You kids these days.
You high school-age kids whose blogs I read or see in Teen Vogue bemoaning how great the nineties must have been, all awash in flannel, Calvin Klein minimalism, and Bikini Kill demo tapes. We were reading Sassy. We were up to our ears in Clintons. We were wearing Dr. Martens. Or, as my mother called them at the time, 'mailman shoes.'
It all may seem so idyllic for those who weren't around the first time. Here's a true story that I've never told until now.
In 1992 I began seventh grade. I came from an elementary school where I was a star student, athlete, artist, and also held the enviable position of being popular. It would be one of the last times my hand would ever contain the popularity card. Like I said, seventh grade began at a new junior high, a school so immense that there were four different lunch periods to feed the 1,700 tweens* that pushed and shoved their way through its halls each and every day. And in these halls and classrooms, I was suddenly, inexplicably, an absolute Nobody.
The only real perk of being a Nobody is that I grew to keenly observe my peers, and how everyone divided themselves up accordingly. Groups dressed a certain way to signify a particular tribe they belonged to. Or wanted to belong to. At my school soccer players were the star athletes and therefore infinitely popular. They constantly wore soccer-related paraphernalia to signify their status. Hippies wore Teva sandals, girls dabbling in Wicca wore black velvet mary janes.
A seventh grader who wore shoes that crossed the one hundred dollar threshold (this is in 1992 dollars) was something that made most twelve year-olds (including me) take notice. It was like breaking the sound barrier. Reebok Pumps and Birkenstocks did the job, but all of a sudden there was a new town doctor: Dr. Marten.
At this point it should of course be noted that I write this from an afghan-covered rocking chair whilst intermittently waving my cane. I am Old, and with this coming birthday in a couple weeks, will officially feel so very much older.
There was something about the Dr. Martens shoes that appealed to me. And let me go on the record by saying that it wasn't their connection with the burgeoning grunge/riot grrrl music genre. At the time I didn't care for that kind of music at all; I preferred En Vogue, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson and new jack swing. The best selling album of 1992 was not Nevermind, but the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, and I was more than okay with that.
Dr. Martens were on my radar, on my brain, but unfortunately not on my feet. I liked the way they looked, and although I would never admit it at the time, I had a glimmer of hope that sporting these boots would somehow help me reclaim the popularity that was lost on me as soon as I stepped over the junior high threshold. But my mother took one look at the boots and said, 'That looks like something the mailman wears.' She then immediately took to calling them 'mailman shoes.' Needless to say, my junior high self never got a pair. And I was miffed. It wasn't fair. All the potential in the world, all the possibility of being both stylish and well-liked, was lost.
Later in the year, our family was visiting some relatives in another part of the country. I should note that these relatives lived in a pretty posh neighborhood, and one day I accompanied my aunt on a trip to the equally posh boutique style grocery store. That afternoon, standing next to a display of Kudos bars, I saw a boy about my age. He didn't see me at all, but I have not forgotten him. I took one look, one head to toe analysis of this stranger, and made a huge judgement. This was a boy in double bridge prescription glasses, who, if he went to my school, would be the last to be picked to play on sports teams, who would be the last to finish the mile run for the Presidential Fitness Challenge, who would suffer cruel taunts about the shape of his body. This boy was pale, with a wavy dollop of brown hair atop his round head. He wore an Air Jordan t-shirt, matching shorts and matching Nike knee socks, and on his feet were a brand new pair of cranberry red Dr. Martens boots. They practically shone under the fluorescent grocery store lights, with nary a crease on the toes.
I balked at this sight. It didn't make sense. Super deluxe exercise clothing paired with sixteen eyelet boots that laced up to just below his knees. I felt a combination of jealousy and pity. Jealousy at the fact that this kid was outfitted in hundreds of dollars worth of apparel and I was not, and pity because I could see exactly what it was he was trying to do. Because really, he and I were not that different. We were trying to buy our way to coolness and acceptance, and we were both failing miserably. I learned that day that you can't buy cool. You can buy a box of Kudos bars maybe, but that's where it ends. And that's where my huge crush on Dr. Martens was buried for the rest of the decade. Any latent palpitations over them were squelched with memories of wanting to belong, wanting to mesh with a crowd, but just not being able to.
My point earlier about the nineties is that they really weren't that great. More and more often I see nostalgia for this decade with a perspective that is gradually narrowing. Just like I grew up thinking that the 1950s = poodle skirts (until I wised up) a ten year span of time can't be encapsulated via a handful of albums or a single pair of boots.
This week a brand new Dr. Martens store opened up in my town. These shoes no longer give me a feeling of social squeamishness. At this point, I feel that they belong to everyone and are leveling in their ubiquity. For me, the notion of being part of a certain tribe (or aspiring to be) by donning these shoes no longer applies. I'm free, and so are you. Even though, you know, we've been that way all along.
* This was also so long ago - verifying my status as Old even more - that the word 'tween' in fact did not yet exist.
