The Spread

By Brittney Nadler 

Coming to college and enjoying the new freedoms of life was not a huge change for me. Growing up, my mom gave my sisters and I a lot of room and independence.

There were many days where we took it upon ourselves to get dressed, a challenge we accomplished by mixing purple pants with an orange shirt, throwing our hair up in Christmas bowties and finishing it all off with cowboy boots and gaudy, old lady jewelry.

That was the life.

But, you see, on the mornings when my mom was not up to the task of dealing with our dress up games, she used to dress us in something that made me want to either rip the clothes off my body or hide in the toy chest so as to save the eyes of everyone who was about to witness….ugly kid leggings.

The particular pair that made me cringe were purple and had tiny white flowers on them. “Why don’t they give my legs room and flow like jeans?” 6-year-old me wondered in pain.

What ever happened to kids clothes that actually looked like, well, kids clothes? It’s slightly awkward when us young adults pass the childrens department of stores and secretly wish an outfit made for five year olds was blown up four times and sold for us.

What happened to the cat shirts, the overalls, the velvet holiday dresses and those godforsaken leggings?

Girls, you know the ones I’m talking about – they weren’t like today’s leggings. They were not a fashion statement. They did not come in plain black and did not accentuate our frumpy butts and tiny legs.

No, these leggings were often an odd shade of a color that was not meant to be put on pants (because this was during a time that pants only included blue jeans, corduroys, dress up and these damned leggings) and they typically had a design. Flowers, animals, nature, you get the gist.

I’m sure there’s a fashion icon for boys that still makes them want to hurl when flipping through the good ol’ family photo album and asking, “Mom, why did you let me go out like this?” on every page.

It is definitely a phase we young adults were the last to go through as children because since our time, the fashion industry has taken an entirely new direction and you no longer see the kids clothes you had to put up with (even though we all really did love our cat shirts and corduroy pants).

And besides, nowadays buying neon green leggings with moose and pizzas on them is actually pretty awesome. So in celebration of TBT, put on the artsy clothes of today, relish in your youth and be thankful this whole fashion thing came full circle.