When the Wall fell, popular culture rose to a new level of social relevance. Wind of Change? More like a tsunami! The Nineties washed over the increasingly globalized media landscape in a tidal wave of catchy tunes, cult movies, TV series and show stars. FACES rolls up the decade – and publishes an encyclopedia on the age of grunge, girl groups, GZSZ and – the boyfriend book.
Today, an Insta-comment is all it takes to profess friendship. In the nineties, teenagers pick up a pen: friendship books are to a certain extent the analog likes of pre-digital youth.
In principle, this seems harmless: favorite animal, favorite song, favorite school subject… But between the hardcover covers of my-best-friends books, trends are defined and implicit group processes take place that shape the pecking order in elementary school playgrounds. Who will be the first to fill it up without their parents writing in? Who will be immortalized at the top? Because of course, it’s the closest buddies’ turn first. And then, in descending order, the preferred representative(s) of the opposite sex. Provided you have the guts to hand her/him the booklet – in an emergency via BFF as a courier.
Then the thrill begins. Will he/she paste a photo? Does he/she reveal the phone number or even leave an artistic decoration? This is, so to speak, the preliminary stage to the “Will you go with me?” love letter; the innocuous questions and the distance of the written form give the first attempts at flirting an innocence that evaporates after the first reading of Bravo at the latest.
