boring old things, as recommended by Bratler, following pretty slavishly in their parents' footsteps. But the young trend-set- ters, rather than trend-followers, tomor- row's role models, will do — indeed already are doing — something sensationally differ- ent, or so my young informants tell me. The new, smart, daring things for teenagers to do before they are 18 are not to get laid but to remain virgins; not to become atheists and renounce religion but to become charismatic Christians and to go to church at Holy Trinity, Brompton, every Sunday morning; not to crash their parents' car but to borrow their bicycle; not to fall foul of the police, in the fashion of Darius Guppy, but to join the police, in the fashion of the glamorous Lord Rosslyn.
Sadly, that Bratler list, in short, is inexcus- ably behind the times, showing not so much a lack of responsibility on the part of the man who published it — as has been sug- gested — as a lack of knowledge. What a trick Mr Coleridge has missed. Instead of consulting the truly up-to-the-minute, avant-garde teenagers who really know what is going on at the cutting edge of youthful fashion, he must have consulted a lot of teenage old fogeys without a clue.
In fact a backlash is taking place. Virtue, so long out of fashion, is beginning to acquire a novelty value. Parents, accus- tomed to producing run-of-the-mill sinners not unlike themselves, simply don't know how to handle saints, the like of which they have never encountered — or even dreamt of ever encountering. They need advice, as do the teenage saints themselves — on the correct age for confirmation, for example, or the right clothes to wear at a first com- munion: There is a great new market out there just waiting to be tapped and I do not doubt that, once made aware of its exis- tence, Mr Coleridge, having missed a trick with his first Bratler, will rush to take it with the second.
That is what is so marvellous about the likes of Nicholas Coleridge. Although quite happy in the past to sink into the gutter in the service of mammon, they will be no less happy in the future, if there is profit in it, to reach for the stars.
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