Where are all the Pet Rocks and the Beanie Babies and the Smurfs? The Hula Hoop got around and around in the fifties. In the sixties tie dyed t-shirts were to die for. By the end of the seventies bell bottom pants bottomed out and in the eighties big hair was literally big.
A fad is something that interests a lot of people for a short time. In other words, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Jennifer Aniston's hair style in "Friends" and Cher's tattoos - some fashions grow out of fashion and others leave their mark. Multi-colored hair faded in popularity, but the mini skirt still has legs.
Teenagers, who are struggling to define who they are, are the most susceptible to fads. Boys, wearing clothes that are too big, are into the rapper look. Girls, wearing clothes that are too tight, short and revealing, are into the Brittany look. Both looks make me wonder if their parents look.
It can't be coincidence fad contains the word ad. An ad spreads fads faster than teenage girls on cell phones.
As a teenager I escaped fighting the fad frenzy because my school required uniforms. I complained at the time - a complaining teenager, unfortunately, isn't a fad; but when I see the competition in today's schools, I'm uniformly grateful for my white blouse, blue skirt and brown oxfords.
Of course, if a starlet were photographed wearing brown oxfords, they'd be copied and in stores before you could say Paris Hilton. What starts as something unique, turns into part of a teenager's, voluntary uniform.
Orange was an in color last season. Somehow girls could look in mirrors and say to themselves, "Orange I in". Unfortunately, if what goes around comes around applies to fashion, poodle skirts and Mohawks will be back.
"Daf" is an English word meaning silly. This one word might explain why the English tend to dress more conservatively. When you look in a mirror, things are backward. Backward, fad becomes daf.
The American language is inundated with fad words - cool, awesome, rad, bad. Language is like fly paper. Some words stick, some don't and some make enough buzz to get into the dictionary.
However, there's hope. The older you get, the less affected you are by fads. Older and wiser is always in style.
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