The Face of Pop In The 80's

I sit here and think back to my childhood, I was twelve and my brother was a year younger. The year was 1996, my brother and I were out of school for the summer, and were making one of our weekly quest to the Dollar General on the other side of Friarsgate, the small neighborhood we lived in. We went to buy candy and snacks with whatever money we could produce through the week, (picking change from the couch or doing random task for the neighbors around us), for the Saturday afternoon movie marathon that played on Fox. Our father did not believe in an allowance, forcing us to earn for ourselves, however with four children and little income this was understandable. The trips were always an adventure to us, making our way to the neighborhood tennis courts, then using a path behind it to get onto the railroad tracks that ran through the neighborhood and led us the rest of the way to shopping center where our destination was.

After picking out our snacks, carefully adding up the prices as we went to ensure we had a little money left over, we made our way to the front of the store. While in line we would look over the comic books that were displayed near the registers next to the sunglasses rack. I had given up on finding anything of interest amongst the comics and as I turned back towards the register, I saw them. A remnant of the decade before, spawned from the times of hippies and disco. They seemed to stare back at me from the sunglasses rack, and I knew I had to have them. The coolest, funkiest sunglasses I had ever seen outside of the occasional music video we would see when our parents were not home, and we had full access to the family TV.

After some slight convincing and a little minor arguing, I was able to talk my brother into letting me use four dollars of our money to buy them, promising to let him wear them whenever he wanted. From that day forward I checked the rack on every visit searching for other pairs I liked, occasionally getting lucky and finding a new pair every so often, until my mid-teens when I stopped finding them in stores, with the exception of costume shops. And for those who are not sure of the style I am speaking of, I do not mean the mutated aviator styles seen on some celebrities through the 80's, but the outlandishly designed frames that made you look like you were from the future, that were made popular by the 80's pop music industry. They had evolved from the artistic frames of the 60's and the oversized frames of the 70's, but the trend was killed off in the 90's by the classic aviator styles, Ray-Bans, and other basic smaller framed designs.

I was never able to wear them, except for in the privacy of my bedroom, or the trusted judgment free company of my closest friends. I could not wear them around my house out of fear of my father, he would either be distrustful of how I got money for them and hit me. I never had the confidence to wear them out in public, I had been bullied enough throughout school to give anyone further reason to insult me. Even through my goth phase I could never bring myself to wear them outside the few comfort zones I had, despite some of the more ridiculous outfits I had put together in those days. It was not until my late teens, after my father moved away, that I began feeling truly comfortable dressing however I wanted to, but by then the trend was dead. Every so often I would buy a cheap pair of women's designer frames, the oversized oval shaped ones that always have reminded me of an owl's eyes, but rarely did I ever really wear them anywhere.

Now in 2021 there is renewed hope for the trend, and again it is the pop industry that has sparked interest in the fashion. They have not grown to the funky shaped frames of the 80's yet, however those can be seen frequently at 80's themed parties across the country, but there is a growing hope in my heart that the trend will return. I have already seen manufactures mass producing them across the globe for sale on various websites across the net. I truly would love to see the fashion become a massive thing again, even though I doubt I have the confidence to wear them out in public still, most likely ending up in my pocket within minutes of being around other people despite how much I tell myself I do not care what others think. I could easily see myself hiding away at home, wearing them with none, other than my dogs to judge me, or out with the few close friends I have. Only time will tell if they ever make a full return, it will certainly be some evolved form of the originals I am sure, but I have my fingers crossed.