What’s Poppin’?
Words by Gaby Ayres
‘Tis no longer the days of magazines and traditional celebrities defining what is the moment. With the introduction of short-form content, more people are being exposed to trends and ideas are going global faster than ever.
The birthplace of modern trends, the internet, seems a fitting place to start. Two prolific creators include Prayag of Pookie Nation fame and Brittany Broski. The beginnings of Gen Alpha’s takeover also seem to be emerging with slang such as “skibbidi” and “fanum tax.” The wider popular culture sphere includes discussions around both “Hunger Games” and “FNAF.” Celebrities holding a prime spot in the limelight are Sabrina Carpenter, Noah Kahan and not surprisingly, Time magazine’s person of the year, Taylor Swift.
To be the most stylish, borrow clothes from your parents, with a remixed 2000s fashion returning. High rise jeans, while still very popular, are on their way out. The baggy jeans and chunky shoes remain victorious as a fashion mainstay of recent years. Uggs are a returning staple as well — this year in their mini form. Infamous items that can be seen around Blue Valley are water bottles such as the Stanley and Owala.
More serious topics aren’t impervious to trends either. A focus on soft skills, the incorporation of AI and hybrid-learning have all been popular topics in the education world.
Trends are ever-changing and if this list is incomplete or outdated by the time of publication, take time to reflect on how fleeting attention is captured and released.
Fitting In
Words by Amira Dvorak
From vinyl to Spotify, beehives to curtain bangs, pagers to smartphones, there’s always a new, shiny trend turning heads. They appear to be all-consuming in their heyday, and yet somehow fade out of prevalence relatively fast.
Art teacher Mark Mosier has roamed the halls of Blue Valley high for over 30 years, bearing witness to this phenomenon over time— he believes that trends are a key part of the human experience.
“Trends help people fit in,” Mosier said. “Everybody, to some extent, follows a trend.”
He argued that it’s not only natural but beneficial to follow trends — and not just for teenagers, but for people of all ages, in all kinds of social situations.
“Everybody wants to be a part of something bigger,” Mosier said. “[Trends] demonstrate what you are excited about whether you’re [following] a trend in clothing, a trend in technology or a Taylor Swiftie, people can identify with it — you make connections.”
However, Mosier does concede that there is a point at which following trends can become damaging.
“It’s easy to become just a part of a group rather than an individual who’s part of the group,” he said. “You can get so involved you lose yourself in order to try to fit in.”
Mosier stressed that it’s important to form your own identity separately from what may be trending in the here and now — after all, the odds are that it won’t be too long until the latest fad starts to fade out of limelight.
Many believe this pressure to conform causes one of the most alarming effects attributed to trends — the loss of confidence that comes from changing yourself to fit in.
“[When] peer pressure drives people to be more anxious or self-conscious, [trends] become a bigger issue,” senior Georgia Loveland said.
Loveland finds it interesting how trends can overhaul what’s considered acceptable in society. To call on a high-profile example, the famous war propaganda poster featuring “Rosie the Riveter” sparked a revolution of women wearing pants and other practical clothing in the 1940s. Even though the fad died out within a decade, it allowed women to make advancements in their role in society.
For a more recent, less dramatic example, Loveland mentioned socks and sandals.
“I don’t love the trend of slides or slippers with socks during the winter,” she said. “The people that feel OK to take their shoes off when they wear [that] weird me out.”
While trends hold a considerable amount of power, Loveland believes their most consistent aspect is how quickly and effectively they allow people to find new interests.
“[They] expose more people to more things — new clothing styles, new apps, new music,” she said.
The Impact of Overconsumption
Words by Emma McAtee
Many people have strong views about the overall effect of trends, junior Mary Putthoff has a separate opinion that varies from others.
“I don’t care if other people follow trends,” she said. “I just get a little annoyed sometimes when it’s over the top.”
Putthoff enjoys the uprising of the trend, jelly nails, but disagrees with many of the new movements.
“I hate slides — they’re shower shoes not for public use,” Putthoff said. “I hate when people wear them without socks, and with their toes over the slide — it’s disgusting.”
Putthoff feels that anywhere you go, everyone is affected and socially pressured by trends.
“The athletic trend was effective — I went to a private middle school and elementary school, and my friends always wore Lululemon and walked around with Hydroflasks — it was out of hand,” she said. “It was pretty much guaranteed that if you didn’t have these things, you would be ostracized.”
The overall effect of overconsumption and trend setting has been greatly affected by social media.
“Instagram, TikTok shop, Facebook Marketplace all promote consumer goods and very poorly made products,” she said. “So when you have a poorly made item, you want to buy it again because it was so badly made, especially with the labor, that it’s not good quality.”
Although preventing the issue of overconsumption is challenging, Putthoff believes there’s a way to cut spending.
“We can find a way to limit the access that brands and companies can have,” she said. “If the company has a very negative impact on the environment and the economy, there should be a protocol in place to help negate that.”
Sociological Standpoints
Words by Nikoo Tahmasebi
In the age of technology, trends have cycled through and impact teenagers substantially more than years past as indicated by former sociology teacher Molly Cowan. These trends give a larger outlook on what our society deems as important and in need of attention.
“You think about beauty or clothing trends and how that emphasizes different things we value, and there have been a lot of positive things that have come about in the last few years, such as body positivity as a trend,” Cowan said. “But even then, I see a lot of my kids downing protein shakes in high school when your metabolism is fine — like, slow your roll. So, some trends are good and some bad, but that’s all part of being a teenager — figuring out what kind of person you want to be and how you express that.”
On the other hand, Cowan highlighted how such a fast change pertaining to what is “in” or not can lead to wasteful tendencies with the upcoming generation of commercialization.
“That’s a big issue if you [contextualize it] to some of the habits that we’ve seen lately,” Cowan said. “When stores put out new clothes, and society is like “Oh! I need to go buy new clothes” — do you really need those new clothes? There’s a whiplash with clothes getting thrown out really quick and now sitting in landfills.”
Material accumulation is not the only change seen in society, but with the rise of social media, there comes a heightened access for teenagers to a wide array of popular opinions that have taken some extremes. As a teacher, Cowan sees first-hand how students’ interactions are affected by a new outlook on how society sees each other.
“We’ve gotten more conscientious of some things, but sometimes we take it to an extreme,” she said. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing that you’re being conscious, but it’s not good to judge everything especially when so much of our interactions are based on first impressions.”
Cowan said that while she looks stereotypically Irish, her great-great grandmother is a registered member of the Cherokee tribe of Eastern Cherokee.
“You can’t see that in me at all, but it’s in there,” Cowan said. “Being aware of other groups is good, and they all deserve to have a voice. Don’t be crazy judging everyone else when you don’t actually know the full story.”
Consumer Cheapism
Words by Ella Lim
With the rise of social media and an increasingly globalized world, trends have taken off on an unprecedented scale. Whether it’s fashion and beauty, music, popular media, current events, or others, consumers have found themselves following the most popular things on the internet. For senior Quinn Sayers, this has led to, what he calls, consumer cheapism.
“Most of the trends have to do with buying things or consuming pieces of media,” Sayers said. “This leads to overconsumption because people will buy things that will be obsolete in a few months or pipes up production [in factories] that can lead to environmental problems.”
Sayers said coupled with environmental problems, there are social problems that come with fads, too.
“Trends don’t really emphasize one’s own individualism because so many people are doing the same things,” he said. “It’s an environmental problem, too, because fast fashion brands, like H&M or Zara, [will] overproduce items that are ‘popular’ or ‘trendy,’ leading to carbon emissions and tons of textile waste.”
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, fast fashion has seen a significant surge in the last 20 years, with annual garment production almost doubling and a 400% increase in global fashion consumption.
Despite its low prices and revolutionizing of the fashion industry, the Center asserts this growth is at the expense of the environment and human rights, as there have been devastating impacts on air, water and wildlife habitat, and laborers have been continuously exposed to hazardous working conditions and inadequate wages.
“The root core of most companies that overproduce items or services is to just make a profit,” Sayers said.
Thus, the impact of social media and the repetitive cycle of trend-following has been immense for society.
“Social media has drawn this out because people don’t understand they’re perpetrating advertisements for these trends,” Sayers said. “The previous trendy water bottle was the Hydroflask. They lasted long and kept your water cool. The epitome of consumer cheapism is probably the Stanley cups — it’s just a worse water bottle, yet so many people pay for them.”
However, trends are almost unavoidable if one has access to the internet, making it harder to resist the temptation to purchase or follow what everyone else is.
“I understand why people feel the pressure to follow what others are doing — even if it’s second-hand following of trends,” Sayers said. “For myself, I sometimes follow trends, but only the ones that I like — not just everything.”
Even though Sayers believes trends bring people together and are fine with restraint, the negatives outweigh the positives.
“There’s nothing wrong with [following trends] in moderation, but when it gets to a point where everyone is doing that, it has the same negative social and environmental implications,” he said. “There could be a positive implication: it brings people together.”
Yet, the responsibility isn’t all on the consumer for this rise in micro-trends.
“People put too much blame on themselves for why overconsumption happens,” Sayers said. “Obviously, people are to blame for consuming items, but it’s mostly large companies with money and resources platforming that produce all these items [that] are to blame.”
With no easy solution or answer to this complex situation, Sayers accentuates that moderation is key.
“Thrifting, recycling and upcycling clothes are perfectly fine — even buying new clothes from a company that just isn’t fast fashion is also good,” Sayers said. “Not everyone has to immediately change their ways and thrift. It’s good to follow trends equally in moderation. It’s not really black or white — both people and companies are to blame, and you can’t just pin it on either one.”
Recent Purchase Regrets
“20,000 Robux.”
“Everything. I’m not allowed in TJ Maxx anymore.”
“[I] bought some bracelets off a TikTok shop — they ended up being super mid.”
“$150 worth of tampons.”
“Insurance.”
“I bought Lego games on Steam. They are impossible without controllers.”
“The ugliest shirt I have ever seen. I thought it would look cute with these new pants I got, but the pair was hideous.”
“A fourth piece of pizza at lunch.”
“Spending $300+ at LuLuLemon and only getting three things.”
“I bought a shirt but it was the wrong color on me.”
250 students surveyed
