vivien | (no subject)

I’ve had my mind on clothes and fashion for a while now, and I’ve wanted to write about my style, the challenges (or lack thereof) I face as a “woman of a certain age”, and other thinky thoughts. I’ve always been intrigued by style and glamor. When I was in high school, I seriously considered a career as a fashion designer or fashion buyer. My personal style – as evidenced by the 80’s picspam I foist on you – was quirky and eclectic. It still is, but in different ways.

In discussion with a twenty-something friend about the Madonna episode of Glee, however, I realized that in order to talk about my style, I needed to delve into some pop culture and music history for a foundation of what formed me, and why I dress the way I did and do. This got a little long and detailed. Please note: These are my opinions from my experiences, and no one has to agree with them or remember things the way I do. That is what makes them my opinions!

1984 was a pivotal year for me. I was fourteen, leaving 8th grade and entering 9th. This was the year I decided to be me, and not a preppy, wannabe-just-like-everyone-else girl. Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with the preppy look. It just wasn’t me. It also wasn't good for me.

What is this preppy business? I can hear some of you younglings thinking this! For my purposes, it was the look of the popular crowd, and before 1984, I desperately wanted to be a part of that crowd. I wanted the Izod and Polo logos to proudly shine from my chest. I wanted the designer jeans, the Bass penny loafers, and the whole Seventeen magazine fashion spread extravaganza. They always had such cute back to school sweaters. I would have died of heat exhaustion in the Oklahoma August in any of them. I wanted to fit in, to navigate the waters of junior high school with ease like my best girlfriend, who was a material girl without the irony, unfortunately.

The only problem was my mom couldn’t afford any of these status symbol brands. I mean, seriously couldn’t afford it. I managed one Izod and one Polo in my whole wannabe existence. And then there was the fact that aside from my best friend and a few others in that popular crowd, I didn’t really like a lot of the girls who wore the Polo shirts and the Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. The boys were a different story, but even they weren’t my type. Not really. I just didn’t know that yet.

I was an MTV baby. My grandparents, with whom we lived, got cable in 1981, a few months after MTV debuted. I was hooked instantly. So when I talk about style and fashion, videos play an essential and intertwined part. I watched MTV constantly. Back then all they played was videos. I know, bizarre, right? I mean, there were some news breaks and concerts, but mostly it was all image, all the time.

In 1984, four famous people changed my course of style. They changed the course of my life, when it comes right down to it. In 1983-1984, Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Annie Lennox (with Eurythmics), and Boy George (with Culture Club) made it onto the pop charts and into the MTV rotation.

Let’s start with Madonna, since she is, as they say, timely!

Only three years into MTV’s existence, the scantily-clad video girl as background accessory was already a standard. Madonna took that image and subverted it to her own ends. Here was a woman with unabashed sexuality who was honest about using that sexuality to get what she wanted on her own terms. I offer as an example the first Madonna video, “Burning Up”, which has lol-tastic effects, lots of writhing, a great beat to dance to, and a nicely subversive ending.

Madonna might have been a “bad girl”, she might have been a Boy Toy, but it was on her terms, as it continues to be. She also had (GASP) people of color in her videos. I hadn’t realized this until I was researching. In 1984, when Michael Jackson had only recently broken the color barrier on MTV, this was fairly significant. Check out Borderline as an example. It’s still one of my favorite Madonna videos.

Madonna was a huge influence on me, but not on how I dressed. I was only fourteen. I wouldn’t have been let out of the house in a Madonna outfit (but OH, I had many, many of those black rubber bracelets.) I did admire her forthrightness and her take-no-prisoners attitude.

While I could admire Madonna from afar, I could be like Cyndi Lauper.

I cannot tell you how influential “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” was for me.

Again, here were women who dressed as they liked and enjoyed each other’s company. If the fellows wanted to join in, they were welcome, but it was the girls’ fun that was important. Oh, and hey, look! More women of color. This is kind of interesting, going back and watching these videos with a different eye.

Cyndi’s look was much easier for me to emulate. It was also a HELL of a lot more fun than Izods and Polos and jeans. And wow, thrift stores? So much more affordable. 1984 is when I began to dress up, and it's when I started collecting vintage clothes. I couldn’t have done it without the like-minded girlfriends in my life, and without Chuck, whom I’d met at the end of 8th grade and who would become my high school GBF and arbiter of style. I was still friends with my preppy best friend, but a transition began in 1984.

So I loved Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, two women who dressed in a variety of feminine styles.

Then there was Annie Lennox. Oh. My. Guh.

The first time I saw “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”, I didn’t know for sure whether the singer was a man or a woman. I didn’t care. All I knew was that she was omfg hot. For a fourteen-year-old girl, that’s an eye-opening realization. Information was a little more difficult to obtain in those days; you couldn’t just Google a band and find out about them. You had to wait for MTV news or music magazines or pen pals in cities with more information to get details, so I didn’t know her gender for a while. I... didn't care. She was hot. Period.

Annie was, and has remained, fearless in presenting herself. In the gender bending 1980’s, she was one of the few women who flipped the bending – there were plenty of cute boys wearing makeup, and I was hot for most of them *fans self*. It was less acceptable for women to dress in masculine styles. There were a couple of other artists, like Grace Jones and Alison Moyet, but they were on the fringe. Annie Lennox could work a suit and still be a woman and wildly popular. When I started collecting vintage silk ties, I wore them proudly as a nod to her.

I also loved that in the “Who’s That Girl Video” she dressed totally in drag to play her own love interest. The video features cameos by another unconventional girl group, Bananrama, and Marilyn, one of the male gender benders.

“Love Is a Stranger”, showcases another reason I loved Annie Lennox. She inhabited many characters in her videos, and that changeability – along with Madonna’s – made a big impression on me, especially when I started delving more and more into vintage looks. Why be stuck in one look or decade or style when you can play with all the ones that tickle your fancy?

(Also what a voice! And those eyes? Okay, okay, I still have a crush on that era's Annie Lennox. Leave me alone. *sticks out tongue*)

My final 1984 influence was not a direct influence on me, but nevertheless, he impacted the social world in which I moved in such a way that I can’t leave him out. If I was Cyndi Lauper, my best friend, Chuck, was Boy George.

I loved Boy George.

I thought he was beautiful. I knew he was gay – I mean, we all did. Even someone as flamboyant as he was wouldn’t come out back in 1982, when the first Culture Club video, “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me”, a video with homophobic harassment as a subtext, debuted. Boy George was another chameleon who defied expectations and wore what he wished, all the while making beautiful music. It’s such a shame that drugs derailed him, and I am pleased that Chuck made it through the harassment and intolerance intact.

Here’s one of my favorite Culture Club songs and videos, Church of the Posion Mind, in case you’re curious.

Chuck emulated Boy George with his own stylistic interpretation, which included makeup at school. He’s the one who showed me what bravery really is, because every day he ran the gauntlet to be the person he wanted to be, in a much more genuine way than Boy George could in the public eye. Chuck wasn't out quite yet; in fact, we dated in freshman year. We got over that pretty quickly, ha, ha. I think the influence of our favorite musicians gave us both the courage to be our own people, and our friendship enabled us to make the scene together and serve as backups when backup was needed.

One more thing about gender bending. I did have a thing for boys in makeup. I've wondered about this, in context of watching the teenager at my house go through her Twilight phase. Was my interest a result of seeing these musicians as safe, non-typically masculine outlets of desire? I think maybe so. At a time when we were just learning that sex could kill you, safe outlets of desire were a-okay by me. But I digress. It was acceptable in the '80's, as they say.

In 1984, I discovered strong role models in women and a man who were not afraid to dress the way they wanted. They disregarded societal norms and inspired me to view fashion and style as a creative outlet. I was able to break free from the judgmental bonds of dressing like my peers, which jettisoned a ton of peer pressure. I am so grateful for that. After 1984, I never looked back.

Sometimes I get a little frustrated, because the 1980's get a bad rap. It wasn't all bad hair and sketchy teen movies. There was real societal change going on. It was happening visibly, and maybe at a surface level only, in pop culture, but it was filtering down to kids like me.

I might write more about fashion and style and how mine developed. It's interesting to reflect on how my teenage experiences were shaped by pop culture and how they continue to influence me.

tl;dr? I will keep it all behind the cut. :-P

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now I am starting to get why this stuff is important. This is fascinating, Vivface. Any time you want to tl;dr about anything is fine by me.

Eee, you don't know how cool it is to hear that from someone like you!!! Granted, these are my personal experiences, and they are probably somewhat diluted by time and nostalgia. As I started to think about it, though, pieces of the puzzle of how I think started coming together in a more cohesive way.

I am too stupid-tired for any kind of in-depth comment, but this is a really interesting post!

*hugs* If nothing else, I can share my pop culture history.

*clings*

Popular culture and the ways in which people appropriate it for their personal use is - uh, part of what I've studied this semester, hence the jargon, but also always interesting to read about!

Viv, this is a really great post. I feel like I should have thoughtful things to say about it, but mostly I'm thinking "Awesome." Also, "So that's what was going on in 1984." I first became aware of popular music on the van to day camp in what was probably the summer of '88, plus or minus a year. I didn't become aware of clothing styles until... uh, probably college. So I'm admiring your badass eighties fashion.

Hee, thanks. I was, and always will be (I hope) a badass in my own colorful way. Fashion was (and is) a creative outlet for me, you know? Like art or music was for others.

That being said, I don't think anything is wrong about not being into fashion at all or for wanting to stick to the "popular" look of whatever era. This was just my experience, and it's interesting for me to write it down.

Oh man, Viv, this is so cool and fascinating to read! I hope you do write more posts - I'm really loving them, and the chance to get to know about all of this stuff that I missed.

I am so glad it's interesting and not just blathering on and on about nostalgia. I wish I'd known more about the details and the complexities I missed from previous generations.

I wish I'd had your courage at that age, hon. I "rebelled" the same way everybody else did: wore black and dyed my hair purple.

Going my own way would have been better. It took me a while to figure that out.

Heeeey, lady, I never had the guts to dye my hair purple. So you did something significant, too.

Well, it never stayed purple long.

I still have a style crush on Annie Lennox. She's... one of my real-life heroes, wonderful on so many levels.

My other personal style icons were (and still are!) Patti Smith and Joe Strummer. So sue me; I'm only visiting this planet from the depths of the punk rock movement.

The punk rock movement is fascinating to me. It didn't quite make it to my hometown, I don't think. My next installment might be about the New Romantics of the early 1980's - the foppish backlash against the punk style in England.

But yeah, Annie Lennox. She is hardcore.

Viv, this post is awesome.

Aww, thanks!

I love this post so much!

Totally hearing you on all of these musicians. I was a Madonna clone at 16. Eventually, I grew my own quirky style.

And then I lost it somewhere around college and I'm still trying to find it again.

But the 80's were awesome. And so much fun...and yes, there was a lot of stuff going on and sometimes you only see that in retrospect.

This is a really awesome post. It's all so fascinating and interesting!

You and I would have been best friends in high school m'dear. We totally traveled the same path. I tried the preppy bit (only here it was more Polo than Izod with some Ocean Pacific tossed into the mix). I had deck shoes, I had the gear. And then Much Music happened (Canada's answer to MTV). And you just pinpointed the women I loved for fashion inspiration.