Punk To Miami Vice Chic And All Between In The 80s

With excitement and apprehension I am writing about the 80s. I have been accused by friends of living in the 80s, but would have to disagree. Sure, I liked the cheesy music and movies of the time, but you wouldn't catch me dead dressed up that way.

The 80s fad trend was geared towards the emerging new face of the American family. Reagan was in office for 2 terms followed by his VP, Bush. People were either wealthy or struggling to maintain.

August 1, 1981 was the beginning to set the stage of the 1980s. MTV opened its broadcast with the first music video aired on a nationally available station - "Video Killed A Radio Star". Music video was purposely aimed to be visually attractive to a young audience which meant more focus would eventually be spent on the look instead of the quality of the music itself. Talented artists without the look for video tended to fade in the background as that first song predicted.

In the 90s, it was the Macarena that everyone heard to death. The 80s had Michael Jackson and his Thriller album where I believe every song on it went to the top charts. It's not so much that it was a bad album (or the later overplayed Bad album) but stations played it so much we tended to get sick of it. Ditto that with anything by Duran Duran or Wham!, and songs such as Come On Eileen, Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, and Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

Going in the back of my mind I remember how kids at school had a fashion trend in the imitation of anyone seen on MTV. People were going around as look alikes. Some of the famous who were rewarded with this flattery were Joan Jett, Boy George, George Michael, Duran Duran, Annie Lennox, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Olivia Newton John (the Let's Get Physical look), Gloria Estefan, and Milli Vanilli. Or the television stars from Miami Vice.

If you were hanging on the coattails of the punk rock scene which hit its height in the late 70s, you may have been in with a crowd of people with mohawks which were sometimes painted in bright colors. You may have been among the crowd who would pierce themselves with safety pins or wear them as earrings.

And speaking of earrings, do you remember the fad to try to fit as many of them on one ear as possible? I managed to get 8 on both of my ears, but due to the itch factor I let all but 2 close up within a week. How many of you out there are willing to admit to that embarrassing trend?

The drug choice of the 80s was cocaine. It was glamorized during the 70s disco scene and carried over into the professional 80s world. If you were rich, it was coke. The freebasing habit became one that would be even more dangerous, it developed into crack which was more addictive and lethal than pure cocaine. Why on earth do people insist on taking a drug that makes your whole body feel the same way when you visit a dentist doing surgery on your mouth?

Other crossovers from the 70s became big in the 80s. The Rubik's Cube was still hot in the early 80s until people realized it could be solved by either method 1 - peeling off the labels and sticking them in the right place, or method 2 - taking it apart with a flathead screwdriver and putting it back in the right place, or method 3 - buying the book which confused people who tried method one or two.

Ninetendo lead the world of video games by tweaking the prehistoric looking video games with colorful characters that had a more 2D look with a lot more possibilities and hidden jewels to find which were not obvious to the casual player. The Mario Brothers were the top games of the decade which helped expand the field for other games in teh Ninetendo line and spark ideas from a competitor, Sega.

A retro fad from the 60s came back in the form of the New Age Movement. People were buying crystals, looking for a spirit guide by channeling and basically looking for a harmonic convergence.

For the kids and kids at heart, they had the Smurfs, Teenage Mutant Turtles and the Cabbage Patch Kids. If you were cynical, you collected the Garbage Patch Kids.

Please note you people who make movies of a certain time piece. Not everyone of this decade had to incorporate every cliche of the era. Some of us did in fact just simply wear jeans and a t-shirt or a simple dress. I think I will cringe if I see another movie about the 80s were everyone is dressed too 80s. It just didn't happen that way.