Teens Are Dressing Up as Masked Old Ladies to Try to Buy Alcohol
Updated July 15 2020, 11:35 a.m. ET
The children are our future. But some of them are trying to speed that process up by dressing up as old ladies to score alcohol. Hey, when you're wearing a mask that covers most of your face, it's easier to disguise yourself. And the teens are apparently using that power to buy six-packs of Mike's Hard Lemonade.
Several TiKTok videos depicting teen girls donning old lady disguises to purchase alcohol have gone viral. Some of them put baby powder in their hair to make them look older, others wear layers and layers of clothes, and one girl even went so far as to wear a full-face of old-lady mask under her medical mask. The kids are alright.
They're calling it a "prank," and indeed, it's hard to tell from the videos how real or successful these attempts actually are. It's unclear whether the teens have fake IDs that clock them as elderly women or if they just bank on the store clerk not questioning what looks like an 80-year-old woman buying several cans of White Claw (obviously the chosen alcoholic beverage of octogenarians everywhere).
One young woman dressed up as her grandma, headscarf, sunglasses, and all, to buy a bottle of wine, which is a little more believable. "For legal reasons, this is my actual grandma" her TikTok caption reads.
In another video, one girl accompanies another, dressed in full grandma gear, into the store. And apparently it works! Even though the store says "No ID, No Service," the two of them come out with a giant bottle of vodka while their friend in the car exclaims, "Oh my god, it worked!"
There are teens going the extra mile to disguise themselves as old women, but there are also near-21-year-olds who say if you already have a fake ID that puts you just over the age of 21, now might be a good time to use that ID. If most of your face is covered with a mask, there's less of a chance the store clerk will notice you're underage, according to one TikTok user.
"PSA: use ur fakes as much as possible rn bc if you wear a mask they cant see ur whole face lol," she writes. Back in the day, you just had to hope the cashier didn't look at your fake too closely. Now, you have an excuse to have your face covered.
"I hope lots of teens are out there illegally buying alcohol with face masks on, confidently not looking at all like their fake ID," one Twitter user wrote. While it's obviously wrong to condone breaking the law, we can't deny that this is an extraordinary time.
And if a store clerk somehow believes that a hunched over grandma wants to sit on her porch, pet her cat, and absolutely go to town on some Mike's Hard, well, then that's more on them than anything else.
Kids today... They really figured it out, didn't they? Look, if you're a teen in quarantine, there are so many ways to entertain yourself that don't include breaking the law and duping a poor store clerk who's probably terrified of going to work every day.
So we can't recommend this as an activity. But we will say that, chances are, if you've been hanging with your parents at home for over 100 days, they'll realize you need a drink just as much as they do if you just ask. Worth a shot.