To miss the simplicity of the 90s/early 2000s

[Wazza89]

I was discussing with a friend yesterday how much simpler life was was in the 90s/early 2000s. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely enjoy the perks of Netflix, Messenger, etc. But things were just more laid back.

When my younger sister turned eighteen, her and her friends got their lips done. They all looked almost identical. 😂 I remember when any form of cosmetic surgery was only reserved for celebrities. Not that it was right, just that there was less pressure and money in regards to our appearance.

My aunt told me how her daughter-in-law spends over £200 on her children’s birthday parties - the cake, the balloon arrangements, and the costumes. I don’t live in an affluent area at all (it was actually one of the poorest areas in the UK a few years ago) and the school DS goes to has a lot of funding for disadvantaged kids. Yet most the parents I see (and their kids) wear Nike or The North Face. Loads of mums get their hair and nails done regularly and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (I’m a bit jealous, to be honest 😂), but I’m worried about the insane amount of
pressure young girls are under to keep up appearances.

One of the mums was talking about the cake she had specially made for her DS and the lavish birthday party he was going to have. I actually felt guilty that my DS had a Colin the Caterpillar cake complete with balloons and a banner from Poundland. It was acceptable when I was a child but now it seems increasingly uncommon.

Sometimes I wander whether I’m stuck in the past and I’m worried DS will be left out by his peers. Anyone else?

@inmyslippers

I'm soo thankful I grew up without social media

This. And so sad that my children have grown up with it.

There's a lot about the 90s/2000s that was great, the music was wonderful, and the variety of it was astounding really - dance/trance, pop, indie, rock. There was so much of it in abundance everywhere, I think we took it for granted.
But like pp, the pressure of having the right brands as a teen was awful, I remember one girl at school getting picked on terribly because she had fake kickers - both soles were red instead of one red and one green.
You had to have the right school bag, the right jeans etc.
But at the same time, everyone just bought No. 17 (No.7 was for oldies and too expensive!), and Boots Natural Collection.
And our fashion, hair and makeup tips came from Just 17, Sugar and Mizz.

My niece is 15, she and her friends aren't as bothered about clothes brands but they all seem to have huge amounts of really high end cosmetics that would have been out of reach for us teens in the 90s.

What makes me sad is the lack of scenes now, you used to talk around any city back then and see kids wearing all sorts of styles and you knew what music they were into etc. And there were so many, now everyone seems to look and dress the same.
The last couple of decades don't have a style that marks it out from the others - think of the 60s (mods and rockers), 70s (flares, disco and punk), 80s (new romantics, early hip hop, electronic) 90s (dance, hip hop, grunge, Brit pop, boy and girl bands) and you get an image of the clothing styles in your head, now it feels like social media and the internet has just smoothed all that away and everyone is the same.

It's not compulsory. Most people I know don't do all that stuff. Expensive parties, nails done, buying lots of branded clothes, cosmetic procedures? Nope. My social media feeds are mostly full of people's photos of their pets, days out with their families and funny/interesting articles, memes etc they've shared. Birthday pics almost always feature a honemade cake, not one of those massive expensive concoctions you can order.

I was at school in the 80s and yes life was simpler in some ways, but it was also more crap in a lot of ways. Peer pressure was always a thing. As an adult you should be more able to resist it.

It’s a sign of getting older that the past is looked on with nostalgia.

Definitely easier. I finished school in 2001 and no-one had a mobile. We’d have great fun in our form room chatting to each other and playing that game where you sit in a circle with a piece of paper and write ‘boys name, girls name, where, he said, she said, what happened’ Not sure if anyone else played that game but we used to also play it with the kids and they loved it too. Far better than having heads buried in mobiles. Also, from what I hear from the kids, if you’re not on SnapChat etc then you’re a social pariah. Couldn’t be doing with that!

In the 90s and early 2000s people were lamenting the 60s and 70s, and in the 60s and 70s................................... nothing's new under the sun!

Yep, we all feel like this as we get older. Welcome to the older generation from the rest of us.

BigYellowHat I was at school in the 60s and we played that paper game then too. It was called "Consequences".

@Ionlydomassiveones
Nailed it 😂

My kids are horrified if they DONT get a Colin cake.

@Curato

It’s a sign of getting older that the past is looked on with nostalgia.

I don't know I missed the 90s as soon as they ended and work tech started to really piss me off and worry me in the year 2000.

Being honest, my 20s were brutal in career terms, so stressful, but I still miss the ease of daily life and the laid back feeling in other ways.

Starting a career now must be even harder.

I also find myself experiencing more racism now, not less.

It's all about the individual experience.

Especially Christmas ! Now everything is Christmas Eve boxes, light trails, breakfast with Santa etc I miss the Christmas's of the 70's/80's.

I'm 51 and remember the 90's fondly but I recently watched the C4 documentary about The Spice Girls and some of the attitudes towards women and the treatment of women generally really shocked me and made me realise that I'd been a victim of this treatment and had even contributed to it without realising. It made me realise that we have progressed quite some way since that time.

With regards to fashions I was a teenager in the 80's and we wore loads of make up and over the top clothes and high heels all the time. Our hair was styled to within an inch of its life. We all looked middle aged!

By the late 80's early 90s it was fashionable to be more natural looking. I wore jeans and DMs and barely any make up to go out. For work a plain suit from Next or similar and simple hair and make up was fine. I never had so much as a manicure until I was almost 30 and for my wedding in1996 just stuck a bit of clear nail varnish on because I knew people would be looking at my wedding ring. No make up artist and just my usual hairdresser and my usual plain bob style with a headdress plonked on top.

My niece is getting married this year and every stage of the process so far has been an instragram moment - it's fascinating and actually quite fun to be a part of. My DD13 is loving it.

Things definitely changed in the 00s with celebrity culture. I remember the pressure to buy expensive hair straighteners and suddenly everyone wanted Tiffany jewellery for birthday and Christmas ( me included!) I got into having regular beauty treatments and buying designer brands.

Obviously now with insta and social media everything has to be picture perfect all the time.

The pandemic will change things a bit I think. Some people will go even more over the top to make up for all the recent misery and some ( like me) will scale things down and embrace a simpler life. It will be interesting to see.

@lollipoprainbow

Especially Christmas ! Now everything is Christmas Eve boxes, light trails, breakfast with Santa etc I miss the Christmas's of the 70's/80's.

Getting a half day on Christmas Eve was exciting! And a Christmas bonus! We would go to a bar in Soho for the rest of the work day. It was brilliant. London felt like such a happy place and hadn't yet tipped into the overcrowding we have now.

And there was no congestion charge till 2003 and driving along the river was a joy! And if you needed to drive into work because you had equipment to carry, you could. And there were side streets you could park on all day!

See I thought we were all getting more environmentally conscious and reducing spending. I was born in late fifties and had my kids in the 90s. I did by a posh cake for a birthday party once - a Thomas the Tank bakery made one - cost about £30 then. It was very nice and took us a while to get through it! But I have accumulated a lot of crap over the years and need to get rid of it now. I am trying to make do with what I have and not buy new any more - more for environmental than economic reasons. I thought that was the zeitgeist now but maybe it's my age. But I do wonder how the woke crowd who go on about the environment justify to themselve their spending on fast fashion and tat if that is what they are doing.

@DahliaBlue I'd assume the "woke crowd" as you call them are not the ones buying unethically produced fast fashion.

I think most people are aware of the need to protect the environment and reduce waste but don't apply their principles to every aspect of their lives. I include myself in that) I need to do more.

I'm not sure young people give a toss about the environment if I'm honest

I miss there being a brand new episode of Friends on each Friday night!

@Tabbypawpaw

I was a 90s teen. What strikes me was how little our expectations were back then. I went to a boarding school so round a set of I guess people from fairly affluent families. But we wore boots own make up, if someone had CK2 perfume it was pretty cool…we didn’t seem to need to spend big on expensive brands. I never would have expected my parents to spend £££ on stuff for me. In contrast I just spent Xmas with six teenagers. One got £100 slippers and £120 silk pjs and she’s 14! My mum would have fainted at the thought of that being spent on a child! They all have air pods and iPhones etc. It seems in three decades the amount you need to spend on a child has risen enormously.

I wouldn't spend that on myself buying those things let alone my dc

I definitely think some things were simpler and some things definitely weren't. I went to uni in '04 and even then we knew you kept your thumb over the top of your bottle because of date rape. I can also remember being horribly made fun of when I was 11 as my mum had bought me a flesh coloured bra and everyone thought I was topless when I was getting changed for PE and they never let me forget it - even without social media that pressure was horribly there as a teen!
I also never get the whole 'kids could play out' thing, though. I wasn't allowed to play out in the street as a mid 80's born kid. Mum always insisted that we played in someone's garden and my gran used to scare me with 'if you don't hold my hand a bad man will take you away in a van!' Children have always been snatched and mothers have always had to worry about it. My great nan was born in the 1890s and when she was 5 her baby nephew was stolen from their garden, never seen again.

Life was simpler/better because you were younger! In the 90s/2000s, I was 12-18. Lived at home with sensible caring parents, all food, laundry, cleaning, bills taken care of for me. Plenty of friends, enjoyed school. Of course life seemed good!!

Now, in the 2020s, we've dealt with a global pandemic, I've lost jobs, one parent died suddenly, one is aging, there's bills to pay and grown-up responsibilities that are zero fun.

Just the way it works I'm afraid!

I think social media accounts for a lot of it. The cosmetic surgery trend is very worrying too.

The consumerism has ramped up I agree, but as a somewhat older person I would say that this has been going on since the early 80s and even before. People's expectations for what is necessary for kids to have, and do, have just continually risen. As has the amount of control and activities and lack of freedom for kids and teens too. Technology leashes have also really affected kids IMO.

It's affected children's ability to function and cope and also their education related skills. So despite more time spent on school their ability to think analytically, read, and do research has been significantly compromised. Little kids come into schools with poorer physical and language skills, too.

Social media is one of the biggest issues these days. It causes envy, bullying, delusions and consumerism to name a few. I have had all platforms deleted for ages and it’s so much better.

I also think 24 hours news is a bad influence.

I preferred having a bit less choice in the past. These days I open up Netflix and there’s so much - a lot of it not very good - that I don’t even end up watching anything. If I do, there’s a strong chance I’ll be drawn to my smartphone anyway, sadly.

We went to a tourist attraction recently which showed how the Queen lived in recent decades. She had beautiful things but it was really striking just how modest and few they were. I was thinking a teenager these days would never be able to believe this was real. Our middle class home contains so much more! Obviously on some level the Queen was able to have little thanks to an an army of staff meeting her needs and also has loads of land and residences etc - I’m not insane! But still, you could see a lot about her actual daily lifestyle from the artefacts, many of them from the 80s and 90s, and it really reminded me how we used to be.

I do remember some very elaborate kids parties from the 90s though and competitive party bags and such - but can imagine this will have got worse. I remember my mum got through this with skill and creativity at costumes and craft kits though rather than spending cash in the Disney store whereas I have no time for this, or skill!

I also remember the popularity of brands and certain toys and skinny models and these weren’t great if you couldn’t actually achieve those things. That all just seems the same as now really except now it’s all filtered through social media with influencers in smaller spheres of influence of what is a “must have”. So maybe worse now because it may also be more subtle and insidious than simply “everyone must wear Kickers” so harder to fight back.

A lot of new tech seems to badly reinvent the wheel too, in a way to extract more money. Trying to buy a story player for my DD and everything ties you into an expensive and exclusive platform. Preferred my old tape player and just buy any tape you like. Not a stupid Toniebox or yoto player. Ugh.

I was born in 1958. Growing up, only one girl I knew had a birthday party and it was (a) at her house, (b) involved only 5 other friends, (c) food such as sandwiches and fairy cakes, (c) party games like pass the parcel organised by her dad. You took home a bit of cake in a paper napkin.

As I recall - and my younger brother was born in 67, when I was 9 - mums tended to knit a lot, cut down old blankets (no duvets then) for cot blankets, have one pram (as soon as brother was toddling, no more chariot rides for him), etc. There were very few of the 'baby accessories' that I know most modern parents buy.

As a teen in the 70s, there wasn't a lot of fashion pressure and certainly none involving costly, regular hair, nails, etc. At university (76-81), almost everyone wore jeans, t shirts and sweatshirts. Going out was down the pub or the union bar, no costly clubbing (and associated clothes, etc costs).

I crave going back to the 70s/80s - even simpler then!

I agree - but I also think every generation ends up longing for the relative simplicity of the time when they grew up.

Seems to be an ever occurring thought.