The cool.

So when I turned 25 or so, I remember thinking, "it's going to be weird not to be in the most-coveted demographic anymore." I mean, most advertising at that point was aimed squarely at the high-school kids or college kids, those with either their parent's money or student loan runoff to spend. I thought it would be kind of nice to not have advertisements constantly crammed down my throat; thought this was the time where one breaks free from corporate-sculpted personas and begins to cultivate an original style.

Now that I'm 30 and have a baby on the way, though, I've discovered that there's no such thing as being outside a targeted demographic. Case in point: we spent our teenage years obsessed with being cool, and now we're at the age our parents were when we thought our parents were the least cool people on the planet. So we're freaking out, and we want to start families and whatnot without turning into our hopelessly square parents. I thought I was alone in, for example, wanting to dress my infant in hip, groovy ways that showed I wasn't into the whole pink-and-blue, lace-and-butterflies thing. Then I saw all this:

Cool baby clothes
Punk rock baby clothes
Retro Baby

Yup. Now instead of worrying that I'm being too square or too trendy, I can worry if my baby's too square or too trendy. And all I wanted when I started that google search was a onesie with a skull on it, for Baby Skullhead. Now I'm wondering when we get to stop worrying about being cool. I'm guessing when I turn 80, there'll be an entire product line of walkers, depends, and pill counters with flames, skulls, and rock band posters on them. Funny ol' world.