Scrunchies and Mom Jeans

From November 2019 Greenbriar Flyer

Several months ago my daughter expressed interest in a scrunchie. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically an elastic band encased in loose cloth that sort of scrunches around the band. It’s intended  to hold hair in a ponytail.

When I was finished snickering, I said, “I just threw a bunch away a couple years ago.”

“Why?”

“They were dry-rotted, for one, and I haven’t worn a scrunchie since the nineteen nineties.”

She made an ick face. “Dry rotted? Ew.”

“Better than the regular, smelly kind of rot.”

“Momma.” She said in the same tone she uses when I burp aloud.  Like nobody else burps.

Anyhoo, I bought her a scrunchie and  I snickered the whole time. She used it just a few times, wearing it on her wrist (the other favored place to them), in her hair, and once on the dog’s leg.

Then I started hearing talk of VSCO Girls.

“What the heck is a disco girl?” I asked her.

She rolled her eyes. “No, momma, VIS-co.”

“Ah. Ooooooookay.” I nodded in faux understanding. “What is a VIS-co girl?”

“Someone who wears scrunchies and big shirts with little Nike shorts and Birkenstocks and a puka shell necklace. Oh, and they have Hydro Flasks. And Airpods.”

I went over the list in my head. Scrunchies = 90s. Big shirts = 90s Birks = 90s. Puka shell necklace = timeless. Hydro Flasks and Airpods…well you gotta have something new mixed in there.  And Birks are timeless, but they were super popular in the 90s.

What’s more, according to local teens and the internet, VSCO Girls make some kind of noise similar to the one I do  when I’m telling the dog to stop. smelling. every. blade. of. grass.  It goes like this: Ssk-ssk-ssk. Not like when you’re telling a dog to sic something (side note! It cracks me up that most every dog understands “SIC ‘Em! Sic-sic-sic!” and starts looking for prey).  I’m not exactly sure what to make of that noise, but a friend told me it’s based on a photo/photo editing app called VSCO and that was the noise it made when it took a picture.

“It’s expensive to be a VSCO Girl,” my daughter said, nodding sagely.

“Fascinating. Do you want more scrunchies?”

“NO!” She said before she vanished into her teen-girl cave where she proceeded to play Twenty-One Pilots and My Chemical Romance songs on her ukulele. Not a VSCO Girl, I suspect.

One morning while dropping off my daughter at the corner for school, I noticed her jeans were pegged. I smiled. “Hey, we used to peg our jeans in the eighties. Fold and roll.”

She tilted her head. “You mean cuffed?”

“Meh. Pegged. Fold and roll.”

She smiled at me and then strode away in her Vans (80s & 90s) and overalls (90s), ear buds tucked into her ears, a breeze blowing through her blue-green hair.

While perusing Instagram I spotted an alarming post. A teen wearing MOM JEANS, aka high-waist jeans. “Ew.” I said. “Those don’ t look good on anyone.” Well, maybe there are five people in the world who look cute in them; that, or my eyes have become used to the awkwardness again. Who knows. I used to wear those jeans, too. It was the style. But once my sister introduced me to Levis 501s—the waist falls just below the bellybutton, that was all I wore for years. Pegged, not pegged, cut off, old, new, blue, black, tan, tie-dyed. I wear other brands of jeans now—501s are not cute on my middle-age figure—but the waist is forbidden to rise above my belly button.

When I was in high school, my aunt gave me her blue suede poncho (fringed!). That, along with my tie dye t-shirt, John Lennon sunglasses, love beads, and peace signs, completed my look in those days, which of course was old (60s) made new again (fold and roll!).

 

She added some artwork to the back.