Close your eyes and imagine a Yuppie. Picture them swishing past you in their tailored power suit, triple-venti macchiato in one hand, intellect and ambition in the other.

Now open your eyes and face reality – Yuppies died with the boom years. And in their place came something a lot more sinister: the Quarterlife Crisis. As universities churn out graduates at the rate of cheesy chips from the Van of Life, life after Cambridge seems as bleak as an undercooked kebab.

 R.I.P Yuppies.

Finding an interesting job with a comfortable salary is no easy ride. Graduate placements are few and far between and internships require hefty financial support. You could opt for the Third Sector, live off righteousness and little else, or you could succumb to the temptations of the City. Accusations of selling-out aren’t so painful from the comfort of the top tax band.

This may all seem blindingly obvious and unnecessarily cynical, but it is difficult to quell that niggling belief that maybe your twenties will be a steady ascent up a dream-career ladder. This underlying confidence isn’t helped by society’s expectation that with the Cantab brand we can waltz into any job.

With such high hopes and ambitions, it is all too easy to stride out of Cambridge laden with false optimism, oblivious to the existential crisis that lies dormant in the next job rejection.

But let us not end on a note of crushing realism. The sooner you become aware of the possibility of a Quarterlife Crisis, the sooner you can accept it, laugh about it and make the most of your undergrad years. Go to Cindies, skinny dip in the Cam, crash a May Ball– enjoy the carefree, government-funded years whilst they last!

And even days as an aimless twenty-something have their perks. Think of the glorious evenings with similarly afflicted friends: the penniless English graduate can bring the anecdotes, the banker can bring the wine and the unemployed can bring the Schadenfreude.

Besides, a Quarterlife Crisis might just save you from it’s scarier older brother. Who wants to hit forty, have an affair and end up alone, battling the urge to take up the ukulele or dye your thinning hair?

As Karl Marx didn’t quite say, a spectre is haunting Cambridge – the spectre of Laddism. Look around our university today and you are overwhelmed with the ‘banter’ of these ‘legends’, before nearly slipping over in a puddle of their ‘chunder’.

I can appreciate when this ‘lad’ culture is used ironically, but the constant repetition of the same themes is beginning to get tedious.  And the more I think about ‘lads’ the more reservations I have about them.

Can ‘lads’ can really exist at Cambridge University? Certainly, they might be curry-spattered in the Mahal and chundering in Cindies one night, but the next morning they are desperately typing away at an essay, as terrified as any other student of failure. If you are clever enough to get into Cambridge, you will be conscientious enough to prevent you living the full life of a ‘lad’.

 The day the banter died…

Within that almost meaningless term ‘banter’ can be concealed some slightly worrying views. It is the use of ‘banter’ as an excuse that allows unfunny Facebook groups like the controversial ‘You know she’s playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alley’. What results is a weird hostage situation – no one’s finding these trite attempts at ‘shocking’ humour all that funny, but we’ve got to laugh along for fear of being accused of “shit chat”.

It is also incredibly odd that the ‘lad’ culture claims to be achingly heterosexual. Ignoring the amount of time many lads will spend delicately spiking up their hair and carefully popping the collar of their favourite Abercrombie and Fitch polo shirt, the question remains why ‘lads’ seem to spend so much time pretending to have sex with each other whenever they bend over?

Now, guys, I know that as predominantly white, straight, middle-class men you have few sources of solidarity to unite you, and that this sub-culture is something which does that. But perhaps you could just be a bit more mature in your expression of male camaraderie, I’m sure the rest of us will appreciate it….

Having trouble spotting a lad? Let our Guide to the Male Drunk give you some pointers.

I find myself in a sticky situation: I am a feminist and a true blue. There’s been a lot of hoo-ha recently about Tory Feminism: what it means and indeed whether it exists. 

Louise Mensch, the new “face of Tory women”, has been continuously patronised by the media as a “chick lit author” and “yummy mummy”. But “none of this is to do with whether women such as Mensch look great, it’s about a central tenet of almost any strand of feminist thought: control over one’s own body” writes Suzanne Moore, and indeed Conservative Feminists have failed to be sufficiently critical of policy which ignores women’s issues.

An unlikely feminist?

The presumption of an intrinsic conflict between Conservatism and Feminism is a convenient fiction. In the second wave feminism of Greer and her peers there is fertile ground for the Conservative: feminism for them is to be built up from an individual level, sexual and personal  reclamation being the first step, and this naturally twins itself with an atomistic view of economics.

Post-feminism’s emphasis on the individual and the unique nature of each woman’s struggle finds a natural home, perhaps with a moat at taxpayer’s expense, in an ideology of personal empowerment and aspiration.

We can bang on about great achievements like the fact that 80% of the lowest paid public sector workers exempt from the pay freeze are women and the prospective plans to change the state pension in favour of women with families, but when the cuts are hitting women the hardest we need to say something.

Nadine Dorries and the rest of her tribe need to be slammed and so do the idiots who dismiss sensible, intelligent suggestions with the awful phrase political correctness gone mad. The Tories are not a party put in place merely pander to the Daily Mail school of thinking.

We demand a better, feminist Tory party, because you can have one – as for those of you who cast us as a paradox, poopoo.

Facebook has already made us into amateur photographers, would-be philosophers, enlightened critics and
sophisticated party planners – but now it seeks to make us immortal.

Some believe the new Facebook Timelines have made us even more vulnerable to the data hunter gatherers out there. But in reality, nothing much has changed. Yes, our information has been organized in a much more coherent and accessible manner but it was all there before.

Boo, hiss, etc. 

It is fair to say that we are no more vulnerable now than we were before the advent of Timelines (a.k.a Doomsday). The new system dutifully tracks your entire life from your birth, through the difficult teen years, in and out of university, past marriage, then retirement, until presumably, death.

The promotional video for Timelines itself looks like an advertisement for the latest Sims instalment, and is coupled with the nauseating tagline, “Tell Your Life Story” – despite the fact that, in real life, this phrase is usually preceded by the words “please don’t”.

Interestingly, Facebook purposefully released Timelines in beta form almost a year before its launch, so that programmers, bloggers and industry experts could get used to it and swell the tide of inevitable “Plz Bring Back Old Facebook!!!!!” groups.  So what now?

Gone are the days where one would rustle though their attic in search of treasure, only to find a horde of lost family photo albums. From now on, if you run into an old school friend that you’ve fallen out of touch with, it’s no longer a fortuitous chance to reconnect– it’s because one of you purposefully decided not to continue your friendship, probably out of dislike. Awkward encounters, therefore, are on the rise.

Facebook also filed for its IPO yesterday morning and Facebook Timelines has become mandatory for all users. Clearly, Facebook is trying to prove to its potential shareholders that it has longevity; that, with its massive demographic expansion, the opportunities are limitless.

Indeed, Facebook intends to be with us forever, from cradle to the grave.

“What I often see is that people are scared of fashion – because they’re frightened or insecure so they put it down…”

So speaks fashion’s ice queen Anna Wintour in the opening scene of The September Issue,  sat in the back of a Mercedes, her eyes hidden behind the inevitable Prada sunglasses. To me, a 20 year old student on a tight budget, the scene means nothing.

Your style in this woman’s hands?

The idea that fashion is elitist partly depends on how you define ‘fashion’. Of course, to be en vogue it is crucial to deck yourself head to toe in Louis V’s fetish-wear, or McQueen’s impossibly high heel-less heels, right? Wrong! With the fashion world increasingly projecting through the computer screen into our rooms, or on the go via smartphone apps, your front row seat (read: library chair) at the latest shows is a mouse-click away.

Blogs, look-books, video tutorials and more are accessible to everyone. Wintour has said that the girl on the street is the most inspiring thing in fashion. And she’s right – we create trends. Who’s to say what’s in or out if no one will buy the product? New fashion is less about the status and more about individual style.

This elitism also depends on whether you give one about what Rodarte, Phillip Lim or any other designer is sending down their catwalks for this Fall. It could be argued that interest feeds elitism. Why are we in Cambridge, arguably an elitist institution? Because we care about our studies, are passionate about our subject and are interested in learning more (well, in most cases).

Translated into a fashion sense, those who are at the top, who do define the trends and who can make or break the career of any young fashionista are those who have eaten, slept and breathed fashion for their entire lives. Casual nepotism just doesn’t cut it anymore.

And does it really matter to you? As a fashion worshipper I do care; but if you don’t, then whether the industry is elitist shouldn’t matter. But for those of us dying to be the editor of Vogue (pick me, pick meeeee) what is the answer? Until now money, privilege and connections were the key to the  sartorial lock. But at last it’s about individuality, flare and style. And it’s fucking exciting!

Having seen Katie Price speak at the Union a few days ago I became convinced of something I had long suspected.  The ex-model was relatively charming, self-deprecating and honest about her life, claiming ‘there is no such thing as can’t’.  She is a more complicated woman than she seems.  But she is in no way a Feminist.

What she is is an excellent Capitalist.  She has worked out how to extract the maximum profit from her body and her marital and family life, churning out books, perfumes and singles – doing everything she can to push the ‘brand’ of Katie Price.  And she is hugely successful at that.

Yet just because a woman is successful or high-profile does not make her a Feminist icon.  Katie Price has done nothing to improve the cause of her gender as a whole.  For her it is all about individual achievement, based purely on her own determination, not about fighting alongside her ‘sisters’ but pushing them, and anyone else who stands  in her way, aside.

In this way she is similar to that other, in my opinion,  spurious Feminist icon who everyone’s been discussing lately: Margaret  Thatcher.  She was another woman who,  while enormously successful, was so on a purely individual basis and once she got into power did bugger all to help other women follow her.

I think it’s a rather sad state of affairs when it is women like these who are held up as icons for other women to emulate.  For, in my opinion, feminism is about collective endeavor and cooperation, not about individual drive and competition.  Every woman should be a Feminist, and every man too, striving for absolute gender equality – not merely facilitating the rise of a few successful women.

So, all respect to Ms. Price for making so much money from big boobs and a dramatic marital life, but Feminist icon?  Give me Germaine Greer any day.

Read the full report on the Union Debate HERE.

The other day I heard one of my best friends – an extremely camp gay man -  lambasted as a “disgrace to homosexuality” by another gay man. Now admittedly he’s attended every Bop of his university career dressed as a different drag icon, but does this behaviour warrant criticism?

The simple, sensible and logical answer is no – not at all. In fact ‘Sissyphobia’, as it is known in queer studies, strikes me as perhaps one of the last and greatest frontiers for the gay community to overcome.

In his book Sissyphobia: Gay Men and Effeminate Behaviour (one of few serious studies on the matter) Tim Bergling, a gay author, states “I still wrestle with some sissyphobia myself, as do many of my interviewees”. On a personal level, I cannot count the number of times I have heard other gay men express opinions along the lines of “I f***ing hate [insert term of abuse: gays, queers, fags etc.]”.

But this kind of attitude is simply not acceptable. Anyone who aligns themselves with this kind of idiotic, self-loathing attitude only arms the homophobic minority.

Taking a stand against ‘Sissyphobia’

The problem clearly arises from a lack of comfort with one’s own sexuality. ‘Sissyphobia’ all too often cloaks itself in seemingly progressive and forward-thinking language – those who claim that effeminate behaviour only serves to make people more uncomfortable with homosexuality. But this feels like politics of appeasement and quite frankly with DADT and civil partnerships we’re above all that.

What’s more, who is to decide what the acceptable, homely “face” of homosexuality should be? Though tempted, with my fascist tendencies, to imagine a benign gay dictatorship where all gays are good-looking and immaculately dressed, it is simply wrong.

All gay people are different and we should celebrate the many faces of the modern gay community for their diversity, from RuPaul to Gareth Thomas to Sue Perkins.

What we need is not  the kind of tribalism and division among the gay community that allows discrimination to happen so easily but support, love and understanding. And now I’m off to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race  and paint my nails.

It is widely know that Jeremy Clarkson is an opinionated right-winger. But does Britain’s embrace of the Winner of the Special Recognition Award in 2007 indicate our own national superiority complex?

On the recent Top Gear feature in India, the BBC were forced to defend the programme against criticism from the Indian High Commission, which deemed Clarkson and his duo lacking in cultural sensitivity.

Though the programme argues that they merely showed the country ‘warts and all’, their proclamation of the motto ‘Bring Britain Back’ in a country which was only freed from British occupation in 1947 was unsettling to say the least.

Boyish banter, or something more sinister? 

Yes, they branded this catchphrase with the mild emphasis on marketing British products to help the economy, but this was not explained on the enormous banners flaunting the British flag that covered the trains for local people to gasp at in horror. And to be honest, the highlight of the show was the cricket match (note, a colonial sport) played against the locals. Gandhi would certainly not have been impressed.

We can appreciate the show’s banter, but what we should be doing is questioning ourselves; having a think can go far. Why did 5 million viewers tune in to see what we knew would be another Clarkson catastrophe on the diplomacy front? Why do we all revel in rebelling against the politically correct?

Clarkson and the opinions which have made him such a lot of money obviously hit home to a huge audience: is his appeal vicarious or even nostalgic, for the good old days when men were men, cars were cars, and “abroad” was populated by inept stereotypes with funny accents?

No other country has coined such a term ‘politically correct’ and we seem to have forgotten why it was needed in the first place: to prevent the deep seated arrogance of the Brits from humiliating us in front of the international community, who see us as a small island that still mistakes imperialism for patriotism.

Sitting in a ‘Math’ class on my first day of American high school in the Fall of 2007, I leaned over and asked a neighbour “Excuse me, do you have a rubber?”. I didn’t understand the joke, I didn’t even ‘get it’, but apparently I’d demanded a condom. Americanized language 1. Apparently slutty British chick 0. Not that any of my classmates knew what a slut was.

But beyond such social misunderstandings, I see no problem with the Americanization of language. Having spent my last two years of school in Portland, Oregon, I have heard everyone from Chaucer to Woolf declaimed in nasal, rounded tones.

In fact, the Royal Shakespeare Company set its latest production of The Merchant of Venice in Las Vegas, meaning Patrick Stewart’s Shylock schemed like a CSI detective. It appears almost needless to say how much of our film and television is either American or influenced by our  friends across the pond. Our visual cultures have become irrevocably blurred.

Forlorn at the prospect of ‘chequers’? 

How about American assaults on our oh-so British literary heritage though? As The Telegraph recently noted, a new edition of Winnie the Pooh is to be released in American bookshops that alters A.A. Milne’s original work so as to be more understandable for Yankee readers. Pooh and friends will now play ‘chequers’, not ‘draughts’ for example.

And what is the problem with this? Cultural snobbery will merely prevent a new generation of readers from accessing one of the funniest children’s books ever written. We’re fine with cafés, croissants and  European nonchalance, so why do we sneer at sidewalks, restrooms and fanny packs?

I do have one condition for Winnie the Pooh’s big trip west though. On the front cover of every edition should be printed TRANSLATION FROM ORIGINAL ENGLISH. Just because both the original and the new edition are written in ‘English’, doesn’t mean that substituting the author’s original words is not a translation.

Americanisms cannot be prevented from informing our daily speech. The English language is already an interesting mish-mash of Latin, Saxon and Norman and frankly the more influences the merrier in creative terms. A text written in 1928 deserves to be respected by publishers everywhere as a complete representation of its author’s and its era’s language. I’m good with Americanisms for the foreseeable future, but not respecting literature past.

The news that a girl ‘rejected’ Oxford did the rounds of the press last week. She was lauded by self-styled anti-establishment types and decried by most of Oxbridge. It went straight onto the Guardian’s built-for-purpose ‘Oxbridge and Elitism’ section (yes, it exists).

I am actually sympathetic to Elly Nowell’s avowed dislike of ‘traditions and rituals’. It doesn’t seem like the best reason to choose your university, but there’s no reason why she should go anywhere she doesn’t want to go.

But the thing that really annoys me is the view of Oxbridge as being exceptionally ‘snobby’.

Thumbs up for reinforcing stereotypes 

Now, it can’t be denied that Cambridge and Oxford both select primarily from a narrow socio-economic band. Leaving aside whose fault this is (although the best study suggests that it’s not Oxbridge’s), I could understand why someone not from a traditional Oxbridge background might feel put off. It is a real problem, and one that the outreach officer of every college in Oxford and Cambridge do a great job trying to reduce.

But the problem is misunderstood, and concealed by the press’s obsession with private-to-state ratios. Some of the most privileged people I know went to state school, some of the least, on a scholarship to private school.

The real scandal is in the small number of students (and applicants) who are not middle class. And this is best represented by a straight-forward measure of wealth – free school meals. Now, Oxbridge does score badly on this – but not significantly worse than many other universities.

Bristol, Exeter, Newcastle, Durham, Bath – the names never seem to crop up in conversations about elitism, yet their FSM numbers are very close to ours.

The problem is a big one, but it’s a social one not an Oxbridge one. The righteously angry get distracted by our nice chapels and silly gowns, and end up assuming that we’ve jumped on horses and ridden the plebs out of town.

This anachronistic view is not just a pain in the arse. It relieves the pressure on the other universities, and on society in general, to right significant wrongs.

So long as people like Elly Nowell continue to assume that inequality is a function of nice stonework, it will persist where they have failed to see it. Don’t fool yourself by moving to UCL: you can’t change inequality with sarcasm.

All evidence is taken from The Sutton Report, which makes fascinating reading for data nerds.