God I miss the 90s

[menohnopausal]

That's all I have to say really. <wistful sigh>

There was hope & a buzz, Cool Britannia etc. We don’t have that now, talking to young people.

Isn’t this a lot to do with your life stage?

I was a young girl in the 00s and the stick thin look and body image issues were still present from the 90s. I think young people of today are quicker to call out bullshit and have a healthier mindset of ‘that’s just not maintainable or realistic’

Of course, people still have issues today with body image. But the media and society in general is much more realistic in comparison to then surely?

I sort of agree with this but I feel now people have that choice to be ‘real’ in rl but then put filters on everything online and change how they look to fit in with ideals whereas in the 90s the pressure was there and the technology to only do it virtually wasn’t. So rather than alter photos people were starving themselves etc

@RootToVictory Thanks for sharing, great article.

I feel sad that my dc won’t have the spontaneity, freedom, element of recklessness that I did. I think the pressure to do the right things in all areas of your life must be overwhelming.

I was a young girl in the 00s and the stick thin look and body image issues were still present from the 90s. I think young people of today are quicker to call out bullshit and have a healthier mindset of ‘that’s just not maintainable or realistic’

Of course, people still have issues today with body image. But the media and society in general is much more realistic in comparison to then surely?

Thin is back in if you look at celebs. I’m not sure if the stick thin look was any more pressured than todays toned stomach with boobs & curvy bum plus facially things were certainly a lot less pressured. Botox, filler, turkey teeth not a thing.

Well, my mum was in her 20s in 60s. Guess what? She is adamant it was the best time in music…
I love 90s ( guess when I was in 20s😉) but it is about being young first of all.

I think the heroin chic look was a big feature of the 90s and the 00s. I think of the 90s as lasting until around 2006 in many ways as the introduction of social media was the big change around that point.

Homophobia (section 28 didn’t exit until 2003); the troubles, the north Wales abuse scandal; teenage pregnancy, smoking, sexual harassment, bullying, poverty (no minimum wage) …

Very good comments.
I would add for myself - everyone was far more relaxed, far less anxiety among kids, proper work and gathering afterwards meant something.
(Village stuff, another country).
And also, the internet.
Obviously a necessity nowadays, but
I still remember what life looked like without it.

I look back with great fondness, but then I was at school, then at university, then in my first job in London...if you don't look back on some good times at that age then you missed out.

However in retrospect I do genuinely believe it was an great time to be a teenager and young adult. Having been children in the 1980s we had low expectations, little sense of entitlement, and finding that times were actually...good (! ) was exciting. We had less, but more was within reach.

I also don’t think saying you loved the 90s meant everything was perfect back then. And tbh I can’t see many issues from then that don’t still exist in some form.

Wish I was a few yrs older & could have got on the property ladder then though!

@pizzaHeart I think the 60s must have been fun at the age, music, fashion, liberation.

We had less, but more was within reach.

Thats a brilliant way of summing it up.

One of the great things about the 90s was that nobody used po-faced words like “problematic”.

I have to disagree because kids and young adults seem more accepting of various body types and there’s no ‘exact ideal’ like I feel there was in those days

Skinny really was a big thing. Much bigger than it is now

There was a definite sense of optimism by the mid/late 90s. Early half was a bit rough with a dire economy. I went to university in 97, no tuition fees, new government we all had high hopes for and lots of opportunities being stretched out in front of us including a growing economy to graduate into. Music was great, and it was definitely an exciting time to be alive; the internet age beckoned and as a student I used it - learning to use Word for assignments, my Amazon account dates back to 98(?) when I ordered university books on it, my Hotmail is from '96 and yet I had an analogue childhood. Xennial luck to have had a traditional childhood and grown up with tech.

I miss some 90s things, but not music. The music was absolutely dire!

I was an emotional mess as a teenager throughout the 90s but I miss the music(still stuck in the 90s, dont like much modern stuff) and the magezines and many other things back in the day

Xennial luck to have had a traditional childhood and grown up with tech.

I had that as an older millennial & think it was perfect.

Wash your mouth out! Britpop and indie music, what’s not to like? 😄

@TheYearOfSmallThings that’s a great way of putting it. I grew up in an ex-mining village decimated by Thatcher, with unemployment and threat of nuclear war ever-presents. The 90s wasn’t perfect - what time ever is? - but whether it’s rose-tinted or not to say so, it felt like there was an optimism around after the dark times of the 80s, and a range of possibilities available that hasn’t always been the case and isn’t always the case now. I knew that once I started earning I could afford to buy a modest flat on my own after a couple of years spent saving, for example - okay, I ended up in negative equity for several years not long after taking out the mortgage, and I paid much higher interest than is the case these days, even allowing for recent rises, but owning my own home wasn’t a far off pipe dream the way it is for far too many people in their early 20s today. I took out a 95% mortgage with a deposit of £1500 that had taken me roughly two years to save up…imagine being able to do that today!

Yup. Me too

its all been downhill since then.

I do too in a way. For me it was , to quote Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times, but I feel we had more freedom and there was a sense of optimism that's been gone since the global economic crash of 2008.
And the music! Oh, them were t'days!

I remember that the most important thing in everyone's life was going out and enjoying yourself, even if you had the price of only one drink you'd still be out enjoying yourself. People that had left home and had their own houses (bought with a mortgage because there were really cheap houses in the North back then - serviceable 2 bed terraced houses for twenty grand even in '98!) still went out and would rather spend their money having a good time with their mates rather than getting in debt for a new car or a new kitchen - no-one cared what kitchen you had, what car you drove, what handbag you had. The posters further up hit the nail on the head - we had less but felt we could achieve more. For a few short years it genuinely felt that the world was becoming a better place and that everything seemed possible. I miss that feeling.

I grew up in the 90s, and what a time to be alive!

I miss the music and the simplicity of life. The current times for a teen are much more complicated..

I have to disagree because kids and young adults seem more accepting of various body types and there’s no ‘exact ideal’ like I feel there was in those days

Skinny really was a big thing. Much bigger than it is now

I’m aware skinny was a big thing, but certainly for me as a Londoner individuality was a good thing. You had girls with short hair, indie girls, clubby girls. Now the boys & girl teens I see all have the same hair.

I’m just not convinced body image issues are lesser now. Looking at eating disorders increases, emergence of orthorexia, use of plastic surgery getting younger., etc. We will have to agree to disagree.

It isn’t a po faced word. It’s just a word. All eras have good and bad things and things can be both at the same time.

70% of music played on the radio is from the 90s, the remaining 30% is new music that is adapted from the 90s. I feel so privileged to have lived through that decade.