And the colors: hot pink, electric blue, neon green. Either that or glossy black and silver.
I think it was a reaction to all the Harvest Gold of the 70’s.
I went through it as a wannabe flower child, growing my hair out long and straight, and wearing nothing but T-shirts, (non-designer) blue jeans, and ragged sneakers. Stopped watching MTV in 1986 and listened to nothing but classic rock for the next ten years.
Footloose and Flashdance are good for the style aspect of the 80’s (I watched Flashdance about a month ago and I can’t imagine how any movie could appear as dated as that). The 80’s weren’t all fun and games however. The Soviets were going to nuke us at any second and then we would nuke them back no questions ask and stand back a watch the fireworks (not most of us though because we would be dead). To capture that aspect, I think Wargames should added to the required viewing list. The Day After can be substituted as a more bleak choice.
Add in The Lost Boys to the movie list as well, and for Post Apocolyptic movies/TV you couldn’t do better than the “The Day After, Threads, and When the Wind Blows” trifecta
If you know where to look on YouTube, the last two Nuclear War shows are available there, they both hold up equally well, but i think somehow WTWB is a little more unnerving…
We got this far an nobody’s mentioned Mark Wills’ “Nineteen Somethin’”? Here’s a link to the YouTube video of the song. Basically, Wills hits the major points of pop culture in the 70s and 80s (“Skating rinks and black Trans-Ams, big hair and parachute pants” for example). Kind of fun, and it does bring back lots of memories.
Heavy metal music! 
This?! Sorry, no, it’s terrible. It’s as if you described an Earthling dress to an alien who constructed a garment that’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike anything anyone would ever actually wear. It makes Molly Ringwald look simultaneously fat and scrawny, which is no mean feat. It’s hideous. It’s hideosity at it’s finest. It’s worse than a muffin top!
Absolutely right. Freddy died in the 70s, according to Curtis Mayfield.
Moving thread from IMHO to MPSIMS.
Going through some old papers & mementoes the other day I found a note that I’d written to a high school friend (she kept all our notes and we read through some of them a while back and this one was saved for its hilarity factor).
Part of it read:
“Are you going to the Video Bash? Do you think Lia will let me borrow her half gloves? I hope so - they totally match my new neon pink sweater! I’m going to wear my acid wash jeans I think …”
SO 1985 !!!
I don’t think “bad hair” is quite fair - I’d say “big hair.” Really, really big hair. On the boys and the girls. Especially the boys.
(Sidenote - the only thing wrong with “The Wedding Singer” with regards to the way it portrayed the 80’s was Drew Barrymore’s hair. No self-respecting teenager in the 80’s would have been caught DEAD with that stupid-looking, parted-in-the-middle, no-perm, no-bangs weirdo hairdo. It wasn’t even dyed a funny colour.)
That specific dress is no masterpiece, certainly, but what I was saying was that the pattern was unheard of in 1986, but commonplace later. A lot of well-made and well-fitting dresses did have that pattern in the early '90s.
Oh, I totally agree, featherlou–Drew is perfectly in style for about 1995. She looks like a freak in those dresses, too, but the hair is the worst. Here’s what she actually looked like in 1989!
Wow, it’s even worse than I remembered. My brain had edited out the worst parts!
My prom dress was very 80’s indeed, and it was way better. Princess bodice, poofy sleeves and skirt (with a crinoline!), and made of metallic fabric that was black one way and blue the other way–with glittery blue swiss dots on the bodice fabric! I believe there was a butt-bow as well. (I’ll post a picture if anyone wants to see it.)
That sounds like a dare! Alrighty then, let’s see that pic! 
Butt bows! I forgot about butt bows.
Graduated highschool in 88’ what are people saying about bad hair? I loved my feathered look.
I’d rather have a million Flock of Seagulls than one jheri curl.
I am SO happy my hair escaped such madness. But I will never forget the day in the seventh grade, a classmates told me I’d look good in one. I think she was just trying to get me to join the Jheri Collective–who’s unfortunate members had all deluded themselves into thinking they looked as good as Michael Jackson in the “Beat It” video.
One of the administrative assistants on my floor still wears one. I just want to pull her to the side and shake her by the shoulders, but I don’t want the juices to splash on me.
There…there are no words. I am stunned speechless by your long-haired, fluorescent-pink-cummerbunded beauty.
Yes, yes you are.
OK, here I am in my prom glory. You can’t see the glittery dots all that well, but we tried. Note my perm, despite the fact that I have naturally curly hair! I can’t compete with Hal, though. Wowee.
I didn’t have the wall o’ bangs–my hair doesn’t like curling irons–but most of my friends did. At my school, some girls had their bangs up pretty high; my yearbooks shows a few girls with about six inches of hair sprayed in place–sometimes going straight up.
