“KABATAAN” - An Essay About Manila And Rural Teens
after living in Cavite (which is not part of the metro) for about 2 yrs, i noticed a lot of differences and similarities of the teenagers in metro manila and the rural areas (specifically Misamis Occidental where i grew up).
first would be the clothing. manila teens love to explore fashion, always get into trend and sometimes may develop their own style. rural teens are into fashion too but they have a hard time finding the right place to buy clothes and accessories coz the malls are not as developed. rural teens would find a way to be on trend, some ways would be that they’d make thier own accessories by recycling magazines or stones and they’d make “patahi” on the local sewer. manila teens are more of the shopping freak. they know where the bargains and tiangge are displayed. they’d search the whole metro or even the suburbs to explore malls. i was even kinda hooked with the latter too. lol.
second, the way of life. manila teens love to drink coffee, or should i say, FLAUNT coffee. they like to display to everyone that they’re drinking a cup of coffee for a hundred and fifty bucks and may sometimes bring their posh laptops with them. rural teens are, well, naive about it just yet. they don’t have coffee houses that has wi-fi in it so they’re more on juices and soft ice cream at the local grocery. manila teens also love expensive slippers. gawd, how they LUV to display their feet with flip flops that has the trademark of HAVAIANAS. for rural teens, they are contented with cheap slippers, just pretty enough to be worn on beaches. manila teens are at pace with the new books and movies that are out. if a movie is popular, they need - as in NEED - to watch it for them to be in touch when their friends talk about it. they don’t like to be left out. rural teens would have had to be like that if the local movie house is up-to-date and that they have equipped bookstores,sadly they don’t.
third and last, the thinking and perceptions. manila teens would love to go out and hang out with friends because they feel much happier with them. the same goes with the rural teens. manila teens sneak out late at night just to go to night clubs or parties. rural teens sneak out in the middle of the day to go to a friend’s house and sometimes may stay there for the night. rural teens don’t have much happenings at night so they’re contented in long chats and gossips about the exciting news in town which is easy to grasp coz almost all the people knew each other. manila teens think that they need to be independent, rural teens does too. manila teens think that rural teens are so naive and are boring. rural teens think that manila teens are too liberated and all of them are not virgins anymore.
as for me, all teens are really the same, its just because of the place where they were brought up that mattered. a friend told me once that teens in the province are somehow immature than teens on the city because manila teens wants to be independent as soon as they can, but actually rural teens are also like that. he said that rural teens are more composed and doesn’t have the ’sungay’ that manila teens have but gawd, if he only knew what we were when i was still in the province, he should have thought otherwise.
teens are all the same, with one heart and one mind. and i agree that teens are the hope of the country as what a hero imparted. LONG LIVE THE TEENS!
