Don’t!

If ever you get the urge to participate in a 2000’s theme party, replete with faux-platinum grillz; if you want to “dip it low” and “get your eagle on”; if you want to lose yourself in the music, the moment, but you don’t know the names of the artists or the songs, don’t!

The year 2020 was a lot of things, most of them not so great, and the desperate way people of all ages clung to nostalgic visions of the past was no exception. Now, as past generations have also wanted to display an ironic sense of embracing times gone by, the year seemed to be overrun with looking back at previous years.

Party in a pandemic

Like little hipsters with their sarcastic grins, when schools closed down and canceled parties, proms and graduations, the students stopped for a moment, looked at each other and said, “2000’s Party!” Wherever a prom or college gathering was canceled at the school, private proms and university student parties arose in backyards and driveways to valiantly buck the trend.

Masked and sanitized, thanks to the ubiquitous sanitation stations around every corner, and dancing the approved six feet apart, these intrepid partiers headed out onto the dance floor wearing gaudy costume jewelry, and Girbaud or Apple Bottom jeans (with extra padding on the backside for the ladies). They bounced and swayed to the music, hardly noticing the embarrassing multi-colored high tops, and awful Ed Hardy shirts. Their tall-tees hovered around their knees and their fitted caps perched backwards just above their sunglasses with white writing.

The clothes and the sounds

The laser-lights and smoke machines obscured some of the cringe-worthy throwback jerseys, and stiff, striped button-down shirts, while pre-teens to twenty-somethings basked in the glow of rear view mirror idealism.

If ever there were a time to travel backwards in thought to the Clinton-Bush-Obama eras, 2020 would have been it. Though considered by TIME magazine as “The Decade from Hell” the alternative, contemplating deaths due to wildfires, COVID-19, violent riots, and giant Asian hornets, would drive most people to want to pretend they were living in a time less traumatic, more “ordinary” by comparison. The 2000’s seemed to spread the horrors out as opposed to concentrating them in to one precarious year.

But there’s a difference between understanding why they’d want to do it, and thinking it’s a good idea. I do, and I don’t. This obsession with all things “retro” needs to stop. We have to get real. I may be showing my age with this 90’s lingo, but all kidding aside, these same young people must look ahead and leave the 2000’s parties in 2020. On the threshold of a new decade, we should walk proudly into the sun of a new view of living.

A sense of being the individual

I can state that the youth, when given the chance to try to have a good time, acted like bears grabbing at a honeycomb. They sought the sweetness of a time soured by national terrorist attacks, two vicious wars, a dismal display following a national disaster in America, and an economic meltdown. But the music and the fashion trends continued through all of these catastrophes. They figured if people got through those kinds of calamities and still made wonderful melodies and donned flamboyant attire to make themselves have a sense of individualism, then they should recognize that.

They wished to take a moment in a broken epoch, all they wanted was a party and the ability to live their lives amongst death and destruction. Those who survived those years emerged from them with a more robust sense of life.

Do away with it all

But for me, I would like to see an end to the whole thing. I will allow the young people to do their virtual returns to the 2000’s. The music and fashion should stay in its place as the province for historians and documentarians and feature filmmakers. For such a year wrought with fright and fear and frustration as 2020 was, the youth just needed a release and relief. They looked behind them and saw a shiny, long platinum chain and some Ugg boots and felt the need to celebrate.

The bright side of 2020

I am an objective hater so I will say that the positive actions like Elon Musk sending the first manned SpaceX mission to the International Space Station enlivened a spirit of rational hope and life last year. Such occurrences sadly became overshadowed. So for young people to hunger for more relarively halcyon days, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Now, as we walk forward into the future, if you must view the trend of watching, listening to, and wearing 2000’s era music without at least wanting to know how the trends originated, don’t!