#90S NOSTALGIA SKIN#

SheвЂ™s never known a world that existed outside of social media, but she daydreams about what her life would be like if she werenвЂ™t under the public spotlight. Chloe, on the other hand, doesnвЂ™t struggle with popularity, at least not online. Jennifer, ChloeвЂ™s mother and momager extraordinaire, is a product of this 90s-era edge: shaped by the mean girl mentality and driven by her need to have likes and be liked. Unfortunately for my characters, this is not the case.Д¬hloe Cates Is Missing focuses on an Insta-famous family and the search for their missing daughter. Taking embarrassing pictures of you on her flip phone and circulating them around school.

In a less cinematic sense, she was the one spreading rumors about you to everyone in her buddy list. DonвЂ™t roll your eyes at me like I said, the 90s were wild. For years, I thought having a choreographed dance-off was an actual thing that happened at prom. Sweet to peopleвЂ™s faces but cruel behind their backs, especially her Weird Girl counterpart/mortal enemy (who miraculously became Hot Girlв„ў when she took off her glasses or slapped on some lip gloss, but thatвЂ™s a discussion for another day).

Not that there havenвЂ™t always been mean girls-IвЂ™m looking at you, infamous locker scene in Carrie-but this particular brand of MG outlasted them all: beautiful. I was raised in a pop culture environment that built the Mean Girl. I lost count of how many hours I spent IMing (which feels totally wrong to type when did DM become the norm?) when I was supposed to be sleeping. We also saw firsthand how addicting it could be to be connected. Unchaperoned, by the way, since-as many of my characters point out-this was also a time when we went out with our friends and werenвЂ™t expected home until the streetlights came on. We remember what relationships were like before friend requests and poking wars, when origami notes were a necessary life skill and going to the mall elicited an excitement that rivals taking a selfie with Chris Hemsworth. Why does this neon-colored flashback create the perfect background for an of-the-moment thriller? And sure, every generation wraps the past in a golden film of happiness, but thereвЂ™s something different about 90s nostalgia-an edginess missing from the doo-wops of yore-and as I started writing Chloe Cates Is Missing, I asked myself how I could use that edge to explore the very real fears we have about social media today.

IвЂ™d argue that the era of As Ifs and WhatвЂ™s Your Favorite Scary Movies never ended.ДЇrom reboots to revivals of sitcoms to the resurgence of boybands, it seems like we justвЂ¦couldnвЂ™t let go. External pressures to conform to archaic beauty standards. We livestream our outings and post food photos instead of angsty away messages, but the underbelly that made social media what it is today is still alive and well.

#90S NOSTALGIA SKIN#

Trends are cyclical, of course, so IвЂ™m not about to bash my questionable fashion choices, but as I stroll through the Target racks desperately searching for a shirt thatвЂ™s not skin tight or cropped for my eight-year-old daughter, I canвЂ™t help but wonder if things have really changed that much since we said goodbye to chatrooms and dial-up. We organized our buddy lists into meticulous friend groups-a hierarchy determined by who we were speaking to the most that week-and we did all of this while sporting blue eyeshadow and butterfly clips like it was our job. We had embarrassing screennames and bedazzled profiles with cheesy inspirational quotes, most likely surrounded by a collection of stars and swoopy digital symbols. YouвЂ™d get those AOL sample CDs, load them on your bulky desktop, wait for your sister to get off the phone, suffer an endless stream of scree-oops and static, and boom, twenty minutes later, you were connected: a world of GeoCities and LiveJournals at your fingertips.Д«eing a teenage girl online in the 90s and early 00s was wild.