2014 was the time to be alive! Tumblr, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Vine, Ellen’s Oscar selfie, and grunge-y outfits took the internet by storm. We were all wearing our bright neon or pastel skater skirts and a now-too-old brandy shirt. Going through our many phases, we blasted Katy Perry and the Arctic Monkeys, staying “rebellious.”
A decade has passed and we’re much more sophisticated… or perhaps we think we are. We’ve traded in our skater skirts for mini skirts, black nail polish for dark red, and Tumblr for Pinterest. However, in this new year of maturity and growth, we find ourselves reverting back to our old tendencies. The rise of women yearning for their nostalgic childhoods and attempting to relive the happy days of their youth have set a chain reaction of trends from 2014 to reemerge in 2024.
In 2014, mustaches were the craze. They were quite literally everywhere. Mustache tattoos, shirts, bags, shoes–anything that you could put a mustache decal on, it was a thing. We look back now and realize the absolute absurdity of our obsession, but in the moment, it was so quirky and cool to associate yourself with mustaches. As old habits die hard, the new mustache of this generation is the pink bow.
The hyper-fixation on bows and ribbons strike an unparalleled resemblance to our obsession with mustaches. Just like how we’d draw mustaches on our fingers and put them to our mouths, we now find our selves drawing bows on any surface and tying on ribbons to everything we own. At this moment, I don’t think bows are as tacky as mustaches, but perhaps in another ten years, I’ll look back and cringe the same way I cringe when I think about my mustache phase.
On TikTok, I’ve noticed a massive resurgence of our favorite vloggers from the 2014-2016 YouTube era. MyLifeAsEva, Alisha Marie, Sierra Furtado, LaurDIY are all YouTubers I was obsessed with. They created content about school, vacations, DIYs, and hauls — I was especially obsessed with their back-to-school and Black Friday hauls—and I vowed to myself in 2014 that I would start a YouTube channel to be as successful as them. Obviously, I did not follow through with my plans.
When I wonder why these creators’ videos are making a comeback, I realize it’s because many of their videos remind us of simpler times. Their intended audience was and is the teen to young adult population. They catered their videos towards us with bright colors, talks of the influencer life, and relatable content geared towards girls. Watching their videos back then made us feel seen and spoken to. It’s no wonder why we find ourselves being naturally drawn to their videos once more.
So far this year, we’re already starting to see skinny jeans and retro sneakers make their way back into the fashion landscape. I’ve seen more pastel Penny skateboards this year alone than any other time in my life (well of course, except for the year 2014). Though every trend isn’t blatantly popping up in our social media and culture, there’s a good chunk of 2014 nostalgia making its run.
The parallels between 2014 and 2024 are clearly present, but why are we all returning to the past? My belief is the reason we are regressing has to do with the longing we feel towards girlhood, femininity, and nostalgia. Growing older is hard, and it makes you look back on your childhood and want to relive every core memory. Especially with how rapid and influential social movements are in the decade of 2020, it’s understandable to feel overwhelmed with all that’s happening. It’s been normalized to accept extreme independence, but with conversations about reliance and self care coming into topic, we can begin conversations of embracing femininity without rejecting independence.
As the years go by and we turn from tweens to young adults, there’s a fear of being misunderstood and time just passing too quickly. We watch our favorites from back then to relive the best parts of our youth and remember that although we can’t reverse the clock, we can always return to the things that give us comfort. The resurgence of the term “girlhood” comes at a time when our access to the internet provides us with the ability to embrace the things women in society have been discouraged for. Beauty standards, sexism — whatever the criticism — returning to girlhood gives us an escape.
The craze of female vloggers, bows, Victoria’s Secret, oversized scarves, and everything else in between, truly captures our society’s need to embrace youth and girlhood. Rather than going backwards, we’re moving forwards by taking the important lessons we’ve learned from 2014 trends into the new year of 2024.