Proof that our parents used up all the cool and left us with none.
If you’ve ever looked through your parents’ vintage photos from when they were younger, you might have stumbled across some jarring images — proof that, in a different decade, some of them were kind of… hip, perhaps even edgy or downright cool.
Nowadays, so many of us covet all things vintage. We wish we could live in the 1980s punk scene or the 1970s disco era or the free love 1960s. And, for many of us, these are precisely the decades in which our parents got to be young and hip.
While our parents didn’t have the internet back then, they did have cameras — and the fashion sense and attitude to look good in front of the lens. Of course, what our parents also didn’t have was smartphones, cyberbullying, and YouTube celebrities; our parents lived their lives in the real world and in the moment and were all the cooler for it.
That’s not to say that any generation, even theirs, is without worry and woe. But the pressures then weren’t quite the same — your parents only had to keep up with the Joneses, not the Kardashians.
Without Facebook and Netflix, our parent’s generation had time to learn to ride unicycles and go to mermaid tryouts at Disneyland. They grew epic beards and wore stylishly chic outfits without an Instagram profile to show it off. They lived for their friends and their cars, and they swore to never, ever be as un-cool as their parents.
Even if your parents weren’t as “hip” as those pictured in the vintage photos from the 1960s-1980s above, they probably didn’t even care. And that right there puts them in the upper echelon of cool.
1960s Chillin’ with the Chianti
The Early 80s were all about jogging shorts and feathered hair.
1973 Flower power and free enterprise
Late 60s classic look on a motorbike
1980s Skateboarding
1970s Style never dies
1980s Awesome boombox style
1960s Epic fashion
1980s Badass
1970s but looks like it could be today
1960s Love with style
1960s Mermaid show? Cool!
1980s Awesomeness
1970s El Camino hang out
1970s Computer cool
1980s Punk era
1970s Corduroy casual
1960s Sunbathing like a boss
1980s Big Hair style
1960s Civil Rights Movement
1960s Hippie Vibe
1960s Fashion and music
1980s when you had to carry your music
1970s Expression
With some of these photos, it can be hard to tell what era they are from. It seems time, like all things, goes in circles.
