Conformist Rebels

Most of Leerom Medovoi’s arguments and conclusions on the emergence of a teenage identity ring true to me, so dissenting has proven to be quite difficult this time around. The only thing I held some problems with tended to be the idea of the teenage population being able to actively deny conformity through rock’ n’ roll and the “realm of freedom” the musical genre created.
Medovoi seems to place “conformity” and “identity” as opposites, where one cannot have an identity while being a conformist and vice-versa. I tend to disagree with this idea. Mainly, I think the very idea of being a conformist is in itself an identity; it might not be a unique one, but it is some form of identity. In defining “identity,” Medovoi states that it “is conceived as the product of self-defining and self-affirming acts” (5). By this, if one naturally tends to follow the crowd and make decisions based on popular opinion, their identity is that of a conformist.
I also do not understand how the idea of a massive percent of the population suddenly deciding to rebel against conventional ideas of authority figures cannot be seen as a form of conformity against the man. If you are obeying these authority figures without question, you are conforming to their structures and rules, but if you are rebelling against them, are you not in some way actively aligning yourself with others against the set rules, and therefore conforming to a separate set of rules which oppose the lawful set?
I am not sure, but I think that one can be a conformist while having a unique identity, the point of classifying actions as conformity being motives. If one define their identity through acting normally and is unaffected by popular culture, then one could be said to be non-conformist. If one is actively attempting to be non-conformist, they are actually, in a way, being conformist – by acknowledging their awareness of others rebelling and deciding it is what one wants to be a part of, one is not unique in their identity, and so becomes a conformist non-conformer, a conformist rebel. One cannot be defined by something they attempt to be a part of.
If you cannot skate but you tend to hang around skate parks in hopes of being accepted by the crowd, you are not one of them but rather you become the ultimate conformist and fake, a poser. And so is the idea of the rebel. If you choose to actively follow and rebel against authority without true passion, you can only be a poser and never a true rebel. It is only in the motives and the authenticity of feeling that one can be a non-conformist.