Apparently, 2016 is trending, and it’s an aesthetic. But my 2016 wasn’t all Tumblr edits, Musical.lys, or Kylie Lip Kits. While the internet’s version of that year was selling girls a pastel-filtered summer of promise, mine was very different. I’d been dragged back up to my hometown of Whangārei – specifically, Tikipunga. Without the internet and TV, my connection to the world was severed with a blunt axe. All I had was my mum’s relic of a USB – a 2009 time capsule that had the most chaotic yet elite tracklist you could ever imagine: DJ Noiz, Wu Tang Clan, BDay-era Beyoncé, Uncle Bob, Nesian Mystik, Chingy, King Kapisi, Selena, Ice Cube, and Electric Pūhā. You know, the classics. But to my 13-year-old self, they sounded prehistoric when Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman had just dropped.
Don’t even get me started on how dry the scene is in the ‘Rei. I didn’t clock the absence of malls or boujee cafes, though – what I felt most was how quiet it all was. But the funny thing is, I soaked in that slowness like it was second nature, and honestly, I don’t think I’ve shaken it since. My teen years in Tikipunga were golden in a way you can’t fake – we lived on a swampy paddock, across the field from my high school, a few houses away from my best friend, with Pehiāweri marae just down the road. At one point, I did the paper runs for all of Tikipunga, and we often frequented Tiki Roast and Sushi Time, which – even after going to Japan last year – still holds the title for best sushi ever. My whole universe was contained within a few kilometres, and the wild part is: that was enough.
So when I dropped head-first into Duds, it felt like landing on another planet. People talking about “fit checks”. Brunch is treated like a full-blown event. Drinking tap water is considered a crime. And all I could think was: I’m in snob central.
Chapped to Snatched
Moving to Dunedin meant saying goodbye to my life as I knew it. It wasn’t long before the side-eyes started. Not the “welcome to Dunedin” kind, but the full-on, cold-shoulder, “who invited this hori?” type. It was like the world came crashing down the first time I said “nek minnit.” My freshness, my Northlander naïvety, my absolute lack of “credentials” this town revered… it was brutal. Suddenly, I wasn’t just a new face, but a walking threat to the carefully curated illusion of their academic haven. Every cooked laugh, silly slang, and unfortunate fashion choice made me hyper-visible, and I could feel the judgment like a spotlight. If someone like me – with fuck-all, a sub-hori accent, and zero insider knowledge – could land here too, what did that say about them? #WhoSaidDat? I’d unwittingly exposed cracks in the facade, and let me tell you, the Dunedin gaze does not forgive.
It wasn’t just the innocent “nek minnit” either. Every word, every habit, every vibe I knew had to be traded in for something that made sense in this new world. But none of it made sense – first came the overpriced shoes (narrow AF), then the salon balayage I had no idea how to care for. Slowly, but surely, it happened. I fell a little too hard for Flo & Frankie, and got pretty carried away in the Tatcha aisle at Mecca, which made my previous “routine” feel like I’d been cleansing with used cooking oil. I said “ka keetz” to my Hello Kitty spray and dived headfirst into the Sol De Janeiro shelf. Somewhere along the way, I got my first and – let’s be real – only pair of Uggs.
It wasn’t the pastel-skied 2016 summer of Pokémon Go (still salty I missed that) and VSCO experience I had in mind, but it was exactly the kind of chaotic, over-the-top indulgence that every material gewl deserves. In retrospect, it totally sounds like the sob story of a homeschooled country freak dropped into the wrong decade – really, we were just a little out of the loop.
Glossed and Bossed
Walking into Mecca for the first time was like being handed the keys to a new dimension. The fluorescent aisles, the testers lined up like trophies, and price points I couldn’t have imagined – it wasn’t just shopping, it was initiation. And not the type that you see in the news. I’d come from the Kmart cosmetic clearance aisle, and suddenly stood before cult favourites like TooFaced and Tatcha, feeling like I’d accidentally wandered onto someone else’s Pinterest board. Everything smelled like luxury, sparkled like promise, and made my tired Nivea blackberry lip balm look like it belonged in a museum.
And then there were the girls. The white girls who did Pilates, wore Nike Dunks, jeans that fit perfectly, and swiped on Summer Fridays butter balms – the full Hailey Bieber-coded aesthetic. No hate, honestly. I wanted to be them. I just didn’t know where to start. Being a triple-brown girl (Māori, Samoan and Tahitian) gave me all the curves, curls, and flat feet, which made jean shopping, hair-styling, and shoe-wearing a nightmare. It was humbling, watching from afar in my socks and jandals, rocking my All Blacks top like it was haute couture. Their world seemed effortless, curated, and impossible to catch up to – and yet, somehow, it became the blueprint I needed.
White Gewl Wannabe
I knew my entry point into womanhood wasn’t going to come from mimicking Hailey Bieber clones. Between my unwelcome Northland ways, my old pair of Red Bands that had seen more mud than concrete, and a wardrobe that screamed “hand-me-down chic,” I was never going to pass for a Pilates girl. I didn’t even realise clothes had an expiry date. Apparently, denim jackets had been “dead” since 2001, and my fantasy of rocking a tramp stamp was met with the kind of horror usually reserved for hard drugs, or worse, dating your cousin. Trust me, I’ll never show my face at a family reunion again. In fact, it wasn’t until leaving Whangārei that I realised just how shallow the gene pool runs. We grow up with the saying, “same marae, say bye-bye” – but in my case, the marae part never actually came up. If a sexy Ngāpuhi boy was singing Kolohe Kai’s ‘Ehu Girl’ to you, you’d forget to ask about the marae, too. Lata bo.
That’s the thing about growing up there – all my lessons, mistakes, and awkward firsts happened in a universe measured in kilometres. But leaving Whangārei meant stepping into a world that didn’t run on Kmart couture, socks and jandals, or whakapapa checks. Suddenly, the rules were different, the options seemed endless, and I had to figure out how to show up as someone I hadn’t been before – lightyears away from the Tiki gewl that hopped on the plane to Duds.
And yet, back in my 3km-wide universe, none of that mattered. Because in Tiki, “upgrading” yourself has never even been a conversation. We’ve got our own gold: Whaea Taua teaching mau rākau in her heels, most of your neighbourhood being somewhat related to you, Kmart couture on parade, slang that makes you feel instantly at home, and tap water you can actually drink without someone breathing down your neck. I’d go back to it all in a heartbeat… as long as I can bring my Summer Fridays with me.
Shot, Tiki.