When I was a 16 year old teenager I was in the first class in senior highschool. I had just got rid of my "classmates" of comprehensive school. You see, I didn´t have any friends from my class. I felt always different and I didn´t fit into any social groups or gangs. However, when I started senior highschool in Raahe, none of my bullies were around anymore. It was a fresh start for the new kind of life, even though I still lived in a small countryside place. My home in Siikajoki was 20km away from my shich school in the city of Raahe.

I thought about all this stuff today because something reminded me about it. When I went to school today, I put Marilyn Manson´s album Antichrist Superstar into my portable cd-player. It´s the album that helped me to find my place in the world during those early years in highschool. I saw first the video of Beautiful People in TV. It was really a WOW -experience for me and soon I bough the album too.

Many people might have got used to the image of Marilyn Manson today, but believe me - for a 16 year old teenager in year 1996 it was something very striking. In the 80´s Alice Cooper was quite popular. He was a kind of monster too and had fans of his own. I think people like him and Marilyn Manson give courage to many teenagers to be whatever they are, no matter what other people say. At least it worked for me: it was much easier to see myself in the world when I found about a celebrity who´s not like the majority, but still proudly claiming his place in society. Not everybody can identify themselves with celebrities like Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake. I think it´s good to have options.