My mom and I were out for a walk this past summer and saw some young girls walking around wearing teeny, tiny jean shorts with chunky skateboarding shoes. They were accessorized with poorly coloured extensions. The overall look was pretty awkward, and inspired my mom to say, "What on earth are they thinking?"
I do agree, they looked ridiculous.
And then I remembered how I used to dress. And how everyone I grew up with used to dress.
Crimped hair with a scrunchy. The more intricate the scrunchy, the better. And if you could have two scrunchies, one on each of your Sailor Moon pigtails, that was even better.
Then pigtails moved lower. They had to be pin-straight and secured over the ears. Emphasis on the straight, something my strangely frizzy hair could never quite accomplish. This was a style I admired from afar.
Does anyone else remember the slicked-back-against-your-skull pony tail? One of my friends actually cut out a chunk of hair that wouldn't sit completely flat, no matter how much gel or water she used to force it down. I don't think it sat flat ever again after that.
How about T-shirts with lame sayings? I was guilty of this one. I remember having a shirt that said "Release the Clones! 'Cause everyone should have a mini me!" That's embarrassing. I'm actually cringing thinking about it.
Oh, another good one was the hair flip. Flat on top (for some reason we were all against volume of any kind by this point) and then one uniform flip. The more uniform the flip, the better. I'm pretty sure no one had bangs during this period, to allow for more flippage.
Speaking of bangs, weren't the two-piece bangs a real treat? Two pieces, both less than an inch thick, outlining everyone's faces. I remember asking my aunt to let me colour the pieces. I thought pink would be a reasonable colour. Fortunately her good sense prevailed.
What about jeans that had multiple washes? I had a pair that, on top of being super-wide legged bell bottoms, were dark wash at the bottom, but faded to almost white at the waist. I wish I still owned these jeans.
Remember when the boys permed their overly-long hockey hair? I like to think it was part of their attempts to look like Will Ferrell.
It's horrifying looking back and thinking about how I used to look when I left my house. It's just as scary to think about what my friends wore, and how we all styled our hair. And it's funny how we thought we looked good.
Kind of how those silly girls in their giant shoes and fried extensions think they look good.
So I think a better question for my mother is: why do their mothers let them leave the house like that? Because clearly parenting is at the root of the problem.
Tonaya secretly still owns shirts with cheesy sayings and multi-coloured jeans. She also likes to wear her hair tightly pulled back against her scalp as often as she can. She misses the nineties and wishes everyone else would just go back to wearing cool nineties clothing. Please. E-mail Tonaya your thoughts at [email protected].
