How has being a teenager changed?

Teenager in the late 60/early 70s. Had a great mum who encouraged the latest fashion saying "go on wear it whilst you look good, you will look terrible in that at 40" I think she had been made to wear horrible stuff as she was a teenager during the war. So Biba and hot pants all the rage and she was right looking back 16, 17, 18 is a great age.

Plastic multi-coloured popper beads. Louis-heeled shoes. Hair in a beehive. Cross-your-Heart pointy bras. Sugar-starched petticoats. Colourful 'duster coats' and slender umbrellas with covers to match the coat. Taking life in general [and boys in particular] far too seriously to actually enjoy what could have been a good time.

Sticky out underskirts (Charlie's dead!) and wide belts, home made clothes from Simplicity patterns, rollers in all night (no sleep), and those alien creatures, boys.

My 2010 teenager in Vintage has to go to the church social on Saturday night - with very strange results! Yes, I remember those very well.

Lipstick used to come in three shades; red, pink and a sort of orangey colour. Obviously to cater for all skin tones.

I was a teenager in the fifties/early sixties.

Milk bars, stockings, pony tail, sticky out net underskirts, circular skirts, stiletto heels with screw in metal bits which fell out when the thread went, thick bright lipstick, making my own clothes

Oh and a pink playtex rubber girdle with little perforations in it and suspenders on the end.

It wasn't done in those days to have wavy buttocks under the tight skirt.

Going steady when I was just fifteen.

Later went from ponytail to beehive with a little velvet bow pinned at the front just above the fringe.

In my early teens I went to church or community youth clubs, and we used to hang out on the streets, usually near the chip shop, or at the outdoor swimming pool in summer. During the fourth form at high school we used to nip into Leeds and go to the Mecca Ballroom during our lunchbreak. (Fortunately I never met Jimmy Savile.) It was a bit of a rush getting back into school in time! By the age of fifteen I had begun travelling further afield going to jazz clubs, folk clubs, coffee bars and arts balls in Leeds and Bradford (where I first met the Rolling Stones in 1963). Then I was attending gigs and blues clubs also in Leeds and Bradford. I rode on the back of scooters and 650 motorbikes, torn between being a mod or a rocker. We used to regularly hitch a lift back home, and I once hitched from Kingston on Thames to Winchester in the middle of the night alone! Either it was a different world then, or I was just very lucky to survive

Like Ana, I had some white plastic boots, but I wore them once on a night out. My friend had a boyfriend who was several years older and one November evening, looking for a Bonfire celebration, he drove us to Castleford where the bad weather had churned up the river and all the effluent from the industries there got whipped up into lots of frothy foam which was blowing around in the deserted streets late at night. We jumped around and frolicked in the froth, but then the next day my boots had turned pink! Fortunatey none of us succumbed to any obvious side effects of the pollutants.

Ana - oh yes I do - and as said, NO regrets

Lots of youth hostelling with two girls who are still friends, in the Peak District, Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. The bit we enjoyed the most was looking for 'talent' at the hostels - I am cringing now to think we actually used that word. Occasionally found some but all very innocent.
Life perked up when I went to university and shared a flat with 3 other girls. No mod cons though - heating consisted of a single electric fire which we used to rotate around the room to get fair shares of the heat. One bath in the house between 9 girls and a washstand in the hallway! I used to go to the students union for a bath, as the bath in the house took 30 minutes to fill from a geyser thing. I had a record player and my favourite LPs were Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears.
Come on Bags don't be reticent

My brother, one year older than me, and I joined with a bunch of pals to make our own 'youth club'. Very innocent. We took turns descending on the houses of our parents each Friday evening (only one house each Friday), playing cards and music, chatting, being fed snackeroos by the parents, who gave up their sitting-rooms for us. I guess they preferred that once every few weeks to having us rampaging around in unknown and 'undesirable' public places.

I spent the rest of my youth studying and tramping about in the Scottish hills. I suppose I've never been wild in the usual sense, though there are parts of my life that other people pretended to be shocked about at the time. I suspect that some of you would be too.

This (ex) teenager is going to bed! Night all!

granjura! Surely you don't mean...no, I know you don't!

Lucky you! I feel deprived

I was very lucky to be a teenager with an older brother in the 60s - and I had an absolute ball We entertained each other with little money, were no bothered with fashion (jeans, t-shirts and trainers were the norm) - boozze was cheap plonk and beer, and we cooked for each other as we had little money. No clubs, no holidays abroad - we slept rough on beaches by the lake after hitch-hiking there. No drugs though - but we did drink too much. And sex, yes, and the pill, but no promiscuity. Don't regret a thing

I was at boarding school where we were as strictly kept as cloistered nuns! In the holidays, I knew no one as there were no others near me and I wasn't allowed to mix with local children. (Snobbish mother)

absent, how mortifying!

My boyfriend and I had matching long trumpet -sleeved tee shirts..his in blue me in red... how sad is that! Thought we were the bees knees!

Ana I longed for brocade bell-bottoms – as you do – and made a pair for myself with great care. I wore them to a party and the sofa and armchairs were covered in the same fabric, so every time I sat down, I disappeared from the waist down.

I had a yellow PVC mac from C&A as well! And some white plastic boots.
Later, when Flower Power arrived, I bought some flowery bell-bottoms which I only dared wear once - some lad shouted "Got your mum's curtains on?", which dented my confidence a bit!

I was a teenager in the 60s and the clothes were fabulous, helped by the fact that I was like a stick insect. We were the first generation to have clothes designed for us, prior to the 60s young people wore the same as their parents.
When I got my first mini skirt I spent a week's wages on a pair of tights, boyfriend accidently spoilt them when he leaned over with a cigarette in his hand. I had to wear a longer skirt and stockings until I saved up for another pair of tights.

Just remembering going down Bold Street from the Telephone exchange to the Cavern in Matthew Street in our lunch hour to hear all the groups of the early 60's then going back home on the 8pm ferry and telling my mum & dad that I had been working overtime after meeting up again with pals when I had finished work at 5pm.I was so daft that I forgot not show my payslip to mum and she noticed that I had no overtime payments,so she put a stop to that.

Being a teenager in the mid 60's early 70's still meant I was very much under my parents rules...meals dished up on the dot by mum...scared of evoking dads displeasure,music disapproved of,boys not allowed,but they way I was allowed to dress they were not much of a consideration....stories of the war years from an embittered dad,spite from mum who married beneath her and probably the wrong person and suffered from undiagnosed and untreated depression and I was her scapegoat....then I reached19 the ugly duckling was still ugly but grew some fine feathers....and boy did I give it some welly....out all night,run off and got married to a totally unsuitable but very bad influence,moved into our own home and was totally free for the first time...never took drugs,but alcohol and parties and shenanigans where common place....then I grew out of it all..got divorced..found no2 and become mrs 2.4 children...still speak to both of them...
But what I really want now is a granny gap year while I am old enough to know what I am doing young enough to enjoy it....and secure enough to not give a monkies....well I can dream can't I ....as I have a teenage 'parent' now telling what I can do,say,and wear.....oh well come round full circle again

Although I was post-teenage in the '60s, I had a yellow PVC mac plus matching wellies and umbrella! Must have looked like a custard pie (was going to say tart but that would give a wrong impression!)

I had a PVC mac too.It was bright pink and from C&A in Oxford St. I stopped wearing it as my boyfriend said it made me look like a giant condom.