I Blame the Nineties

I have a soft spot for the BBC News website feature ‘Have Your Say’ – I love it! However I have noticed that the responses to the various topics discussed involve both rational and idiotic ‘Have Your Sayers’ turning to the Blame Culture. Blame the parents, blame the fat gene, blame rap music – blaming everything and everyone seems to be the current trend in the ‘Have Your Say’ community. What’s more, forget ASBOs, this act of ‘blaming’ can earn you the ‘Basher’ title, such as ‘fat basher’. Well…

Whilst at home I did some sorting out, my first move of which was to climb into my old CD collection and see if there was anything worth salvaging. Underneath the ‘angry teenager’ music, demos of local bands I once lived to support and dodgy compilations from ex romantic liaisons, I struck gold. Smash Hits 1999, Hits 97, Aqua, The Vengaboys, The Spice Girls!

Feeling nostalgic, I immediately set forth to track skip through this Nineties treasure and hear once again the music I’d graced my ears with prior to the millennium (where I became a teenager, knew everything, realized my music collection was shit and disowned it).

But good Lord; the lyrics we listened to! No wonder our generation is apparently all sex and babies, drinks and drugs, disrespectful and delinquent. Its little surprise that stereotypically we know our rights yet can’t set the washing machine off. I mean, what kind of a woman did The Mother expect her blond haired blue eyed ten year old to grow into, mindlessly humming along to ‘I’m horny, horny horny horny. I’m so horny, horny horny’, whilst doing homework?

This got me thinking. Surely the kids who sang the rap to the ‘Fresh Prince of Bel Air’, religiously danced the Macarena and worshipped all things Spice were subconsciously being shaped into the tribe of party animals we supposedly are, whose only culture is a drinking one? With this in mind I realized there must be other aspects of the 90s that we can blame our generations flaws on (the easily influenced, badly spoken, image obsessed, attitude ridden, lazy consumer driven lot we are), because heaven forbid, in this day and age, we can’t take responsibility for them ourselves.

Realistically, what was to become of a generation who learned from the Chuckle Brothers and Noel Edmunds? Whose idols were Power Rangers and Gladiators and whose dream homes were either the Funhouse or the Crystal Maze. Children who believed ‘I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?’ or ‘talk to the hand coz the face ain’t listening!’ were the answer to all insults, finished every sentence with ‘not’ and yelled ‘LEG IT!’ when running, were never going to be the most intellectual, well spoken, grammatically correct members of society now, were they?

I know I am not alone when looking at old photos and feel the need to shriek ‘you let me go outside dressed like THAT?’ at The Mother. Who can forget the fashions of the Nineties? Huge fringes, curtains, shag bands, stick on earrings and hair mascara. Adidas trousers and trainers with flashing lights, jelly shoes and lets not forget headbands with our names on (in glitter). Girl power indeed! No wonder we all have complexes about what we look like.

Further, what with Beanie Babies,== the divine Nokia 3310, trolls, gel pens, BN biscuits and technology such as the ‘Furby’ on the market, what did people expect would become of our materialistic habits later on in life? With knowledge of the Live&Kicking number still engrained on our brains…0181 811 8181, where is there room for a ‘proper education’. (But who needed an education with South Park and Friends?)

Our our generation was the little darlings that mothered Tamagotchis, abused Yoyos and would have sold a kidney on the black market for a rare Pokemon card or Pog. Our little fads were everything to us, yet they were banned from our schools and playgrounds. For that, we are justified to never be polite to a member of staff again. In fact, why not just stab each other and set things on fire?

Remember we had these gooey aliens that lived in a plastic ‘pod’? We thought that if we stuck two together they would have a baby? We were lied to en masse! And did Mr. Starburst stop and think about what changing the name of Opal Fruits would do our mental health? That’s it, let’s put hoodies on and raid the local supermarket to ease the emotional scars.

If we don’t want to help around the house, be careful with money or respect our elders, we have every right to blame the trauma we suffered when Robbie left Take That. If we want to sleep around, catch diseases, have babies or scrounge off the state, it’s because we miss the original Noddy, Fireman Sam and Postman Pat.

So, I blame being a child of the Nineties for all the not-quite-perfect aspects of my personality. And I blame my parents for the reason I am a child of the Nineties. And I blame the media and the government for the reason the Nineties was how it was. Which makes me totally innocent.

Not.