THIS MONTH: “The 90s Are Back!”
And not in a ‘Backstreet’s Back Alright!’ kind of way, because that would be awesome, end of discussion. More in the Chucky’s baaaack, creepy, cringe worthy, I want to look away and run into an array of kitchen knives kind of way.
As a nineties kid I am mildly ashamed of the decade I spend most of formative years in. There was Pokemon, a card game 99% of the child population collected, and yet did anyone even know how to play it? We also added nothing to fashion. We reintroduced flares, they weren’t great in the 70s but at least they were original, although the Navy would oppose that idea. Think about the great looks from previous decades. The 20s had pin curls and flapper dresses. The forties had the peplum shape with red lipstick and shoulder pads. The fifties had the pinup look down pat, and Marilyn Monroe. The 80s had…had, well it had panache, I’ll bloody well give them that.
Now look what the younger generation have gone and done. They brought back the only era in the last century that no one needed to see again. Crop tops, Spice Girl hair buns, and those pathetic plastic stretchy chokers, that what, are supposed to look like some strange growth-like tattoo? Do not even get me started on jelly shoes and platform trainers. The only people on this planet that should be legally allowed to wear multicolored jelly shoes are three year olds who are going to the beach; because they are three (they don’t know any better) and because jelly shoes are waterproof. If you wear them to the dinner party I am hosting I will melt them down in a saucepan and make Tupperware out of them. I’ve always wanted purple glitter Tupperware containers.
The most obvious way we know the Internet decade is back is the reemergence of the pop band. Yup, One Direction got the ball rolling and now every second song on the radio is performed by a group of barely pubescent teenagers singing about the emotional ache of losing their long lost love. Pur-lease, if they were singing about acne, feeling fat in high school, parental divorce, and learning how to apply foundation without looking like an ‘Oompa Loompa’, I might at least respect their songs. But to make things worse, not only do these new pop bands still not write their own songs or play their own instruments, this time they don’t even dance. Goddamn man, now in the nineties at least they could dance.
Alexis Collier writes monthly for PEARL on whatever springs to mind really. If you’ve got any feedback about any of her columns, drop us a line on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pearlmagazine.
ALEXIS COLLIER