At first I thought Helen Hunt was wearing kittie ears...then I realized she was wearing dinosaurs on her head.....and in another scene she has a giant praying mantis on her head...was that really popular in the 80's? So bizarre.
Sometimes the difference between self-amusement and self-actualization is less than you think.
Gigantic hair accessories certainly were.
Glove slap, baby, glove slap!
Glove slap, I don't take crap!
Glove slap, shut your big yap.
Even as a young girl in the 80's watching this, I knew the fashion sense exhibited by the character Lynn was a bit quirky. People didn't really dress like her, but she did embody what most rule-obeying young girls wanted to become: fearless.
Fearless in dress, fearless in crowds, and utterly sure of herself at all times.
Maybe that's what the costume designer/buyer was going for -- 'here's a quirky person, very much the individual. Let's dress her that way.'
Some of the hairstyles sported by Helen Hunt in that role were also a bit different.
80's was a time of individuality and creativity. It was common to see some bizarre looks and styles. Weird for the sake of weird was very popular. Everything and anything. It was wonderful. It was the first time anyone saw such a bizarre and varied array - Goths, punks with multi colored hair, and so forth. A lot of 80's teenagers and young adults (ages 18 to 23) loved to sport big hair, big accessories, and loved to try a mix of modern and retro, usually something 50's or 60's. They imitated the big pop icons Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and the hairstyles of Flock of Seagulls and so forth. Cyndi Lauper had the craziest styles and young girls loved to dress up like her. I was a small girl in the 80's and what was in was mismatched clothes - colors that didn't match and yet no one called it "bad" or ugly. In my elementary school, Punky Brewster was popular and girls loved to dress up like that. Some girls did like to look more stylish and wore fake jewelry, earrings, bracelets, charm necklaces. The girls I knew who were older in junior high loved to wear that stuff. I didn't know teenagers that well but I had a few teenage neighbors. They didn't wear big hair or anything like that though.
The most bizarre hairstyles I saw in the 80's were a woman wearing a beehive hairdo, similar to the one that Helen Hunt is wearing when she goes to Dance TV studio at the end of the movie. Another woman I remember had hair so long that it reached to her feet. It was like Rapunzel.
They were clearly homemade concoctions to show her character's creativity and individuality. Nothing like that was sold as far as I recall, but I do remember those dinosaur toys.
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