Okay, heard a disturbing report yesterday. Ascots on men are in. Seriously? The only men who can get away with ascots are Fred from Scooby Doo and John Waters. One is a cartoon, the other is, well, he's John Waters. The boys from Panic at the Disco wore ascots for their SNL appeance last week, and so did some guy on American Idol - sorry - don't watch the show so I can't remember his name, only the look.
It got me thinking how slavish - is that a word or am I pulling a DRS and creating one? >: ) - we are to what someone tells us is in. Not for nothing, remember when straight guys decided what was hot or flattering on a woman? Looking back on some of the trends I whole heartedly emabraced I have to laugh, then I stop and pray I have the courage to just say no in case they come back. As a teen in the 80's, I have much to be ashamed of.
Legwarmers. Yeah - the closest I came to Flashdance was walking past a construction site. I wasn't fooling anyone.
Shoulder pads. I'm 5'2" with DD boobs. I looked like a minature linebacker. What an unflattering silhouette. Lets take the one good feature I had, a tiny waist, and smother it.
Speaking of smothering, how 'bout leggings? Unless you were a dancer, you ended up with legs that appeared to be stuffed into sausage casings.
Acid washed jeans. Like Billy Ray Cyrus, they should never have been created in the first place. A skid mark on denim that will last forever.
Speaking of Billy Ray, the mullet. Now arguably, the mullet's been around longer and like a cockroach, won't die, but I believe the boys of the 80's raised it to an art form. Bruce Mac Neil had one I lusted over my entire High school career.
Headbands. Not the preppy hair band, but the sweatband/headband thingy from Olivia Newton John's "Physical" video. Yeah, I was rockin a blue and white terry cloth number with a gold thread running through it. Jealous much?
Big Hair. I'm torn on this one. On one hand, big hair was easy for me - perm the crap out of it, tease the crap out of it, then spray the crap out of it with Aqua Net. There is a hole the size of TX over a tiny village on the east coast of Canada and it's my fault. On the other hand, it was a lot of work. See steps 1-3 above. And, it resulted in potentially dangerous eye-threatening situations. For instance, if you leaned in to tell a secret to a girlfriend, you could lose an eye on her bangs. Stranger things have happened. True story - I couldn't wear the headpiece I wanted for my wedding because my bangs were too high.
Big earrings. I'm not talking hoops - I'm talking satellite dish sized hunks of plastic that gave us lobes like those tribal women in rural Africa. At least for them, the droopy lobe thing is considered sexy. Here, not so much.
Jelly shoes. This abomination is back. How do you make a smelly part of your body smell worse? And, can we add painful blisters? That'd be great, thanks.
White panty hose. Lets think, I'm a white girl of Scottish descent living in a community that frequently had snow from October to May - summer usually lasted for 15 minutes on a Thusday in July ... how can I make myself whiter?
Enough - this is worse than I thought. I didn't even get to the "Independant-Baptist-Pastor's-wife-plaid-jumper years". I need to go lie down. How about you - what do you never want to see or will you never wear again?
