Mom in a bikini, Dad in short shorts. Yep, they were cooler than you.

[David Baxter PhD]

Sweet duds, Dad! Mom in a bikini, Dad in short shorts: Yep, they were cooler than you
by Zosia Bielski, Globe and Mail
Sunday, Dec. 06, 2009

As twentysomethings discover that mom and pops had a life before kids, they're posting the evidence online, with stylin' photos of their folks ? back in the day

our parents were cooler than you.

• Exhibit A: Your dad pulling an Evel Knievel on his motorcycle in little more than short shorts.
• Exhibit B: Your mother on a cruise wearing pigtails and a bikini while stocking up at the buffet.

Twentysomethings who have come to realize their parents are human are scanning old, fuzzy photos and putting them out for mass consumption on blogs such as My Parents Were Awesome; My Mom, The Style Icon; and Dads in Short Shorts. The sites showcase parents, grandparents and even great grandparents poolside, atop muscle cars and in exotic locales dressed in glamorous ? and sometimes cringe-inducing ? threads.

The blogs seem to delight in the moment when children come to grasp that their parents had style, adventures and lives before they came along.

Piper Weiss, a 31-year-old newspaper editor in New York, started her blog My Mom, The Style Icon in March. After years of rummaging through her mother's closet, Ms. Weiss stumbled across a photo album she'd never seen.

?She was in Egypt, Morocco and Italy and she's wearing these mod frocks that she had handmade by an Italian tailor, which she said was cheap then. I said, ?Where did these pictures come from, where are these clothes now and who the hell are you?'?

Ms. Weiss scanned the photos, posted them online and asked her friends for theirs. She now has hundreds of submissions and a hypothesis: ?Moms had more fun before we existed.?