It happens to us all, death and taxes are, notoriously, the only certainties in life and getting older is perhaps the preferable alternative. Here at Squeamish Bikini we can't be sure of what your measure of young/old is but I think it's fair to say we are fast approaching summer chicken status.
The abrupt halt in fashion of originality and fondness instead for revivals is cruel to those forced to witness their childhood threads laughed at, then worn by those born in a later decade. The worship of youth has increased and the hunt to cling on to it by hook or by Botox as soon as the first grey hair crests the scalp is emptying our ageing pockets.
New attitudes to marriage and economic difficulties have meant that the old joke of 40 being the new 30 and so on is coming true. 20-somethings are living like teens and 30-somethings are hitting milestones formerly the territory of people 10 years their junior.
So when do we get to be crotchety and disapproving now the decades are swapping around and Olay is using SCIENCE like never before? We have decided there's no time like the present and here are the things that make us feel OLD...
The abrupt halt in fashion of originality and fondness instead for revivals is cruel to those forced to witness their childhood threads laughed at, then worn by those born in a later decade. The worship of youth has increased and the hunt to cling on to it by hook or by Botox as soon as the first grey hair crests the scalp is emptying our ageing pockets.
New attitudes to marriage and economic difficulties have meant that the old joke of 40 being the new 30 and so on is coming true. 20-somethings are living like teens and 30-somethings are hitting milestones formerly the territory of people 10 years their junior.
So when do we get to be crotchety and disapproving now the decades are swapping around and Olay is using SCIENCE like never before? We have decided there's no time like the present and here are the things that make us feel OLD...
1. EVERYTHING. Now that I am 30, everything makes me feel old. The song I had my first kiss to is now old enough to drink in the States, the song I lost my virginity to is more than old enough to buy a gun, and I have tattoos and piercings that are nearly old enough to start learning how to drive. So everything makes me feel old because I chose to live hard, starting young, and now I am rich - oh so rich - in experience. At least, that's what I tell myself. At least once a month I realise that x favourite song/book/movie is y years old, which makes me want to cry a little. But what really makes me feel old is when I meet up-and-coming young racing drivers who were born in 1996. That's ninety-freakin'-six, people, and they're driving race cars. Madness. But I leave you with this heart-warming thought: kids who weren't even born when 9/11 happened are starting secondary school next month. Now who's feeling old? Ha! F1 Kate
2. Lots and lots of things make me feel old these days. The most recent thing was discovering that Tellytubbies is 15 years old and the baby in the sun from it now looks like this. Gareth
3. I was at work, not doing any work and gabbing about clothes and what we thought of the new Batman film, then we got onto favourite foods, which led to IKEA meatballs, which led to the crushing realisation I was old and this was the future and somehow I remember things from a by-gone era. This happened because we jumped from IKEA foods to IKEA household items you can get out the shop in a bag. My co-worker had bought a novelty frame, it was a giant version of...the 22year old struggled, what was that word? What was it called? she explained: “You know how cameras used to open up and you'd put that stuff in it?” Horrified, I explained, “FILM! YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT FILM AND THE NEGATIVES!” she replied: “Yeah, the giant photo frame was like a wavy bit of film with negatives on it.” My colleague spoke like she had genuinely had never seen or used these things in her life. Which she hadn't. There is only so much obsolete technology you can recall first-hand before you feel ancient. Squeamish Nicola
4. It feels like things are constantly making me feel old at the moment. And considering I have yet to turn 30 I do wonder what that says about the emphasis our society puts on youth, and why we think that younger means better. But that doesn't stop me wincing slightly when I realise that despite feeling like I'm 10 years younger than I am, quite a lot has actually happened in that time. It would be stranger if I WAS the same, but still: seeing outfits similar to those I used to wear in my teens on younger people and realising the time has well and truly passed for me to get away with them; overhearing a conversation between 20-year olds on the bus - these things make me cringe at the same time as they make me slightly sad and nostalgic. But it was at a talk I attended last year that I realised quite how much the world has changed, and how odd some of the things I remember are going to sound to later generations. I don't just mean things like having to arrange to meet someone at a certain time and then show up then instead of being able to text them 5 minutes before you arranged to say you're running late. No, last year I went to a talk at the Video Game Archive. It was really interesting, and lots of fun to watch old games. But then. Then. They showed a picture of a cassette cartridge. And told us all they had shown exactly the same photo to a group of sixth-form students the week before . And none of them knew what it was. Records some of them recognise because they're cool. But cassettes? No.
Even worse - last week I tried listening to one of my old mixtapes. And the tape was eroding. Same thing with my old Pulp album, and the No Doubt one. I have outlived my tapes! Squeamish Louise
5. Because my sister and I knew better than to ask our parents for Gameboys or other expensive items that according to various I Y the 90s shows defined our youth, I can often be blissfully unaware that perhaps I belong to a by-gone age. I still get asked for ID (though this is fast becoming a rare occurrence) and I still wear fashionable (and brief) clothing, but it is clothing that can make me question where I am on the ageing spectrum. Now the 90s is being 'revived' (with huge difficulty because in the 90s the 70s were revived) I am feeling confused. The 90s look that is currently in fashion is a look I was too young to partake in but I do recall. Does that mean I shouldn't wear it, or that I can wear it and add tweaks of marvellous accuracy? Can someone with what I now know to be a Lion's wrinkle wear a re-issue Nirvana T-shirt? Looking over that phrase 'fashionable clothing' makes me want to smother myself in anti-ageing cream and familiarise myself with what's in the charts. Or instruct those whippersnappers to come up with some ideas of their own and quit plundering my childhood! Squeamish Kate
2. Lots and lots of things make me feel old these days. The most recent thing was discovering that Tellytubbies is 15 years old and the baby in the sun from it now looks like this. Gareth
3. I was at work, not doing any work and gabbing about clothes and what we thought of the new Batman film, then we got onto favourite foods, which led to IKEA meatballs, which led to the crushing realisation I was old and this was the future and somehow I remember things from a by-gone era. This happened because we jumped from IKEA foods to IKEA household items you can get out the shop in a bag. My co-worker had bought a novelty frame, it was a giant version of...the 22year old struggled, what was that word? What was it called? she explained: “You know how cameras used to open up and you'd put that stuff in it?” Horrified, I explained, “FILM! YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT FILM AND THE NEGATIVES!” she replied: “Yeah, the giant photo frame was like a wavy bit of film with negatives on it.” My colleague spoke like she had genuinely had never seen or used these things in her life. Which she hadn't. There is only so much obsolete technology you can recall first-hand before you feel ancient. Squeamish Nicola
4. It feels like things are constantly making me feel old at the moment. And considering I have yet to turn 30 I do wonder what that says about the emphasis our society puts on youth, and why we think that younger means better. But that doesn't stop me wincing slightly when I realise that despite feeling like I'm 10 years younger than I am, quite a lot has actually happened in that time. It would be stranger if I WAS the same, but still: seeing outfits similar to those I used to wear in my teens on younger people and realising the time has well and truly passed for me to get away with them; overhearing a conversation between 20-year olds on the bus - these things make me cringe at the same time as they make me slightly sad and nostalgic. But it was at a talk I attended last year that I realised quite how much the world has changed, and how odd some of the things I remember are going to sound to later generations. I don't just mean things like having to arrange to meet someone at a certain time and then show up then instead of being able to text them 5 minutes before you arranged to say you're running late. No, last year I went to a talk at the Video Game Archive. It was really interesting, and lots of fun to watch old games. But then. Then. They showed a picture of a cassette cartridge. And told us all they had shown exactly the same photo to a group of sixth-form students the week before . And none of them knew what it was. Records some of them recognise because they're cool. But cassettes? No.
Even worse - last week I tried listening to one of my old mixtapes. And the tape was eroding. Same thing with my old Pulp album, and the No Doubt one. I have outlived my tapes! Squeamish Louise
5. Because my sister and I knew better than to ask our parents for Gameboys or other expensive items that according to various I Y the 90s shows defined our youth, I can often be blissfully unaware that perhaps I belong to a by-gone age. I still get asked for ID (though this is fast becoming a rare occurrence) and I still wear fashionable (and brief) clothing, but it is clothing that can make me question where I am on the ageing spectrum. Now the 90s is being 'revived' (with huge difficulty because in the 90s the 70s were revived) I am feeling confused. The 90s look that is currently in fashion is a look I was too young to partake in but I do recall. Does that mean I shouldn't wear it, or that I can wear it and add tweaks of marvellous accuracy? Can someone with what I now know to be a Lion's wrinkle wear a re-issue Nirvana T-shirt? Looking over that phrase 'fashionable clothing' makes me want to smother myself in anti-ageing cream and familiarise myself with what's in the charts. Or instruct those whippersnappers to come up with some ideas of their own and quit plundering my childhood! Squeamish Kate
RSS Feed