Do you love or loathe all those teen rebels?

Monique Natalia, Contributor, Jakarta

From the heyday of leather jackets in the 1950s, when James Dean was the surly, shifty pretty boy loved by teens and loathed by their parents, to the now glory days of body piercing and hip-hop bad boy Eminem, rebels have ruled our world; or, to be precise, the teen world of entertainment. But, what do you think of them?

Diwan, 20, North Jakarta. For me a rebel is someone who doesn't want to follow something that's conservative. A rebel always wants to find something new. He or she also always tries to find a way to break down the existing system.

Like in fashion, for example, Indonesian girls used to wear clothes that are not revealing. Now, you can see girls wearing tank tops everywhere.

I think rebellion in Indonesia is more about lifestyle. But I don't know if it's really a form of rebellion or if it's only a passing trend. Take clubbing. Those people who adopt this kind of lifestyle often claim that they do it because it's a form of rebellion when in fact they're just doing it because everybody else is doing it. Don't get me wrong though -- I do it too sometimes!

I like it when it is a form of expression, like filmmaking for instance. I hate it when it is done at the expense of other people.

Vita, 19, South Jakarta: I think that rebels are people who break the rules. For teenagers I think it's more about not obeying your parents. Like people whose body is like a walking jewelry store, full of all kinds of body piercing and tattoos.

Take a more common case, promiscuous sex! ... Our parents say that we shouldn't have sex before marriage, but most of my friends have already done it. Sometimes, rebels do what they do because they want to attract attention. They want to be different from other people.

Sometimes I rebel, too, but compared with other people my rebellion could still be considered "normal". Usually, I try to do what my parents tell me to do but when it is against my will, like what school to choose, I would say no.

As for my feeling about rebels, I'm kind of in the middle. I like rebels when what they do turns out to be good. Maybe they have a different goal from the rest of us. There is no harm in making it happen when it doesn't have a negative impact on other people. I don't like rebels when they start doing things that violate other people's rights.

Tia, 16, South Jakarta: To me rebels are people who don't follow rules. They are people who are ignorant of rules. They just do what they want. They don't like the existing rules so they decide to make their own rules.

I think most teenagers who rebel tend to come from dysfunctional families. Their parents do not care about what they do, so they think that what they do is always right.

I hate those kind of people. Especially when they start doing things that are harmful to other people. They don't think about the impact of their actions on other people, and that I don't like.

Reza, 16, South Jakarta: I think people who don't follow rules are rebels. It could be rules set by your parents, your school, or other rules. They always do what they think is fun and do not care what other people think. When other people tell them what they think about their behavior they never listen.

I like rebels like Eminem. He's cool. I think that if rebellion is a form of self-expression, then it's cool. If it harms other people, like school brawls just for the heck of it, I don't like it. But sometimes rebellion can have a good effect too, like the demonstrations that brought down Soeharto.

Lydia, 18, West Jakarta: For me rebels are people who go against the mainstream. They don't follow what everybody else is doing. They create their own thing. Like in music, when they feel everything else that other musicians are doing sucks then they look for their own style and try to create something new with it. Also in film, people who are fed up with all these Hollywood movies come up with their own films. Hey, that's why they started the Sundance Film Festival, right?

I think that form of rebellion is good. It's cool when people want to be different from the rest of the population. Otherwise, we're just a bunch of robots all doing the same thing. Rebellion can be the start of something new, something revolutionary. It can change your perspective on things.

On the other hand, there are forms of rebellion that I don't like, like those people who damage public property. But, there are always two sides. There is the bad side and there is a good side. Take graffiti, for example, and what I mean by graffiti is the nice stuff ... For some it's a form of expression. For others it's a violation.

Hans, 16, South Jakarta: I think rebels are people who break the rules. They do that because they want to be different from other people. People who have piercings and tattoos everywhere, for example, I think they do that because they want to stand out from the rest of us. Another example is drugs. To me drug addicts are rebels, they go against what their parents and what everybody else tells them.

I know some forms of rebellion are bad, but it's up to them. They choose to do it. It's none of our business.

Cool people are usually rebels. Like people with tattoos and piercings. I like them because I think it's cool that they always do what they want. They're not afraid to go against what everybody else does.