Yikes. I have lots of options to choose from here, but I’ll go with the first one that popped into my head: my childhood glasses.
I grew up in the 80s, which is when large, plastic-framed glasses were in style, and for a long time, I have cringed when looking back at my old photos.
I got glasses when I was six, so the pictures of me without these enormous frames are less numerous than I’d like.
I know the cool kids are now wearing glasses not so different than these…but having worn them once already, I really cannot get on board with this trend.
I have always felt very grateful that when I turned 13, my eye doctor recommended contacts for medical reasons. I really appreciated the excuse to get rid of the glasses! And I like all my kid pictures from 13+ much better.
Now it’s your turn. 😉
Braces. I feel like braces now are mostly pretty unobstrusive, but that was definitely NOT the case when I had them in the 90s. I always worried about getting food stuck in them, and I just hated the way it looked when I smiled with them. But at least I didn’t have to have headgear like my brother did. 🙂
And of course, I appreciate my straight teeth now. Two years of braces for a lifetime of straight teeth is a pretty good deal, even if it doesn’t seem that way at 15.
Did you have headgear too? Braces + headgear is the perfect storm for embarrasment.
An orange pantsuit that I wore as a child. It had a polka dotted collar. Loved it at the time. With today’s lens, nope. 🙂
Everything was big in the 80s for me: big glasses, big perms, big shoulder pads, big earrings, big bows at my neck. It’s a wonder anyone could see me under all that.
In the late 1980s, my best friend’s mom made her a one-piece pants thing. Romper? But pants. Clown suit style, with poofy sleeves and legs, gathers at the elbow, ankles and waist, and a ginormous collar with lace. Totally over the top. It was too big for my friend, so the mom gave it to me, and I did wear it to keep from hurting her feelings. Wore it for Easter, no less. It was the same fabric as my mom had chosen for bedroom curtains. And honestly I was so glad to outgrow it in the following summer.
Those glasses don’t look nearly as bad as you think. Now if you’d have purchased and worn the flying squirrel sweater in public that would qualify! 😉
As for my most embarrassing item, it was an orange Reese’s Peanut Butter cups t-shirt I got on a trip to Hershey park. I loved the shirt until the first time I wore it to (high) school. The logo fell in the wrong spot on my chest and I never realized how many people loved peanut butter cups! I never wore the shirt out of the house again.
A red dress, mid calf length, with giant yellow pineapples all over it. I wore it once, on a first date with a guy. He never asked me out again. I am convinced it was the dress.
SO many things! Ugly glasses, braces, retainer, hair-pieces and weird hairstyles, jumpsuits, culottes, flood pants, crazy wide bell-bottoms, hip-huggers, super high-waisted pants, micro- minis, minis, midis, maxis!
But, you guys, what we think looks normal now is going to seem just as strange and ugly in the future, I guarantee it! If I could post photos, you’d probably gasp in horror. It’s pretty much the same with foods and home decor, too.
A bright orange onesie with yellow strapping that went down the front from shoulders to hem and around the knees and thighs and in the “princess waist” area. Also yellow snaps down the front. It was a maternity jumpsuit. Once my ex-husband stuffed pillows in it and wore it as a halloween outfit – a pumpkin! My friend called it my “pylon suit”. Looking back, I cringe! But maternity clothes were expensive then (mid-eighties) and I only had a couple of outfits, so I wore it repeatedly…