As seniors return to school this fall, we should be returning triumphant, heads high and without a care in the world. We should have our legs up on our desks and every underclassman scurrying to bring us our every demand. We should be wearing sunglasses 24/7, driving sweet rides, and being perfectly dressed, tanned, and made-up at all hours of the school day, right? You may be wondering where I possibly got these notions. Well, I’ll tell you, every single movie about high school ever. 

I would like to formally sue Hollywood for the complete false advertisement of the American high school experience. I’ve yet to solve a murder with my friends, or save an arts program or win Prom Queen then share my crown with every girl to solve sexism and I’m sick of it! I know it’s not the 80s, or the 90s or the 2000s anymore, but I’m beginning to think that life was never actually like that all along… I mean let’s think about it. I only know of one person who drives a sports car, the most makeup my friends ever wear is mascara and you will rarely see us in jeans, never mind heels, and a mini skirt, but was this a recent cultural shift or decades upon decades of movie magic? 

To answer this question I went to the source, Youtube archives of high school back in the good ol’ days. My results were shocking. The 80s coming-of-age movies did not lie, every outfit, hairdo, and makeup look of Orem High School’s Class of ‘86 Video Yearbook was identical to the ones I’d seen so many times in Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. John Hughes could be taken off of my subpoena. The 90s had similar results, they spoke fast in slang, looked like they were much more adult and cooler than I could dream, and lived out loud, as a community.

After that, things started to split, the scenes were the ones I’d seen forever, just average kids doing average kid things. So what caused this change? Some might say phones, and some might say that the CW realized that hiring adults to play children was easier than the inverse, but I have another theory. I think Hollywood just got bored of telling our stories. Kids started buckling down, having less fun and more stress, so why not throw some vampires in there to spice it up? 

So what’s my point? I think we should all strive to be more like an 80s movie high school protagonist. The ones that never are shown studying but end up at an Ivy and always get the dream ending and the graduation speech. So Class of 2024, let’s go get our Molly Ringwald moments.