Why is it so frowned upon to go against the grain? A little crazy is good.

I am not your average teenager. I'm a born again Christian, I love to write, I collect books, I'm obsessed with conspiracy theories, I'd prefer to get a takeaway than eat salad whilst moaning about how fat I am and the thought of going clubbing more than two nights a week doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. I'm more at home sitting in a pub with a pint and a couple of my close guy mates than I am in Topshop, I hate Hollywood films and am too weird to dress normally yet not cool enough to be...well...cool. My taste in music ranges from Rage Against The Machine to Yeasayer to Nicki Minaj and I love getting into debates with people, which I quickly found out after joining the debating society is definitely not a thing normal people do.

However, I'm proud of my quirks. If I didn't like who I was then I wouldn't be this way. I'm far happier in my own skin with my own interests than I would be dumbing myself down to impress some indie boy in 5^th Avenue or to make some bitchy girls want to be friends with me. My boyfriend finds me interesting and I never run out of things to talk about with my friends so why would I want to change? I'm just as happy with my own company as I am with that of other people, and if my only interests were getting drunk and watching The Only Way is Essex (eh touchy one considering my boyfriend's sister produces it but you know what I mean) then I don't see how I could be. What would I do when the parties finished and the good TV shows stopped?

Nothing. I'd be lost. If my entire personality was shaped by my social life and my friends then I'd probably not be able to survive if I had a couple of weeks where I couldn't afford to go out, or if I wasn't fortunate enough to be a member of social networking sites, meaning that my friends are available literally 24 hours a day should I need them to be.

I find it sad that I am considered the oddity in this situation. I'd absolutely hate to be anyone but myself. I know that I'm not for everyone (God help us if everybody was like me) but a little individuality and passion for something is nothing to be ashamed of! I use Twitter fairly frequently to promote my blog and boast about my life to people that don't care, and since being a member, it's come to my attention that Jodie Marsh has been getting abuse for the fact that she's taken up body building. Sure, it's not to everyone’s' taste (hell, I don't even like muscular men, never mind women!) but I have so much respect to the woman for putting so much time and effort into something that she's passionate about. Yeah, maybe she's doing it because it's getting her a lot of publicity but maybe, just maybe, she's found something in her life that she feels is her calling and is sticking to it no matter how it changes people's view of her. I don't see anything wrong with glamour modelling: if it's the thing you're passionate about then own it, but obviously it wasn't for Jodie, and if she's happier turning her body into something she can win competitions with rather than just winning the prize for most-masturbated-over-woman of year X then who are we to judge? How dare a woman decide to start empowering herself!

It saddens me that people like the Kardashian sisters trend on Twitter (for doing what exactly?) while people like Jodie are attacked. In today's postmodern society, we should be more tolerant of individuality and the freedom to do pretty much whatever we want, but we're not. Society is changing but our values aren't and it's disgusting. Why should anybody adhere to this stereotype of what is considered 'normal' and acceptable, when really, I don't find it very acceptable at all! I don't find it acceptable that women can get admiration for parading around mansions that they didn't earn while bitching about how terrible their lives are while children are starving to death or being beaten and abused and people aren't even aware of it because Cheryl Cole has a new album coming out. I find it sad that the Kony 2012 campaign only took off because it was trending on Twitter. Sure, it's great that Twitter made people aware of an important issue in record time but it shouldn't have to be the case. We should be reading the news ourselves rather than just stumbling upon it in between narcissistic rants about how wonderful we are and looking for the latest Hollywood gossip.

Angelina Jolie is in my opinion perhaps one of the most inspirational women alive today, but nobody cares about her charity work and passion for making a difference in unfortunate children's lives because all anybody can talk about is her latest action film or speculate about how happy she is in her marriage when she says herself that after seeing some of the things that she's witnessed she will never again complain about things that don't matter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEzuBwifyAk&feature=related ).

There's nothing wrong with unwinding and watching Take Me Out on a Saturday night for a little light relief, but when it gets to the stage where you're frowned upon if you don't buy into the celebrity gossip and nightclub culture there's something wrong. Why would we crave mediocrity when we can do anything we please? We've been born into a world where almost anything is possible. I don't want to say 'everybody in Britain' because I don't want to be so arrogant as to assume I know anything about sociology but I would guess that the majority of people born into this country are born with a roof over their heads, a bed to sleep in every night and food to eat. They're born with clothes to wear, they're given an education, money is thrown at anybody who doesn't wish to earn it for themselves and yet all we aspire to is to buy Heat magazine every week, live off ready meals and become hooked on Coronation Street. It's pathetic! Why is it the minority who want to make a difference in somebody's life, or to climb to the top and be the man in the suit that produces The Jeremy Kyle Show rather than the guy slobbing around in his tracksuit waiting for the same show to get back to him about his lie detector results?

Why do we not have individual desires and dreams? Why are we content with the norm that society offers us (you know, 2.5 children, a dog, a semi-detached house in a suburb and a nine to five job that pretty much guarantees you'll cheat on your spouse at some point due to the sheer boredom of it all)? I was talking to my beeautiful girl Paige about this a couple of weeks ago and she told me about how she wants to spend years travelling when she finishes university. She's read about different landmarks, temples and festivals that she wants to go to and she doesn't see the point in settling down when she hasn't even lived yet, and I couldn't agree more! The thing that Paige and I couldn't understand was why people look at us so blankly when we tell them about our dreams. Why they are confused as to why we would possibly want anything more than to get a job, get married and have children before the age of 25. I couldn't think of anything worse to do personally but that isn't the point. The point is that it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't be shocking that we both want to do something that would make us happier than what other people want to do, just as it shouldn't be classed as weird if any of my peers wanted to invest more energy into an interest or hobby of theirs than doing body shots off some toned beauty.

We live in a society where we can do anything we like, and where we're surrounded by people who differ from one another, whether that be by religion or dress (I'd love to see a goth hand in hand with a cheerleader) or any other variable that you can possibly think of. We should be celebrating people's differences, not punishing them. Let's move our views into the 21^st century instead of just our bodies.