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Thick, bleached stripes in stark contrast against your natural color — the opposite of subtle. Chunky highlights ruled the late '90s and early 2000s, applied at sleepovers with box dye and a plastic cap, and every 2003 yearbook photo proves it.
Short hair gelled into stiff spikes with the tips bleached pale blond — the signature boy-band-era men's look. If a guy on TRL had it, so did half the boys at your school.
The screaming-yellow tube in the drugstore hair aisle that promised — and delivered — spikes that could survive a school day, gym class, and a thunderstorm. Schwarzkopf's göt2b Glued was industrial adhesive masquerading as styling product, and every spiked, flipped, faux-hawked head of the 2000s knew it on sight.