An American Lion

Miranda Rogers

For some reason, Miranda sent me the picture above. This was taken when she was staying with her mother in Manchester, New Hampshire last year, or so it would appear, since that’s not my dog and since Miranda doesn’t dress that way around me. At least, I think that’s her. It might not be. When Miranda says, “whatever you do, don’t put this on your frickin’ blog,” I put it up there. It’s what she would have wanted.

Old photos can haunt us now that people on the Internet are able to work their scanners and put their vintage prints online. There are a slew of web sites that feature this kind of thing now:

Dads in short shorts and moms in beehive hairdos are becoming all the rage on the Internet.

Parents are usually the first to show off pictures of their kids, but that role has been reversed in a new breed of style blogs in which children submit nostalgic and stylish photos of their parents from back in the day.

Blogs like My Mom, the Style Icon, My Parents Were Awesome and Dads in Short Shorts allow proud children to submit nostalgic pictures of their parents to put on display for the world.

“Similar to the way that young people look to celebrities as style icons, more people are looking to these attainable vintage fashions from their parents and there is a growing population of people who prefer these classic looks,” said Margot Nason, editor of the trend forecasting newsletter Trend Central.

What is so unique about these blogs is that the photos celebrate just how cool today’s offspring think their parents are. Rather than laughing or cringing at old photos of their folks, today’s children want everyone to see their parents in their heyday.

Newspaper editor Piper Weiss got the idea for My Mom, the Style Icon when she was rifling through her mother’s closet in search of vintage clothes to steal for her own wardrobe.

“I began using pictures of her before I was born as a guide to my own style because I figured whatever looked good on her when she was young would look good on me now,” said Weiss, 31.

The blog, My Mom, the Style Icon, features this:

Moira Stone’s mom deserves a purple heart. She got one soldier through gruesome battles with nothing but a pair of high-waisted short shorts, Annette Funnicello Hair and a pair of legs that go on for days.

Moira explains: “My mom, Myrna, in 1968. She sent this picture to my Dad when he was stationed in Vietnam right after they were married. It kept getting stolen from his stuff, so she had to keep reprinting and sending it again.”

Wow. That’s the hottest Myrna, ever. She’s a spitting image of Miranda, except Myrna is a hottie and my daughter is weird. Or is that my Miranda? Why is she crouching like that? Is she about to leap at the camera and eat my ex-wife? I can’t tell.