The 'Laguna Beach' Reunion and While We're All So Nostalgic

Like so many millennials, I spent this past weekend tuned in to the Laguna Beach 20 year (!!!) reunion. And I found myself feeling strangely emotional about the whole thing. A quick note: Laguna Beach was one of the OG reality shows about a group of high school students in a beautiful, affluent beach town. It hinged on a central love triangle between Kristin Cavallari, Stephen Colletti, and Lauren Conrad. Much of the buzz around the show was about pitting Conrad and Cavallari against on another, but Laguna Beach actually showcased a lot of beautiful friendships — and we don't talk about that enough!

Anyway, back to me getting full emotional during the reunion. It stands to reason, I guess: I am almost the same age as the cast, and the first season of Laguna Beach premiered when I was in high school. Watching this show feels like a time capsule. I dressed the same way as the kids onscreen (the chokehold that layered tanks, Uggs, and denim skirts had on us!), listened to the same music, and spoke in a similar way (less beach slang for sure, but pretty sure I said “like” as much as they did). 

While I was watching, I had a realization: The reason I, and so many of my fellow millennials, are so hopelessly nostalgic all the time, is because nothing today feels quite as accessible.

Watching Laguna Beach felt like getting invited to a high school party hosted by the popular kids. You had this sense that you were in the room with them, and that’s what felt so game-changing about the early days of reality TV.

But today, nothing feels this authentic. Not TV, not social media, not even real life. 

We’re living in this disconnected world and experiencing so much of it through the screen. And on those screens, we see filtered, edited, spliced content. We see altered faces everywhere today — on Laguna Beach, it is striking to see how normal everyone looks. How much character and expression their faces had. Every single person on the cast was beautiful, but in a “they look like the hottest person I went to high school with” way. Now, I see teenagers who have perfected their makeup routines (thanks, I'm sure, to social media tutorials), and I wonder when we all lost the privilege of just...stumbling through it all. 

And I think that’s what we are longing for right now: Something that feels real. Content that feels relatable. Simplicity. Kids just being kids: Messing up, being imperfect, caring only about the small worlds they inhabit. Being a teen in the aughts, it felt like your friends, the parties, the music, the Friday night plans...they were everything. For better or worse, nothing else really mattered.  

I don’t know if teens today get to experience this in our digitally connected world. But here’s what I do know: I don’t feel this same sense  simplicity in my life anymore. At all.

I am young enough to remember the feeling of that era in my own life and in pop culture, yet old enough to feel totally removed from it…and to long for a little piece of that world.