80's flashback......

Yes, so I had an 80's flashback for two reasons. One, because someone handed down a ton of shoes to Zoe, one of which was a pair of red "Jellies". And everyone knows that those were shoes of the 80's. Ah, yes, jellies...I'm not sure that I ever actually owned a pair, and after smelling the stench that followed when friends of mine who owned them took them off after a HOT summer day, I really don't remember wanting to own a pair. And yes, that same stench, though probably not as bad, came back to haunt me when I took Zoe's jellies off after she'd sweat in them all day long. Yuck. But here's Zoe sporting her new look.



She looks like she's modeling, doesn't she???

The other flashback came through a friend's post on her blog talking about "teenage watching". Through her careful observation of teenagers that she encounters through the day, she described all of the, styles that teens will sport down the halls of a high school, all of which we now consider very odd or just downright ugly. And that got me to thinking...good grief. How weird must older adults have thought we looked when we sported our "hot mamma" styles through the school halls? Some other people and I commented on her blog and jogged her memory a little. So in response, she did a new blog post to share her new found 80's memories. I will now follow in suit by rehashing some of the hideous styles that I thought was just the coolest in the 80's and early 90's. And yes, in the late 80's, I was not even 10, but the trends started young.

If you are a child of the 80's or just remember some of these hideous styles and think of one that I forgot, comment. I'll attempt to do a top 20 thing...only with 16.

16. Scrunchies
15. Banana Clips
14. Loved sporting the New Kids on the Block paraphernalia - Jordan was my favorite....
13. Caboodle's - not necessarily a fashion trend, but you looked "rad" bringing these to your slumber party.
12. The tee-shirt clips that you would pull your tee shirt to the side with.
11. The brightly colored shoe-laces. I had some that were bright pink and teal that I wore with stone washed gray and white Keds shoes.
10. Those little squiggly things you could put on the end of your shoelaces. I had those in bright pink and bright green, and probably some more awful colors. Put those with the teal and pink shoelaces and you've got yourself a real good lookin' foot.
9. The tight pants that sucked the life out of our legs and were usually too short to begin with. To top it off, most of the time, these lovely pants were acid wash or stone washed pants.
8. Stirrup pants...loved these for some reason.
7. High Tops
6. The High Top look with jeans tucked inside or tight rolled
5. The tank top with a gigantic sweatshirt over it that was all cut up (when we wanted to be "cute" while working out)
4. the side ponytail
3. The tight roll on the pants - I taught one of my students to do that last year and he thought I was nuts. I thought it was hilarious. We thought we were hot stuff strutting down our elementary halls with tight rolled pants. Really, we just looked like we were expecting a gigantic rain puddle to mysteriously appear in the hallway and rolled up our pants so as not to get them wet.
2. Two or three different colored socks that we layered one on top of the other. I LOVED to do the black socks with bright teal or pink....yeah, can you tell I had a teal and pink thing going on? But three layers were the super-cool. Two layers, and you were only semi-cool. Then throw in the LA Gear high tops and you were hot stuff!
1. Drum roll please...this is probably the best, or worst depending on how you look at it, style of them all. The three layer bangs with so much poof we could have touched the sky with the top layer...and not to mention the half can of hairspray used to hold it in place. I had my bangs so stiff that even a tornado couldn't stand up to me. Not a hair would have ever been out of place. I think every girl did this style.

What's even funnier after looking at these things is how trends that you just think are a signature trend of your town are really all over the United States.

And now to think about the styles then and now...how much worse could it get?? I often catch myself thinking, "what am I wearing right now that I'm going to make fun of later on?". Hmm....