comment| pi magazine 713
Pi Debates: A
s I strolled out of the cinema, having just watched Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, all I could think of was how awesome it would have been to be born in a previous decade. Had I been born in the 1920s, I could have sat down and chatted with Salvador Dali or Ernest Hemingway. Still filled with nostalgia, I suddenly came to a realisation: the 1990s were actually the best decade to be born in.
Were the 90s the best decade to be born in?
up waiting for a response on WhatsApp, or taking ridiculous selfies you will regret ever posting on Facebook. You are, however, still young enough to sigh and roll your eyes at lame people older than you who aren’t up to date on the latest parody accounts on Twitter and Tumblr.
It’s the perfect balance.
It’s that perfect combination, where you are able to judge the maximum amount of people.
You’re still old enough to lecture people born in the 2000s on the days before social media, when your time wasn’t taken
The music and fashion of the 1990s was so great that they have already come back in style.
For
Think of the girl power of the Spice Girls, or the twin pinnacles of boy band perfection, ‘N Sync and the Backstreet Boys. While we couldn’t record our hardcore fangirling on social media back then, the passion was certainly there. And need I remind you of the decade’s fashion icons? Remember the characters in Clueless, whose outfits are now being dug up and resold in Topshop? What would Cher say if you told her you didn’t want to be born in the 1990s?
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En a t t e l ico
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just don’t get hype surrounding the 1990s. How can our generation have nostalgia for a time that most of us don’t really remember? Of course, bits of it were good. I like the Spice Girls as much as anyone. But there was a lot more going on, and I’m pretty sure we’ve deliberately forgotten the bad bits.
tire decade of designs.
There were, for example, a large number of fashion failures. I don’t think anyone looks back too warmly on Justin Timberlake’s spaghetti hair. The so-called “90s revival” is picking and choosing the things that actually looked good. It’s not too hard to come up with a good outfit or trend from an en-
Being born in the 1990s has given millennials a fair amount of problems. As a result of our birth years, we’re coming of age at a time when things are going completely downhill for young adults.
That’s not to say we don’t do this with other decades. As a pedantic history student, I’m aware we always remember selectively. But the exaggerated love for the 1990s is obscuring the fact that most of it was a bit rubbish.
t s n i Aga
£9,000 tuition fees or maintenance loans. We graduate in debt. Paid jobs for young people are scarce. We’ll probably never be able to afford a place of our own. I personally envy the baby boomers and their lifetimes filled with free education, stable jobs, and (trying not to get too political here) a healthcare system that hadn’t yet been slowly torn apart by austerity. We’re screwed, powerless, and skint. Seeing the Spice Girls in their heyday seems a poor consolation.
I don’t need to remind students of their
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