Last week, on J's first day of her freshman year of high school, we had one of our lately-not-uncommon clothing "discussions." Her new public high school has a standardized, rather modest dress code, but because this was a special orientation day, the kids could wear whatever they wanted, and what she wanted to wear was shorts. Now, I'm not sure whether those of you who do not have tweens or teens yet, or who do not yourselves shop at Abercrombie, Hollister or American Eagle know this, but shorts for teenage girls in recent seasons have staged a 70s hotpants revival - only shorter. (Think of those shorts Jodie Foster wore as the 13-year-old hooker in "Taxi Driver," and then mentally lop off an inch or two from their length. You get the idea.) At the moment, the shorts teenage girls favor are little more than bikini bottoms made of demim, khaki and madras. My mother was lucky, I guess, because during my own teenage years, the 80s preppy thang was in full flower, so when I wore shorts, they were almost knee length, covered in whales or ducks, and looked more like something Thurston Howell, III would have worn, rather than the Mary Anne-esque, barely-there shorts favored today.
And so J and I had a disagreement that first morning of school about whether I would allow her to wear her teensy, tiny denim shorts to school. I said no way, and she was extremely miffed, telling me that everyone would be wearing shorts that day - ones just like hers - and that if I denied her request to wear the shorts, she would be both swelteringly hot all day, as well as socially ruined. But I held fast. No shorts like those for school.
In all of these disagreements over clothing that we've had lately, what I am trying to get her to understand is that there are times and places where things like super short shorts are appropriate, and times and places where they are not. The shorts would be great for a three hour cruise around the Hawaaian Islands, for example, but I am just totally uncomfortable with her wearing them to school (or church or out to dinner at a restaurant with a friend's family....) She was annoyed, but she found something else to wear, and off she went for her first day, ready to face her certain fate of heat exhaustion combined with social damnation,
Later that day, when I mentioned to friends on Facebook that I had disallowed J from wearing shorts to school, most of the responses I got from people, including other parents, disagreed with my position. Some said I shouldn't try to be so controlling of a teenager's clothing choices, while others said there simply isn't anything wrong with wearing short shorts to school because that's what girls are wearing at the moment. The fact that people mostly seemed to disagree with me on the issue (which kind of surprised me) forced me to think through my views more carefully. Why did I say no to the shorts? And it's not just that pair of shorts; why do I occasionally put my foot down and disallow her from wearing what I consider to be excessively low cut tank tops when she goes to the mall, or extra low rise jeans when she goes to a movie with friends? These are all clothing items she bought at mainstream stores, meaning they are what teenage girls are wearing these days. I know that I do see other girls J's age wearing these things - and other stuff I also don't let J wear in public - all the time. Am I just really different than "all the other moms," like J says?
I don't think I am a prude. It's not like I am forbidding her from wearing about 95% of what's in style, or forcing her to wear a long denim skirt and prairie blouse. No, I think that if you saw my daughter anywhere, anytime, you would have no idea that she considers her mother's clothing guidelines excessively strict, because she looks adorable and fashionable and wears things that are - as most clothing for teenage girls has been since time immemorial - designed to take advantage of the fact that when we are adolescents, our bodies are rockin' in a way they really never will be again. So no, I am not weird or uptight in general about her clothing. I mean, she wears a bikini at the pool, and she wore a white eyelet, strapless sundress to her eighth grade graduation. She wears skinny jeans and big hoop earrings, and I let her start wearing makeup sooner than many of her friends' mothers. But sometimes, I draw the line at a certain item of clothing, or at a particular way of wearing something. What are the things that provoke my maternal veto? Well, I don't really have hard and fast rules about what those specific items and styles are, it's more of a "I know it when I see it" kind of standard. In parent-ese, that means the only reason I am able or willing to give her on these clothing disagreements is, "because I said so." And as years go by, I am completely comfortable with saying that.
This clothing issue isn't necessarily just a parenting-a-teenage-girl thing, either. I have already parented J's older brother, H through his high school years (he turns 18 next month) and I dealt with different clothing issues with him. And frankly, I now believe that I made some mistakes with how I allowed him to dress, and wear his hair. Poor H has, as most first children are, been a bit of a parenting guinea pig. So I've learned from trial and error in mothering him, and his three younger siblings are now the trickledown recipients of my enhanced, evidence-based maternal judgment. In short, I have always let H wear pretty much whatever he wanted, and in his case, by about age 14, that became the standard jam-band-following-Phish-loving-neo-hippie uniform, with the occasional thuggy item (I am speaking specifically of a brief flirtation with the sideways trucker hat) thrown in for good measure. He also, until recently, wore his hair very long and kept it mostly in his face. I realize now that I should have laid down the law on allowing H to dress like a cross between a homeless person and a deadhead when he started doing it, because this look did not serve him well in all kinds of ways. But even though my gut told me I needed to get more comfortable with pulling a Ward Cleaver and simply tell him to "get a haircut," I didn't do it, believing that his personal autonomy was more important than my personal opinion of his clothing and grooming choices. However, I was wrong. The way he dressed created a perception in others that was no good for him, and by dressing like that, he both attracted and was drawn to kids who were not a good influence. The "look" these kids all wore - including my son - was like a secret handshake, and it gave them an instant, visual organizational schema, just like gang colors do.
( H update: he is now in his senior year at boarding school, doing great, and he has his sights set on graduating early, this semester, and starting college in January. I am really proud of him. The campus we chose for him to finish high school does not allow students to wear any sort of identifiable "look," instead asking the kids to focus on who they really are, rather than what they are attempting to project through a certain fashion persona. Same reason so many schools - public and private - require uniforms.)
Teenagers are trying to find and express their identities through their clothing. I get that, and they need some freedom to do play around with who they are through their sartorial excesses. That shape-shifting through fashion experimentation can be an important part of the growing up process, and completely harmless. On the other hand, when the identity teenegers are expressing through what they are wearing is one that truly contradicts your values as a parent, or celebrates things that are dangerous or illegal, or that compromises their reputation among other kids and adults because it says something about them that people find negative, well, then, I think parental discretion and judgment trumps their need or right to have complete freedom of choice in what they wear. That's where I am with this these days, but that's been an evolution over time.
For some teenagers, dressing a certain way is nothing more than play acting, but for other kids, adopting, for example, a Goth fashion sensibility actually supports and encourages their descent into depression or drug use or other kinds of self-harm. Dressing like the guys in gangsta rap videos might be a big nothing for some kids, who just like to play around with costuming themselves, while for others, it's part of a very meaningful and dangerous interest in a criminal lifestyle. And even if the kids themselves aren't actually doing any of the things commonly associated with whatever specific clothing styles they are sporting, they can be creating an impression in their schools, neighborhoods and communities that is unhealthy and self-defeating. As parents, we have to protect our kids' from their own lack of experience and underdeveloped judgment unti l they "get" this stuff themselves.
When it comes to my 14 year old daughter, one of the things I want to protect her from is the increasing "pornification" of our youth culture. When Miley Cyrus is pole dancing on a TV awards show designed for a target audience of 13 year olds, and the wall-sized ads inside teen shopping haven, Abercrombie features groups of barely legal, barely dressed girls clearly engaged in sex acts with their stripped down, shaggy haired "boyfriends," it's no wonder girls feel pressure to start wearing thongs and push up bras in middle school. I honor and respect the fact that teenagers are indeed sexual beings, and I want my kids to feel positive and confident in themselves as they grow into the adolescent bodies that are biologically destined to be at least a few years ahead of their brains and judgment. I never want my daughter, or her little sister when the time comes, to feel that she needs to be ashamed of her body, or that she needs to "cover up" when choosing clothing. But I also know that there is a balance between parenting in a way that is sex-positive, while also protecting my daughter from the pressures that descend on her to "be sexy" before she's even done growing. I also want her to develop her OWN idea over time of what "being sexy" even means, rather than simply blindly accepting the current cultural zeitgeist that tells her that it necessarily involves dressing like Kim Kardashian and her sisters.
Maybe if all the teenage boys start wearing the male equivalent of the midriff-baring tank tops and short shorts that adolescent girls today seem to believe they are expected to wear (What would that even be? Speedo swimsuits? Assless pleather chaps?), I'll reconsider my position that the items I disallow my daughter from wearing in public are less about fashion than they are about sexist objectification of this generation of girls. But I just don't see that happening.
But beyond these high concept, feminist issues, I also say no to things like short shorts at school in order to teach my daughter that there are simply different dress codes for different times and places. I mean, I wouldn't wear the cleavage-baring, little black dress and heels I wore for New Year's Eve when I go to work the next day, and in the same way, teenagers need to learn about context when it comes to choosing their own clothing. I know my teenagers cuss when they are talking with their friends, but they understand context well enough to realize that those same words aren't appropriate or helpful for use when conversing with their teachers or grandparents. Along the same lines, I say wear shorts-like-a-bikini-bottom to play volleyball with friends at the beach, but don't wear them to stand in front of your high school civics class and talk about the lessons of Brown v. Board of Education.
So there you have it - my shortie shorts parenting manifesto, still a work in progress (talk to me when my two year old daughter starts ninth grade and see where I am with all of this then). Take what's useful and leave the rest. And also, be sure to leave a comment below, letting me know your own thoughts on all of this..
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