Keep your backyard chicken coops, dear 2018, and your vampire facials, too. And the stiff-arm Floss dance? Stomp it out in the new year.
Here’s what we’d like to leave behind come Jan. 1. You’re welcome.
FLOSS NO MORE
The arm-flailing, hip-swaying, rapid-fire dance craze is the new Dab and we owe it to 16-year-old social media dude Russell Horning, aka The Backpack Kid. Horning grew a sizable Instagram following through his dance moves as far back as 2014, and Rihanna reposted a photo of him well before Katy Perry invited him to do his thing with her on “Saturday Night Live” in 2017, launching him to social media superstardom.
Other celebs, moms, dads, athletes and pretty much all of YouTube are flossing their lives away. So are all the little kids in your households, once they outgrow “Baby Shark,” that is.
“Fortnite” added a Floss Battle Royale victory emote. The fisted, stiff-armed dance that involves rotating arms from the front to back over and over again isn’t as easy as it looks for some, so it has sprouted instructional videos. It also won Horning a 2018 Shorty Award.
Aren’t all you Flossers exhausted? Have a seat. Take a load off. Go cheek-to-cheek with someone. Anything but another year of your back-and-forthness.
GENDER REVEAL PARTIES
Firstly, gender is not solely boy or girl. Gender can be fluid. Gender is a spectrum. A child may have a non-binary gender identity, meaning they don’t identify strictly as boy or girl. They may identify as both, neither or another gender entirely.
Secondly, have we not outgrown blue for boys and pink for girls? Thirdly, how about a surprise? How about keeping all of this to yourselves?
Gender reveal events, such as the one recently that sparked a massive fire in Arizona , have grown into an industry, with party supplies on sale and DIY tips all over the place.
Celebrate the birth of a human being instead. Oh wait, that’s what baby showers are for, and birthdays.
BIG OL’ SLEEVES
Runways are full of bell sleeves, and stores, too. But what about the marinara sauce?
Nobody needs to police their sleeves quite this much, especially when they’re eating or doing something equally bottom-of-the-sleeve skimming.
Bell sleeves were once oh-so-boho but have popped up on all manner of tops and dresses. How hard do you want to work to stuff those things into a jacket or coat? How big the bells have become. How utterly same-same we all look in our flared sleeves.
And tiered bell sleeves? And those flares that fall at the elbow or way high off the wrist? Prairie-wear and swingy sleeves, take a breather.
YOUR CHICKEN FRIENDS
Organic eggs, pest control, fertilizer! Those are some of the apparent joys of keeping backyard chickens. The idea is they roam around your Brooklyn patio, patch of grass or suburban wood, finding their way home at night. Or something. Some are confined to enclosed runs. And what happens when hipsters can’t cope? According to news reports, the feathered puffs with legs get dumped at animal shelters, sanctuaries or worse, gobbled by some predator.
Just go to a store and do your tick checks, sweet faux farmers. It’s been years now. How many eggs is too many eggs?
KETO DESSERTS
Ketogenics, and ketosis, and the ketogenic diet have been around forevah. But the masses got all whipped up in 2018.
Here’s how it goes: A high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carb approach to eating may be good for difficult-to-control epilepsy in children, and for weight loss and general health in all. The idea is for you to get more calories from protein and fat and fewer from carbs, in part by cutting back on carbs that are easy to digest.
And that, my friends, includes sugar. And THAT means so many desserts. Of course, eat what you want. Celebrate your health, but do the rest of us need to go without when we, say, come over for dinner? “My sister’s cheesecake was basically a fatberg,” notes one unsatisfied enlistee.
BOX UP YOUR BOXES
In beauty and fitness, food prep, apparel and toys, all your dreams can come true in a box for a fee.
Subscription boxes have been around for a while but in 2018 there were so many they needed to be curated and heavily reviewed by media and consumers alike.
So many copycats. Such a big grab for the cash.
While it’s truly nice and way convenient sometimes to receive a curated box of stuff in the mail, especially at dinnertime, do remember that you’re the one who’s paying, unless you got lucky and your boxes are gifts that keep on giving.
VAMPIRE FACIALS
Using your own blood with little skin pricks and sometimes radio frequencies thrown in to make you, what, the best skin-deep version of yourself, somebody else entirely, is on the gross side of the beauty equation.
But then again, so are the gods commonly known as dermal fillers.
Let’s shed some light on the bloody facials. First, you need your blood drawn. Then you need your blood to be run through a centrifuge to isolate the platelets. This is all about PRPs, or platelet-rich plasma. Then microdermabrasion or microneedling is done to really get those platelets in there. Optional are the aforementioned radio frequencies to further run over your face and assist rejuvenation.
Vampire facials can hydrate and offer boosts of collagen and elastin, fans say. And cure the common cold?
BEYOND, BEYOND AND BEYOND
When we’re not “obsessed” with everything, we’re “beyond blessed,” ‘‘beyond grateful,“ ‘‘beyond honored,” ‘‘beyond exhausted“ and ”beyond excited.”
No. We’re all right here in this dimension. Is the meaning of the word not enough without the qualifier? Why not allow yourselves to be, simply, blessed, grateful and honored? The same with “truly” happy, sad or angry.
Be thrilled beyond words, but do trust that language has your back. Hopefully, so does the new year.