Ok, I admit it, I love the 80s. The VH1 clip shows have sucked me into acid-washed nostalgia for almost two years now. Teddy Ruxbin, Pac-Man, and what would we have done without the “where’s the beef” lady? The movies were legendary. Stand by Me brought us River Phoenix, Top Gun brought us the need for speed, and The Breakfast Club brought teen angst into the main stream.

The music was catchy and innovative. Run-DMC impressed and inspired musical talents that went far beyond the rap community, Guns n’ Roses broke us of that nasty hair-band habit (no, they were NOT a hair band), and Depeche Mode managed to find balance between synthesizers and substance.

But for every Molly Ringwald flick, there are about fifty menopausal divorcee tear-fests like Beaches. And for every immortal old school lyric like, “not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good,” there are probably millions of unforgivable lines like Sheena Easton’s “come spend the night inside my sugar walls.”

My point here is, while the 80s are an amusing decade to reminisce upon, they need to stay in the past. Now don’t get me wrong, I still search for re-runs of “Square Pegs” on late-night television, and I just burned “Turning Japanese” onto a mix CD last month, but these are selective memories on my T.V. and my stereo, not in my wallet and my closet. Re-airing Howard the Duck I can grudgingly handle. But shoulder pads and hair crimping is just too much. After months of denying what has become painfully obvious on television and in magazines, it is with great despair that I have finally begun to accept that 80s fashions are coming back.

Now as someone whose wardrobe is compiled entirely from Marshalls and thrift stores, I think it’s fair to say that I care as much about fashion as I do about who’s to blame for the Van Halen split (it was totally David Lee Roth’s fault). But seeing a return in 80s fashion is just frightening. It’s not the styles that scare me; it’s what those styles represent: Reliving the past – a past that, frankly, looks much nicer in the rear-view mirror.

You see, there’s a difference between remembering an era and reliving it. Remembering entails J. Geils on your tape deck, Cory Feldman in your VCR, a Cabbage Patch doll in your attic. Reliving entails wearing leg-warmers even though you’re not a dancer or a gymnast, or cutting the collars off all your sweatshirts so they hang off one shoulder (you’re not Jennifer Beals and you never will be). Remembering should never involve acquiring anything new. The minute you order those bright teal hot pants with matching sweatband off some 80s throwback website, you’re bringing the 80s back.

If you bring back the fashion, what’s next? Valley Girls? The re-birth of crack? “Joanie Loves Chachi?” Hey, how about we give that whole trickle-down-economics thing another go? The 80s were a black hole in almost every arena involved, and no Tiffany single is going to make Al Capone’s vault worth re-excavating.

I know what you might be thinking: “people bring back old fashions all the time. Look at peasant shirts, crochet hats, bellbottoms – those are huge, it doesn’t mean we’re bringing back the 60s.” True, those trends originated in another time and it doesn’t look like our military is invading any – oh, wait…

Besides, those trends don’t look stupid and they don’t come in colors that could potentially cause seizures in some lab animals. What’s my source? I said so, that’s my damn source.

But hey, what do I know? Maybe I’m just haven’t stopped being bitter ever since I found out that I couldn’t marry Indiana Jones due to the fact that he’s a fictional character. But do you know what happens when you try to bring back the 80s? Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. Did you see it? Yeah, me neither. No one did. Think about it.