The 80s!

Haven’t you ever stopped for a moment to think about what would your life have been like if you had lived your youth in a different decade? Which decade can you best picture yourself in? How different would that be from the way you currently lead your life? Well, all these questions quite often flood my mind and, after doing a lot of thinking, I came with the following answers.

If I had the chance to choose when I would have liked to live my youth, I would most definitely have chosen the 80s, mainly because of the many positive changes society experienced: the 80s was a vibrant ecclectic period, which became the age of rebelliousness against the established mandates of society; it developed as a time of self-indulgence; and it represented the beginning of the computing era. All these changes were so pervasive that they featured in many aspects of life such as fashion, shared beliefs, entertainment and music. The implications these changes had on such aspects are what I find particularly beckoning about this decade.

As regards people’s unwillingness to conform to the conventions of the time, this idea was mainly reflected in connection to the outrageous fashion that characterised the 80s, a trend where excesses were the rule and not the exception. People didn’t accessorize – they “excessorized”, and I’m really keen on this trend, due to the fact that people did so in order to express their creativity and individuality- something we lack nowadays. Indeed, people were not fashion victims, they were just themselves!

On the other hand, self- indulgence was linked to open-mindedness in terms of sex and travelling. People no longer regarded sexual intercourse as a taboo subject matter to be dealt with delicacy, during the 80s ,sex was openly addressed in many songs . As the interest in getting to know other cultures grew increasingly, travelling around the world became much more common, this also featured in loads of songs as a recurrent theme. As the straightfoward and outgoing person I myself believe to be, I reckon this two changes are more than attractive to, again, lead me to choose this decade as the most suitable for me to live in.

Finally, thanks to the technological advancements related to the computing field, new forms of entertainment were created, such as video games! This rise of technology was also significant in the field of music, since MTV and other music channels came into existence, giving birth to another form of entertainment – what on earth could be better than inviting your mates round to have a coke while having pacman competitions and then watching your favourite videos and singing them along?

There’s nowhere near a decade that’s packed with style, a chilled out atmosphere and fun, all in one! Though nowadays youngsters are by no means restricted in terms of what society dictates, even if they are totally free to talk whatever they wish, with no regard whatsoever for the place and the people they are talking to, and even if they have access to a wider variety of entertainment, I would always still prefer to have lived my youth during the 80s!