By Sharon Steel Before teen stars were quietly shuttled to private rehabilitation facilities and "It" girls figured out how to pay paparazzi agencies to shoot self-styled, faux-candid spreads, Teen Beat and Tiger Beatruled the adolescent subscription niche with cut & paste photo-collages and "exclusive" Q&As.
Before Zac Efron, Hilary Duff, and the Jonas Brothers, these junior high publications fed the adolescent histrionic machine by featuring cover girls and boys like David Cassidy, Michael J. Fox, Molly Ringwald, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Jonathan Brandis (RIP).
Before gossip blogs made the fall from celebrity pedestal to skanky rock-bottom a neck-breaker instead of a twisted ankle, before Britney invented her own prison-house fame disease, before Miley Cyrus and Selina Gomez attacked each other's good-girl images via YouTube video cat fights, it was enough to carefully rip out a fold-out portrait poster of your sixteen-year-old idol of choice (free with every magazine!), and lovingly Sticky-Tak it to your door. There were no semi-scripted reality TV shows to tell you what they were really like, so you were free to imagine a ridiculous fantasy of your own while you chewed a stale piece of bubble gum, listened to your cassette tape collection, and wondered if so-and-so would ever answer your perfume-scented fan-mail.
Teddy Ruxpin, an animatronic talking bear, actually sold for $69.99 when he was first released in 1985. That's a lot of dollars -- pre-Greatest Depression dollars -- for a stuffed animal that told stories and gave you a wonky-eyed death glare. Given that our image is tainted due to the Mary Shelly's Frankenstein tone of the commercial above, we suppose, at the time, it made sense that everyone thought he was "cute."
The original Teddy used two sets of analog cassette tapes to control his storytelling and body movements. He became a collector's item in 1987 after World of Wonders halted production, which may have something to do with the fantasy back story created for his character. Gutangs vs. Illops? A digital cartridge upgrade arrived in 2005. Teddy Ruxpin still looks like he's tripping. But now, he's marked down!
Jennifer Aniston is fracking everywhere these days, blah-blahing about her films and her 30 Rock guest appearance and how very uncool that Jolie woman is.
The New York Times Magazineseems to be on Team Aniston, at any rate. I didn't have too many expectations from the requisite Q&A, though there was one very intriguing tidbit! Chatting away about her "sitcom graveyard," Jen referenced her role on Ferris Bueller, the television series based on John Hughes' seminal high school ditch-day film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Jen played Jeanie Bueller, Ferris's uptight sister and Jennifer Grey's pre-nose job role.
So we turned to YouTube for further evidence. And above, Jen makes her star turn in the pilot episode clip at minute 1:10 with a face FULL of eyelash curler. (Don't say we didn't warn you.) A few other things: Charlie Schlatter, who takes over for Matthew Broderick as Ferris, does eerily resemble a skimpier version of Zach Morris. But. One has to own his deadpan is pretty amazing. And speaking of Mr. Sarah Jessica Parker, right away, Schlatter takes a chainsaw to a Matthew Brodrick-as-him cardboard cutout that just so happens to be in his closet as if to say... screw you, it shoulda been me? Those writers had their meta down in 1986. Josh Schwartz must have been paying attention when he wrote the second season of The O.C.
Feather fascinators are the current mark of a sartorialist who wants fashion to bleed into her hair accessories. But there was a time when shoelace hair clips were the raddest alternative to scrunchies ever invented. Royal-hued, neon-colored, or metallic. Crazy-glued to a cheap silver clip. Purchased for $1 at a drugstore with your allowance.
Instead of a fairy wood nymph, one usually resembled... um, a girl with bouncy shoelaces in her hair. And gosh, did they ever go great with Swatch watches and mis-matched leggings from the GAP.
Why don't they make toys like this anymore? Sweet Secrets were tiny plastic dolls that doubled as lockets or pots of lip gloss. They had gaudy rhinestone-gem stomachs and neon-hued hair. You could wear them around your neck. I do believe they were the perfect toy.
Once again, Regression Obsession brings supposedly good, yet actually very disappointing news of a resurgence. In 2007, Play Along developed a modern take on the Galoob version that's a more literal take on the girly Transformer. The idea is still wonderful, but if I may say so, these are yet another lame excuse for the original. What's up with the anorexic little body? Where are the jewels? Who on earth would bother smilingly telling their secret wishes to this...thing? Don't fuck with a brilliant formula, toy people!
The other day, I was staring at an insidery model casting blog, noting that ever so many of the current up-and-comers have serious manes of stick-straight, perfect hair. As the familiar ping of envy hit me I remembered Topanga Lawrence (Danielle Fishel) on Boy Meets World, Felicity (Keri Russell) on her eponymous WB show, and Laura Sibbie in Louis Sachar's novel Sixth Grade Secrets: all three characters grew out their locks until they made the boys come running and the girls squirm with jealousy.
And then someone else with the type of hair I do believe I yearned for the most came to mind: Winnie Cooper (Danica McKellar) on The Wonder Years. I don't think I ever watched an episode of the show without wishing for her flat, shiny, ebony-colored tresses, long enough to hang behind her like a cape. She hid behind them when Kevin said something stupid. She could flip her hair back when she bent over to kiss him on the lips. She had straight-across bangs, and they never turned into a weird Sarah Palin claw-bang. I once spent hours frying my hair straight with a cheap Hot Tools iron, praying it would turn out like hers.
Does the expression "greetings and salutations" mean anything to you? There are many things that make Heathers one of the best mean-girl dark comedies of the late '80s, and I could probably spend an entire post listing them all: the infamous Heather scrunchie, Veronica's hatred of the clique she helps lead; Heather Duke's (Shannen Doherty) deadpan utterance: "Veronica, why are you pulling my dick?" She always gets the best lines.
But every high school hierarchy -- particularly a place like Westerberg -- needs a twisted, hopelessly attractive foil in a black trench coat. Puppetmaster JD (Christian Slater) saves Veronica from the Heathers' clutches, then amuses himself by disguising a series of murders as trendy suicides. He also owns the thin-lipped, shit-eating grin and stringy hair like no other.
Life's rough when you treat being popular like a job. Particularly when your first real love is actually kind of a psycho.
Hats with flowers on the brims. Tie skirts. Black-and-white striped tights. Did anyone really need a reason to watch Blossom, other than the fact that you wanted to see what weirdly wonderful combination Mayim Bialik's stylist would put her in next?
"I'm afraid of the dark and my glow-worm night-light is broken."
Um, why not simply turn on that magical shining light? Lite-Brites were the '80s kiddie version of that mind-boggling LED scroll at the 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony. And, at the time, they were glorious.
Most people will forever associate Sarah Jessica Parker, first and foremost, with Sex & the City. And that's fine. I understand: it's an obvious, iconic, unbreakable connection. But I will always remember her (is it possible to be nostalgic for a film that came out when you were three-years-old? Er, yes!) as Janey Glenn from the 1985 classic Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Parker stars as a quiet, pretty, private school girl who looooves to dance. When her super-strict military family moves to the big, bad city of Chicago, Janey finally decides it's time to break free. So she scores herself a wild new BFF, meets the boy of her dreams, and auditions to become a regular cast member of Dance TV. You know what happens next.
Above: a modernized version of the retro junk-necklace, by Punky Pins
If you asked me to pick only one, I probably would have said my most beloved junk-necklace charm was a tiny, orange plastic notebook the size of a toenail, with a sparkly blue sticker on its cover. But it didn't really do any good picking favorites. The whole point of owning and wearing a junk-necklace -- a long plastic loop chain festooned with as many different plastic charms as you could collect -- was excess. Sweet, sweet excess.
Every '80s girl basically had at least one friend who owned a Caboodle that was jam-packed with scrunchies, Wet & Wild make-up (we'll return to this at a later date), and vast quantities of plastic jewelery. I was not that friend, but I had one -- because she was a dancer, she actually had an excuse to use her Caboodle at competitions. She always looked so official carrying it around. It was the suitcase for 5th graders, and don't you dare compare it to a fisherman's tackle box! Do they come in teal with a baby-pink accents? I think not.
Ann M. Martin's Scholastic series chronicled the overly-polite misadventures of a group of middle schoolers who run a suburban baby-sitting business and manage, through the magic of Y.A. fiction, to stay 13-years-old forever. If you were a fan of the original The BSC, you probably also carved out time to gorge yourself on Super Specials, Mysteries, and Friends Forever off-shoots. They were all ghost-written after Book 35, and reading them was like chewing on a delicious piece of gum that loses its flavor immediately. I took out dozens at a time from the library.
I often come across discarded puff-paint T-shirts at thrift stores. I hold them up, mourn their passing, and wonder whether they were lovingly created at a slumber party or camp craft session of yore. Because there was a time in most '80s girls' life when no piece of fabric could escape the radical bedazzle of a puff-paint set -- preferably the kind that came with glitter mixed into the paint. This was exactly as it should be.
You can still buy puff paint -- and yes, it comes in Purple Glitz! -- which means, of course, that you can take that Tri-Blend V-neck T you got at American Apparel this past weekend and whip it into something Dov Charney (gag me with a spoon) will either be incredibly impressed with or utterly horrified by. It doesn't actually matter either way, because you will probably be the coolest person at that Hipster Costume party whether or not he approves.
If Anne Shirley of Green Gables fame had known about best-friend necklaces, it's possible she'd have fashioned boxes full of these platonic lady-love charms for her "bosom friend" Diana Barry.
In the '80s, anybody lucky enough to find their own kindred spirit/hetero girl-crush would celebrate their connection with a piece of jewelery that announced they had a BFF 4-ever. And like jelly shoes and acid-wash T-shirts, the BFF necklace has had its renaissance for quite some time now. A recent issue of Elle pointed to designer Dana Lorenz's tongue-in-cheek dog-tags, inscribed with '80s song lyrics, and Claire's Accessories has been hawking these babies for years, Hannah Montana-themed or otherwise. Oh, but there's always Etsy if you and your gal-pal are far too unique to go for the classic sliced-heart version: broken zombie kitty coffin (pictured above), anyone?
