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While people generally associate nostalgia with beautiful, colorful memories, experts say it can be a double-edged sword. According to Texas Christian University professor Cathy Cox, neurotic and anxious individuals, in particular, can have a difficult time looking back on the past.
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“Nostalgia is considered a bittersweet emotion,” Cox said. “But, in general, people can turn negative experiences into positives, which helps them improve their well-being.”
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Cox and her colleagues have been researching how nostalgia affects people. Their findings reveal that it not only brings physical benefits, such as increased pain tolerance, but also that many of their subjects report having “greater intentions to eat healthy and exercise more” simply by living vicariously through others.
“Internet trends include people taking pictures of themselves in the past and updating them at the same spot in the present, and we found that people can actually experience positive nostalgia by looking at others’ images,” Cox explained.
The 1980s have their own unique and iconic style that appears to transcend generations. In recent years, the era has come back in full swing through art exhibits like the Outlaws fashion shows.
Aptly titled “Fashion Renegades of 90s London,” it provided the organizers an opportunity to bring back the 80s brand of clothing, which, according to curator Martin Green, was a “time before the tyranny of brands and sportswear.”
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“People were deconstructing and repurposing outfits, using whatever they could, from safety pins to swathes of cloth bought from fabric shops in Soho that were cut up, put together again and maybe hand-painted,” Green told The Guardian in a 2025 interview. “They were creating wild outfits out of what was affordable and available, from Turkish rugs to tea towels and even beer mats.”
