FOR PARENTS!

Teenagers go wild about fashion - changing their appearance at every season. What is it they are expressing by doing that?

Nothing is wrong with it. They should be allowed to, because they are changing, everything in them is changing. Changing fashions is simply an expression of their inner change. It is perfectly healthy and right. They should be allowed and helped to change as many times as they want. Soon they will settle, once their inner changes have settled. By the time they are twenty-one things will start settling.
For the time being, if you don't allow them to change the outer expressions then theirinner changes will create tensions and anguish in them. Let them change. It is natural. This is the time when so much is happening inside them - before they become mature, adult - that they need some kind of expression for it. We can help with better changes but we cannot prevent changes; we can only give them better alternatives.
For example, we can give them better clothes, every year new fashions in clothes which are not ugly. Otherwise they will find their own way and become hippies and do all kinds of stupid things. They will not take showers, will not wash their teeth; they will do stupid things because they are, after all, children and new to the world.
We should give them changes. It is better to give them every six months better samples - better hair conditioners, better soaps, better toothpaste. Any change will help. Don't force them to cut their hair according to the way you would like, no; give them alternatives. Take them to the barber and show them all possible kinds of different, beautiful hairdos. Let them choose; don't condemn them.
If you condemn them, they will become punks; they will cut half their hair, keep the other half, and paint that half in different colors. What can the poor children do? Give them some better alternatives - better musicians, better dancers; otherwise they will become followers of the Beatles.
All these fashions and different things are not going to help them as much as if the parents were interested and helping them. They could have given them higher classical music, paintings to do, music to play, dances to dance; it is their duty. Otherwise, anybody, most of whom are almost insane people...
You were asking about one pop singer, Madonna. She is a beautiful woman but just look at her clothes and all the kinds of junk that she has hanging around. I would like some day to see her. She is beautiful. She may have talents for great music, great dance, but she will be gone just like the Beatles and others have come and gone. Teenagers take everything as a fashion. You cannot depend on them; they are not serious, they are simply experimenting.
A vast life has become available to them and they are experimenting. It is the duty of the parents and the teachers and the educational institutes to give them beautiful alternatives, to give changes which can help their growth, their maturity.
You know perfectly well that now it is very difficult to find any hippie. Have you seen any hippie of the age of forty? Do you think everybody dies nearabout thirty? No. Those poor people, after the age of thirty, realize that they have wasted their time. They did not get any education, they dropped out of school because that was in fashion. They lived in dirtiness, ugliness, drugs, and the moment they realize it - that they have been stupid - they come back into life.
But those ten years are lost forever. And back in life they will not have the same respectable jobs, the same creative facilities, because they are not skilled, they are not educated. They don't know any craft and they have not done anything so in life they will suffer till their death.
Who is responsible for it? I don't think they are responsible, because they were too young, and responsibility cannot be put on their shoulders. We are responsible. We could have given them better chances. Perhaps those ten years they could have been meditating rather than wandering like a hippie from Kabul to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Goa. And after Goa there is nowhere to go... the whole journey is finished.
They could have been given chances to understand different schools of meditation - Sufism, Hassidism, Zen, Yoga. They simply needed something new, something exciting. You could have sent them to the East to learn Zen painting, Japanese flute or Arabic flute or Indian flute - there are so many different instruments in the world. Soon they would have realized that it is time to go back into the world and work your way. But they would have come with respect, with some craft, with some creativity.

(Osho - Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries #23)