You’re Cute Jeans

To this day, I still have the same car I had in high school. It’s a light green car with light green rims on the wheels, a flower-adorned steering wheel, and a green flower pillow in the back.

I don’t know if it was because of the overall aesthetic of the car or because I was just very enthused about 70s fashion, but knowing that I would be driving my car made me want to dress up actively—for the part, as someone worthy or as someone who looks like they would drive that type of car. 

Knowing I would be driving the car venerated me to wear my bell bottoms and made my shag haircut fit right in.

Turning on the radio in my lived-in Beetle car, I found I was most drawn to the stations that played older music. Constantly jamming to 70s, 80s, and 90s songs, I found it perfect for my driving mood every time I got into my car. 

I would lower the windows and let my hair flow with the wind. I would sing and thrum my fingers on the steering wheel. Completely at peace, I would ease myself into the 70s, feeling transported—even if just for a few minutes—to another decade.

Driving my car, I suddenly felt cool and more comfortable in my skin. Wearing a confident face and singing to The Spot, an old-school Beats radio station, I felt I could be my true self.

Multiple phases and obsessions marked my high school years. However, my obsession with the 70s is the one that stands out the most in my mind.

Flare jeans, colorful pops of color, funk, statement earrings, disco, 70s hairstyles, glitzy and bold makeup, bubblegum, off-shoulder tops, ostentatious patterns, accentuated shoulders, and everything in between.

Episodes of That 70s Show were frequently watched in my house, and I enjoyed jamming out to the music, mostly the Bee Gees and Fleetwood Mac, in my Volkswagen Beetle. I sang while wearing multicolored shades and saw the world through vintage-filtered glasses. 

Back to the future: women were still finding themselves in the 70s, and women are still finding themselves now. 

While I have left that phase, I still see it show up from time to time, sprinkled into the way I dress day to day. The prevalent fashion from the 70s still shows up in modern-day fashion occasionally.

Dancing the night away, the 70s was all about flashing lights and flashing colors. The 70s were all about statements. Making a statement while wearing statement pieces. Wearing denim on denim and making it popular, just a few years after, it had become a social norm to wear jeans instead of only allowing women to wear skirts. 

The women from the 70s were experiencing a myriad of emotions from finding their own identity, getting access to birth control pills, and sparking feminism. 

Shedding the skirts and the identity chained to them, rebelling against the oppression from the past, they decided that they would hand it to the past by popularizing denim on denim. Turning up with this ensemble was like wearing a statement piece and making a statement—against the confines of what society wanted girls to act and look like and instead painting a more rebelling picture. 

While the oppression that women in the 1970s were breaking free of is something of the past, we can’t help but reflect on today’s society and the difference in what women can do that they weren’t able to in the past.

Women in today’s society are able to do many things that they were barred from in the past, and yet women are still feeling oppressed in different ways so while we may have left that time period, women have yet to leave the feelings that the time had.

While able to accomplish more than they could have in the past, women are still facing similar feelings of backlash, constant criticism, body negativity, feelings of insufficiency, hard-to-reach expectations, and overall the feelings that come with not being treated fairly in the sense that men aren’t put on the same crystal glass view pedestal.

Trends constantly resurface, and a correlation between fashion trends and society's state is not far off. Fashion is a place where people can express their emotions and state of mind.

We have long since left the passion of disco behind, but 70s fashion trends still show up in fashion from time to time. Flare and bootcut jeans are becoming increasingly popular, my personal staple, and we have lively colors and patterns constantly being played with in our outfits. 

Big eyeshadows, and big hair, and Sabrina Carpenter’s Nonsense. The resurfacing of these trends comes with the empowerment of feeling in control and of being in control of the room. Standing out from the rest, it conveys confidence, and like a mirrorball, it immediately garners attention. Catching the reflections from those around them. 

The 1970s saw women's liberation in both mind and body, something reflected in Sabrina’s hair, makeup, and lyrics. Unafraid of ‘innuending,’ this is what the liberation of women in the 1970s alluded to. They felt more confident in themselves and, in turn, in their own bodies.