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resonantAdditional notes to young writers who saw Cobra Kai and got sucked into Karate Kid and are now trying to set stories in the foreign country that is 1985:
- The shorts were that short. It was normal. Men were allowed to have thighs in the '80s.
- The hair was that clean and shiny. It was normal. On TV even scary criminal types all looked like their hairdryers were still warm.
- "Thirsty" and "the D" didn't have any slang meaning then, and they wouldn't have made anybody laugh.
- Wikipedia says the phrase "safe sex" was being used as early as '84, but it wasn't really mainstream; condoms were generally thought of as birth control. Most of them were unlubricated and really, really dry. They'd suck all the moisture out of your Parts. I was 21 in 1985 and was unaware of the whole concept of lube, though I was familiar with spermicidal gel.
- No internet meant that it was difficult and embarrassing to get hold of porn, so a lot of people had just never seen any. No internet also meant teens went around believing some things about sex that were really spectacularly wrong.
- Spandex wasn't common except in leotards. Jeans had no stretch, zero. So they were loose enough in the leg that when you unfastened them, they pretty much just fell to the ground.
- Earphones were little sponge-covered things the size of Oreos strung on a length-adjustable arc of metal. They neither went into the ear nor fully covered the ear. They really didn't block outside sound at all unless you had the music turned up as high as it would go.
- You can go right on imagining these guys in boxer-briefs if you like, but I promise you they were wearing white Jockeys.
Edited to add a link tofeklar42's addition on the subject of consent and date rape, which is an area where attitudes were very different in 1985.
- The shorts were that short. It was normal. Men were allowed to have thighs in the '80s.
- The hair was that clean and shiny. It was normal. On TV even scary criminal types all looked like their hairdryers were still warm.
- "Thirsty" and "the D" didn't have any slang meaning then, and they wouldn't have made anybody laugh.
- Wikipedia says the phrase "safe sex" was being used as early as '84, but it wasn't really mainstream; condoms were generally thought of as birth control. Most of them were unlubricated and really, really dry. They'd suck all the moisture out of your Parts. I was 21 in 1985 and was unaware of the whole concept of lube, though I was familiar with spermicidal gel.
- No internet meant that it was difficult and embarrassing to get hold of porn, so a lot of people had just never seen any. No internet also meant teens went around believing some things about sex that were really spectacularly wrong.
- Spandex wasn't common except in leotards. Jeans had no stretch, zero. So they were loose enough in the leg that when you unfastened them, they pretty much just fell to the ground.
- Earphones were little sponge-covered things the size of Oreos strung on a length-adjustable arc of metal. They neither went into the ear nor fully covered the ear. They really didn't block outside sound at all unless you had the music turned up as high as it would go.
- You can go right on imagining these guys in boxer-briefs if you like, but I promise you they were wearing white Jockeys.
Edited to add a link to
feklar42's addition on the subject of consent and date rape, which is an area where attitudes were very different in 1985.
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:17 am (UTC)Oh! Haha. I have actually been trying to source one of these, which I remember using in high school. Despite the not-so-great quality sound, I really liked how they never hurt my ears and didn't get in the way of my glasses. I didn't realise it's now a fossil of technology - no wonder I can't find them to buy. *facepalm*
Hee hee!
Date: 6/14/21 02:18 am (UTC)I bet mileage varies here for gay men, though. :) (I was 11 and probably did not know about it.)
Jeans had no stretch, zero. So they were loose enough in the leg that when you unfastened them, they pretty much just fell to the ground.
On skinny teenage boys, sure. As someone with a small waist and big butt, I have never had this problem in jeans, spandex or no spandex. :) On the other hand, I remember pleated fronts on pants (if not heavy jeans) as an option for women a couple of years later.
(Additionally: I forget when super-tapered legs on jeans came in, if it wasn't 1985 it wasn't much later.)
You can go right on imagining these guys in boxer-briefs if you like, but I promise you they were wearing white Jockeys.
I had never heard of these until I started reading fanfic and got someone to explain. :)
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:24 am (UTC)It just occurred to me how odd it is that an earphone jack is still the same shape that it was in the '80s. I'm surprised the market hasn't "fixed" that for us.
Re: Hee hee!
Date: 6/14/21 02:27 am (UTC)I do remember the narrow ankles on jeans, sometimes with a little zipper to create an opening big enough to get your foot through -- but I only recall those on girls' jeans. I worked in a Levi's store, and the only styles we sold for men were straight-leg and boot-cut.
I'm sure there were many, many people who knew a lot more about lube than I did in 1985! Don't know if our heroes were among them, though, since they're still in high school at that point and mostly still think they're straight until fanfic writers explain things to them.
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:36 am (UTC)I would add a detail about the popularity of porn's lesser cousin, the sex comedy, especially the "teen" sex comedy, and how that led to a lot of bad information and worse manners being propagated.
I'm kinda surprised that "Guardians of the Galaxy" hasn't inspired a wave of retro electronics like headphones and Walkmen-shaped music players.
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:40 am (UTC)Re: Hee hee!
Date: 6/14/21 02:40 am (UTC)I had thought I remembered someone who was a teenage boy in the 80s asserting that they existed for boys too, but the man in the room with me right now says his memory agrees with yours. :)
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 02:45 am (UTC)Re: Hee hee!
Date: 6/14/21 03:03 am (UTC)I think the narrow ankles started around 1988 or 89? And before the zippers were a thing, the cool girls wore their jeans "pegged"--folded tight around the ankle, rolled up, and secured with a hidden hairpin or, better, an old-fashioned round-headed clothespin.
(Pegging, in its current meaning, was only coined around the term of the millennium--Dan Savage ran a poll to agree on a single-word name for the practice because it did not have one.)
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 03:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 03:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 03:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 03:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 04:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 04:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 04:35 am (UTC)I had also read Valley of the Horses, and knew that James Michner books were good for approximately the same two sex scenes in any given book.
(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 04:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 05:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/14/21 06:14 am (UTC)That would have been extremely annoying.