Source
r/Zillennials•
averagecryptid

Do you ever feel like there are some aesthetics you continue to associate with "the big kids"?

Discussion

Like middle parts and low rise jeans, maybe. The colour baby blue for some reason. Flip phones. A lot of 90s aesthetics and early 00s stuff I get that vibe from. If I got it as hand-me-downs I also get that vibe from. There's dresses I just associate with teachers I had in elementary school.

Like if I watch a movie that has teenagers and is set in 2004, I still associate the aesthetics with people older than me who I would look up to, even if I'm 27.

I wonder if the 20 year fashion cycle is people who can now afford the aesthetic they wanted as a kid without shame. (But maybe not because it's teenagers who seem to be heading the y2k revival.)

Posted Jul 8, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

1815
luke_cohen11999•

I think a better way of putting it would be calling such trends "before your time". You recognize them and know about them but you were too young to take part in it. This is my general attitude towards the affliction jeans and american fighter t-shirt wearing hummer owner of 2006, the original crop of Ed Hardy fans, or the heavily tattooed XGames athletes that were popular around 2004 (there’s a reason I call that decade the "douchey 2000’s"). I recognize the look and attitudes but I was too young to join in myself.

12
averagecryptidOP1994•

This isn't how I feel, though. I associate them with people older than me. I recognize floppy discs as before my time. I see the aesthetics of individuals as being a different more specific thing.

2
luke_cohen11999•

I can understand that. When tech becomes obsolete, most people toss it in the trash and buy something brand new. Fashion, meanwhile, appears much more fleeting on first glance but has a longer lasting impact. The previous trend always seems to impact the current one in some way shape or form. It leads to a greater familiarity with the trend if you’re a kid even if you never wore those clothes yourself due to your age. I look at the scene kids, 2000’s motocross (I’m most familiar with this style because I grew up with it), crunk music, and garage rock revival clothing styles as something recognizable but before me.

2
Hypso-Musk-Rat1997•

Yep definitely. Even when I look at high school yearbook pictures from the 2000s, they still seem “old” to me.

9
Jaycor261995•

I remember dressing like those “big kids” back when I was in middle school in the 2000s. I transitioned from that baggy ghetto fashion to the emo style but I definitely went through a full emo phase when I started high school in 2009. I would wear red or black skinny jeans that were like a size 2 and wore band t-shirts that were popular at that time lol

3
poolfullofbeauty1995•

I definitely agree with you about the 20 year fashion cycle. Also, it seems it’s mostly people in their early 20s and teens that are partaking. I want to partake because I don’t care for a lot of modern fashion. I guess people who did get to wear those clothes during their time just don’t like them anymore.

3
96nugget1996•

I agree most of the Y2K trends gen z is partaking in we were too young as well especially teen Y2K-2006 fashion. Like we were aware of it but the clothes icons of the time like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Beyoncé, Hilary duff etc wore was not age appropriate for us and parents did not let their kids dress like thots like they do now, but they are what most people think of as millennial fashion. I guess as cuspers we missed the mark on trends before and after us but i consider anything geared towards teens before the 2009 -2010 school year before my time as I didn’t pick out my own cloths until I was 13/14.

3
poolfullofbeauty1995•

Not always, for example some of the fashion at the time was also available for kids like one shoulder tops.

2
DreamIn240p1995•

No because I've started to look at it from a different point of view (probably). Also because I've seen movies and shows from the 80s and earlier.

I've seen my old pictures and my mom dressed me in some of the most 2003-2004 clothing I've ever seen. I was literally decked out in denim head to toe (and posing with my mom who also wore full denim jacket/bell jeans and with those square frameless sunglasses; I also had a light brown jacket and mainly wore that, but my mom was absolutely denim crazy). But I often forgot I dressed like that since I didn't choose the fashion.

2
averagecryptidOP1994•

More/updated ruminations after reading through folks comments here:

Something that's occurred to me as I've gone through these comments is that there's aesthetics I associate with my childhood despite it being from the 70s or so, because a lot of the people who cared for me as a kid had some reason that aesthetic was in their lives. My mom and her sister were children in the 70s and a lot of my grandparents' place hadn't honestly been updated since lol. (And I'm talking the normal aesthetics of the time - wall to wall carpeting, big cozy couches, textured wallpaper, wood fixtures everywhere etc. Not just the stereotypical aesthetic of the time.) The girl guide leaders I had started volunteering as such in the 70s and 80s, so a lot of the books and materials they used to teach us various survival or camping skills were from the era.

I feel nostalgic for certain things, but like there was also this inaccessible Other for a lot of the fleeting trends kids older than me got into that passed out of fashion before I could access them for whatever reason.

My relationship to these things now is more like, what gave me joy then and what gives me joy now. I get to pick and choose the things to reclaim or not based on what suits my tastes. And I can somehow usually tell the difference visually from the era and revivals because even in cases of people trying very hard to replicate the era, there are still parts of it that feel more reflective of the things more appealing to contemporary tastes than the tastes of the time.

​

Still feel like Lizzie McGuire is older than me though against all logic lol

1
EducationalOutside5•

the 2000s teens pop punk era. when i was in high school most of kids in my class weren't much into pop rock and more into edm

1
LadyVisa3141994•

Huh, we’re born the same year but I can’t relate lol. Flip phones were still popular up to 2010/11 and people I knew didn’t stop wearing low rise jeans until 2014. I never stopped wearing low rise lol, my siblings were born in the 80s & them making fun of high rise and seeing their old photos has repulsed me away from anything above a 7” rise forever LOL.

0
averagecryptidOP1994•

I have possible explanations for these differences.

For the phone thing: My family couldn't afford a lot of the basic tech others had, so we didn't even get internet until 2006. My first cell phone was one of these guys, and it was one of those prepaid things where we'd put like $20 on it at a time and it would last as long as it possibly could. I didn't get it until midway through high school, long after my peers.

For the low rise thing: Just to be super clear I mean this sort of low rise, not just low rise in comparison to the current high waist mom jean situation that's in vogue right now. Like, one inch lower and flashing everybody sort of low rise, needing to tuck in pubes sort of low rise.
I think I just have trauma memories related to those because I think those jeans were just meant for someone who was not at risk of either having a wedgie (and/or camel toe) or a plumber butt at all times in them. It strikes me they could only fit a very specific body type, and I just wasn't one of them.
And normal low rise jeans (like the kind that were more common in the early 2010s) kind of have the same effect on me just because... well, proportions. I still can't afford jeans in a store, so I mainly just rely on clothing swaps with friends (and community centres I used to hang around pre-pandemic) and tailoring them by hand to my own body.

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As more of a general thing I also think having older or younger siblings kind of impacts how generational stuff feels. I didn't have any older siblings, just one 4 years younger than me. "The big kids" vibe I get is kind of like, these teenagers I was really intimidated by and looked up to and had no frame of reference for knowing as an actual peer until things felt like they equalized a little more in high school or so, and kind of even then, depending how much older we're talking I guess.

1
LadyVisa3141994•

Might be a state difference too for fashion, in AZ there were a lot of boutiques where I lived that still had the 6” rise Frankie B jeans. I’ve always adored the low rise but I know they’re not for everyone, wish they still made them though for the people who like them :( The jeans they’re calling “low rise” nowadays are mid rise, I’m glad I kept my jeans from high school!

2
averagecryptidOP1994•

I do not live in the US so there's that too haha. I agree that I wish there were more variety of jeans. It's annoying how hard it is to find the clothes you like just because it's not the dominant trend at a given time.

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