Nicola Alpe: I'm a 'cheug' and proud of it - but give me back my mom jeans

Double denim is another fashion choice that's been described as 'cheugy' by Gen Z. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION:

With a birthday fast approaching, I'm thinking there is nothing that makes you feel older than becoming irrelevant.

While not knocking on the door of invisibility that some women experience as they age, I have started to walk across the threshold of irrelevancy.

When I read about what the young people are doing these days, sometimes I feel like Austin Powers in that scene when he says to his son, "I'm with it. I'm hip", before doing the Macarena and comparing himself favourably to Frankenstein. If I'm honest with myself, the very fact that I can remember seeing that movie when it was released makes me irrelevant, right?

I recently started engaging with this topic and turns out there are several aspects of young life that I'm struggling to get my head around.

We've all read that slipping between the sheets may be a thing of the past. In the land where customers and trends are heeded and swiftly actioned, bedding retailers in the US are selling sets without a top sheet. You can buy them, but they are extra. No longer is it a set of two sheets and two pillowcases, it's just a cotton threesome. In the efforts of sleep hygiene, metaphorically and physically, wouldn't you need to launder the duvet cover weekly, causing unnecessary harrumphing and colourful language to get the duvet in and out of its cover all the time?

But sheets are just the start. Gone are landlines and casual sex is on the decrease. The former is obvious, the latter has apparently influenced by living longer with Mum and Dad and hook-up apps, which is a pity. I've even read literature on what is termed the McNugget Generation. Apparently, there are swathes of young people who refuse to eat meat off the bone because they have grown up on McNuggets. A boneless life.

Side parts and skinny jeans are out, with dreadful low-rise jeans highlighting the slender hips of the Hadid sisters in 2021 as opposed to the muffin tops from us mere mortals in the '90's.

I'll admit, skinny jeans can be uncomfortable, especially when you've wolfed a big meal and your internal organs feel they are being shoved up underneath your sternum, but they have a valid place in our wardrobes. But lately I've gone back to a side part and maybe it's just harking back to my glory days, but I'm enjoying the style refresh.

Having lived longer brings about degrees of wisdom that can only be achieved by actual life experience. The same people who are eschewing side parts and top sheets are the same ones gadding about in bike shorts (sans spongy bum) and what can only be described as the trainer equivalent of Nomad school shoes. Everything about that sentence is wrong to me, and anyone who lived through bike pants or saw Nomad-clad feet at school should agree.

But before you try to insult me by saying I'm a "cheug", there's no wicker or #girlboss artwork in my home, I don't holler "Rose All Day", wear Dunder Mifflin apparel (although I do love The Office) and I cringe when I hear someone say "wine o'clock" - but I will gladly leave some aspects of 2021 life to the young'uns.

You lot can leave me the coveted mom jeans though. It's only fair. They have my name on them.