Schoolies has turned into a red carpet of fashion. It's the “who wore it best” that's gone too far.

But it’s not something really you can blame on the Gold Coast Bulletin.  It is simply is a reflection of the culture that young people embody.

Just a flick through the hashtag “Schoolies2016” and you will get the idea.

Image after image of toned young women posing in bathrooms mirrors or on balconies.

Snap after snap of school leavers posing in bikinis poolside or at the beach. Vodka cruiser in hand, body toned to perfection, titled at just the right angle that it shouts not just “I am having fun” but “I am looking good and having fun”.

So beat that.

If I think back, I am sure that when I went to schoolies many, many years ago I too probably thought about what I wore.

I’d happily tell you about the outfits, if I could remember, but well you know, schoolies is schoolies and the motto “what goes on at schoolies stays at schoolies” was always easier to blurt out rather than admit we were all too blind drunk to remember any of it.

But really, I was an 18-year-old straight out of school, and I am sure what to wear was probably on the list right under what to drink, how to get fake ID for my underage friends, which boys were going to be in Surfers, whose apartment was having the most fun, which nightclub to go to and then somewhere under all that we probably cared about what we wore.

Of course times haven’t changed that much.

We were still laden down with many of the same pressures that teenagers at schoolies face these days.

The pressure that this one week you’d planed for, for so long, was going to be fun god-damn-it. The pressure to drink the right amount and do the right things and look the right way and above all have the time of your life, even if you’d rather be at home with your dog and your mum and your own comfy bed that didn’t smell like someone else’s vomit.

In most respects, the pressures haven’t changed.

But what we were blessed with when we went to schoolies in the 90’s was this old fashioned thing called a camera. No, it wasn't on a phone. It was a separate device. You carried it in your clutch and - if you weren’t drunk enough to lose it  - printed the photos out when you got home and stuck them in an album for only those you wanted to see to have a laugh.

No social media, no hashtags, no pressure to stand on a balcony or pose in a bathroom wearing short shorts and holding a vodka cruiser.

If you wore a dress you’d searched for in every op shop in Sydney or if you wore your sister’s hand me downs no one really gave a fig because schoolies fashion was nonexistent.

Schoolies is a pressure pot of expectations for young people, one that at melting point can explode into violence and tragedy. One that at a personal level can bring about deep disappointment and sadness.

Or one that, for the lucky few, can just be a few days of fun with their friends before real life begins.

Schoolies is not is a red carpet event. It’s not about who wore it best. It’s not about publicly shaming young women for being a “size six or sixteen”.

It’s just about teenagers being teens and we should let them remain that way.