By Ashleigh Heaton
Entertainment Editor

The “throwback” theme really got to me homecoming week – not only did it give me an excuse to play dress-up with each decade, but it also made me realize the differences and similarities between each generation.

For example, when I previewed my ‘60s outfit to my mother Sunday night, she merely frowned at me and said that poodle skirts were from the ‘50s. I swear, I thought the ‘60s was the age of Elvis and soda fountains, not Hendrix and Woodstock.

Then came the ‘70s, with its bellbottoms and disco balls instead of hippies and peace signs. The ‘80s and ‘90s I know pretty well, with their off-the-shoulder cut-off shirts and leg warmers, and N*SYNC and Mommy jeans. That’s where the homecoming theme cut off, but the little voice in my head said, What about the 2000s?

The question stuck with me and still haunts me now. What will the world think of my generation 20 years from now? What fashion trends will be slandered and teased? Who will my grandchildren think I was when they hear I grew up in the 2000s?

The list I came up with is shabby, mostly because I’m an insider and not an outsider looking in. I tossed around a few ideas, none of them original to the times, before I could even come up with something applicable. But what I came up with boiled down to the going green trend, sequin belts, emo hair and ponchos. Is that it? Whatever happened to “leaving your mark on the world”? As I see it, we’ve done a pretty half-baked job in the pop cultural sense.

I’m sure the generation of the ‘80s thought the same, too, when they began donning the side-ponytails and tacky jewelry. We have no idea what the future will look like, much less the future of fashion and trends.

But I thought about the fact that, what my generation lacks in fashion is made up in personality. We’re a generation of dreamers, fighters and tech-savvy workers. We’ve been around for a terrorist attack, a war, an economic depression. We’ve been around for the emergence of social networking on Facebook, the election of the first black President and Harry Potter.

And despite the differences in our pop cultures and clothes…our generations are more similar than meets the eye.

I thought that my generation is more aware of the world around them and driven to change what they think needs to be changed – to stand up for what they truly believe in and to right the wrongs of society. But the more I thought, the more I realized how the aspect it similar to the way the Flower Children of the ‘60s saw themselves.

We’ve seen an international conflict in Iraq no different in importance than Vietnam was in the ‘60s, the Cold War of the ‘70s, Palestine in the ‘80s or the terrorist attacks from the ‘90s. Each generation has had their share of celebrity icons that have defined their culture – from The Beatles to John Travolta, Madonna, Jennifer Aniston or, now, Lady Gaga. All of the generations have seen the world in both the darkest and brightest of lights.

The term “terrorist” may be the new replacement for “communist”, but they still mean the same thing to each generation. We still hold the same core beliefs and morals, and though the clothes on our backs have changed, we’re still so similar in the fact that we share common experience and understanding.

I cannot wait to see what the next generations bring to the table, because the 2000s have, in my opinion, continued and expanded the tradition of generation excellence.