A reader’s (Janet) comment on my column Kindergarten Fashion Show really provided some clarity about who is driving the fashion show in elementary school. Mommy, obviously.
Mean Girls are driving the whole thing. But, it’s Second Generation Mean Girls now. It’s the Mean Girls in our memory actually. Now that we’ve become mothers we’re trying to heal our own fashion wounds through our daughters. Or if you were the Mean Girl, perhaps you’re afraid your own Karma will work itself out on your kid. Perhaps you’ve developed a new empathy, or you just want to make sure your kid becomes a Mean Girl versus a picked-on Dork.
Mothers are really the only ones in the family ecosystem with enough power to drive the whole thing. Little girls can have a sense of taste and style of their own, my daughter certainly does. Yet, they don’t have jobs and therefore no money to make any actual decisions about what they wear. Dads couldn’t care less. Nor could they be trusted with something so important. It is also the mother who will be judged if her children look sloppy, unclean or trampy. Duh, all mothers know this. We take this seriously.
All perspective about the importance of a child’s clothing is lost by Kindergarten. Which is why I feel like I’m sending my daughter into some hot bed of fashionistas in September. But, I now realize it’s not those innocent little five-year-olds. It’s their mothers.
I have had many in-depth conversations about the issue of kids clothes with women and every single conversation goes back to the mother’s empathy for her child. She remembers what it felt like to be wrong, out of place, not cool enough, not pretty enough, not stylish enough.
I have yet to meet a woman, whether she had been a Mean Girl herself or not, who hasn’t considered the issue in depth. It would seem parentally irresponsible not to consider the feelings of our children when it comes to clothing.
I don’t really know the answer to this dilemma yet myself. I do know this: if we try to heal our fashion wounds through our children then we will create wounds were there were none. A Second Generation Mean Girl is, I imagine, about 1,000 times meaner with more electronic weapons than the Mean Girl of my day. First Generation Mean Girl passed a note calling me a “slut,” her daughters are snapping pictures of girls in the gym locker room with their cell phone, posting them on My Space with the words, “Porn Star” and an ugly guy photoshopped in.
Am I the only mother who worries that my own daughter has the potential to become a Mean Girl? Am I the only mother who wants to keep her daughter out of Mean Girl status and out of picked-on Dork status, without blending into the wallpaper? Not a single one of those are empowering places to be for a girl.
School uniforms would be one solution and lots of public schools are going that way. Myself, I would like to see all the mommies step back and rein it in. Maybe a national school clothes boycott would be my fantasy. But, that could have unforeseen repercussions, like economic backlash or even more viciousness from those who refuse to participate. If not a boycott of fashion all together, I would at least like to generate a discussion.
What do you think is the answer?
Shoemotional
June 15th, 2007 — Other stuff
While I don’t want my daughter to believe she IS her clothing. I have to confess to a bizarre attachment to a pair of dancing shoes I no longer have.
While packing for my femimother weekend I felt an old familiar yearning for my black dancing shoes. I lost one of them on a trip home to see my parents probably three or four years ago. I had been wearing them since college and had never worn any other pair of shoes out dancing.
They were really high, black Sandy from Grease in the very last scene when she’s turned bad-girl, dancing shoes. They provided me this sense of balance and confidence and laissez fair and sexy that I don’t normally possess. I felt powerful and carefree in them and I really only ever wore them dancing.
I kept the one remaining shoe in my closet for years after the other was gone. I kept hoping, even praying, the other would magically turn up. I’m sure it’s on the side of the road in New Mexico living out a very Jitterbug Perfume
Omigod (so, totally stole that from my friend Rebecca), I just did a search for Tom Robbins and apparently he has written a new book I had not heard about. Wild Ducks Flying Backward
Femimother Must Go On Vacation Alone
June 15th, 2007 — Family Life
By Tracee Sioux
One of the best ways to empower children, in my experience, is to get away without them for a weekend. It sends the message that they can and should be somewhat independent. They will, after all, be going out in the world without me eventually.
It gives their father the opportunity to be their primary caregiver (though there is a rumor going around that he’s asked his mom to babysit while he plays golf on Father’s Day.) Happy Father’s Day Honey! It also gives the impression that I, though I am their mother, can and should take time for my self. I existed pre-kid and I will exist post-kid, and in the meantime, I can take a vacation from them.
I expect this weekend to be quite liberating. I’m going to Houston on a little errand for a family member in need of a wheelchair. I’m going to pick one up and hang out with a good friend of mine. Oh the pure pleasure of a good deed turned run of good luck. The best, absolutely best part about the whole deal is that she has not had children yet. So our conversations need not include children, nor do they need to be interrupted by the demands of any. My appendages are staying home. I do not intend to prattle on endlessly about them. They already get nearly all of my time and attention.
I adore my children, but sometimes after one of them has been sick and we’ve been home all week and my husband has had meetings virtually every night, I’m just plain tired of their company. And that’s not only okay – I think it’s the healthiest part of my femimothering style.
I must go out and have fun and have adult conversation and feel like a self again. I will be back on Monday to do my mothering (and my blogging) and no one will have suffered.
Kindergarten Fashion Show
June 14th, 2007 — Girl Culture
Oh girls, you are not defined by your clothes!
Really, we’re not sending this message to our girls in any kind of adequate way. By the time my daughter was two she was getting herself dressed and had a very set idea of what she wanted to look like. She wanted to wear her sparkly Wizard of Oz shoes every single day. She was dedicated to never matching. I’m all for independence, so I let her wear whatever she wants as long as it’s modest.
By modest, I mean she is not allowed to leave the house looking like a Bratz Doll. No belly shirts and no bum cheeks hanging out of her shorts or skirt. She must wear shorts under her dresses because it’s no fun to “sit like a lady.” No bikinis either. Oh, how I wanted to be allowed to wear a bikini and always swore I would never make my daughter wear a one-piece swim suit. The first time we got one handed down I thought, are there any circumstances where I want my daughter wearing a bikini? The answer in my head was a resounding NO and I promptly threw the swim suit away without her knowledge.
By the time she was three she would absolutely freak out if we suggested she wear something she didn’t like. It got to such an extreme fight about what she was going to wear on any given day that I took away every single item of clothing she owned for an entire week. Well, except for the “I hate that shirt, I look like a boy” outfit that I just kept washing and making her put back on. It’s actually parenting advice I got from a Madonna interview.
You are not going to behave this way about clothes. You are NOT your clothes. Do you think I love every item of clothing I wear? No, I do not! I wear clothes I hate, because that’s what I have, that’s what people hand down to me and that’s what we can afford to buy! And you ARE going to learn to be grateful for every stitch of clothes you have the privilege of owning, I told her as I packed her entire wardrobe in a black garbage bag and shoved it in my closet.
All week long she went around telling everyone we spoke to, I’m wearing this because I’m being punished. My mom took away all my clothes.
But, I could tell by her tone that she was not complaining as much as she was bragging. It was as if she were very excited to be punished (paid attention to) in such a big way.
September is coming and school is going to start and everyone is going to be bombarded by commercials and sales and tax-free weekends with the big push to buy school clothes. Already last year, in pre-school, my daughter was complaining that her clothes weren’t as cute as some of the other girls’, who came to school looking like a fashion show.
My clothes aren’t as cute as Caitlin and Abby’s, she would complain.
That’s not true. Grandma has bought you a lot of very cute matching outfits and those girls wear what their mother’s tell them to wear every morning. They match. You have the clothes, but you choose to dress yourself and you never decide to wear the matching outfits together. You could look just like them if you wanted to. You’re choosing not to. That’s okay too. You have your own style, I told her. She went to school mismatched again, so apparently it wasn’t that important to blend in.
I’m not okay with spending hundreds of dollars on “school clothes.” Frankly, we have more important needs in our family. I picked up a bunch of new-enough outfits at garage sales and a couple of dresses and three pairs of shoes at garage sales this weekend. I hid them and will pull them out when she starts to see all the advertising telling her she’s not good enough if she doesn’t get new clothes.
I spent $12. I’ll probably pick up a few more things at garage sales and the Grandmas might make a few contributions. If I happen to have money burning a hole in my pocket I may take her to Old Navy and allow her to pick one new school outfit with a budget of $20. Just so she won’t feel completely left out of the American Tradition of School Clothes Shopping.
I guess I just don’t understand why a whole new wardrobe is an American tradition. It’s not like in my grandmother’s day when she would save her money all year to be able to afford to buy her kids one new pair of shoes for school. Kids get clothes all year long now, don’t they? Mine certainly get them for birthdays, Christmas and whenever I happen upon them or when wonderful people hand them down.
It’s June, now is the time to decide how much you’re willing to spend on school clothes. Now is the time to give daughters the message,
You are not your clothes. You are good enough no matter what you wear. We are not going into debt so you can win a popularity contest at school. People will like you because you’re a great person, not because of what you wear.
Dear God and Dave Ramsey
June 13th, 2007 — Family Life
Dear God and Dave Ramsey:
Not that you’re one and the same or like you have the same address or anything, but you both live in the money department of my brain.
This is what I look like in the mornings. My eyes are sealed shut with monkey poop and they hurt, the lids are sore and red and the sinuses below them are full of fluid and puffy and swollen. I have to do a sinus wash and take a bunch of Benadryl before they stop hurting and itching and before I can breath. I don’t buy the Zyrtec, which helps more, because it’s a $50 copay and that’s not in our zero-based budget. The generic Benadryl is only $4 and it seems to help, but it wears off in my sleep and the window air conditioner blows everything I’m allergic to straight onto me all night long and I wake up in a swollen, itchy, painful mess.
My baby used to take a bunch of allergy medicine because he’s had a rattle in his chest since he was born. But, the Dr. said just forget giving it to him because it wasn’t even helping his constant congestion. So, now I take him for a lymph node massage and that’s only $10 and it helps him a lot. I usually end up using my blow money to take him to this therapy, Dave. In fact I rarely ever get to blow my blow money.
It’s the allergies. The pediatrician says it’s the mold in our tiny rented house and we should move immediately. Plus, the hay fever from having window air conditioners that blow all the pollen straight into the house.
Oh God, thank you so much for the money to buy a new window unit this year. It was expensive, but I just couldn’t take another year in the sweltering East Texas humidity at 103 degrees, Dave. It really will make you physically sick to sit in a house that feels like an oven all day long. I really would be perfectly happy with this solution if the pollen didn’t make me and the kids ill. Winters are a problem though, as the city has outlawed the use of the only heat source we have because it’s a serious carbon-monoxide risk (as the soot on my walls can attest to).
Dave, we finally paid off a ton of debt, around $8,000 probably. And we had a paid for, debt-free, we-own-him-outright, baby in the meantime. We took the crappy jobs and go without all kinds of stuff. But, I’ve still got a whopper of a student loan. My husband got a great new job with a big fat raise so we can finally make our minimum payments and get my student loan out of deferment. I graduated over 10 years ago. In college, they failed to teach me about how an interest rate accrues but they made me spend an entire year trying to figure out what the square root of something was. We’ve been “paying our professional dues” and have never made enough to pay the ever interest-accruing burden. My husband was pretty depressed that our actual lifestyle wasn’t improving with his new job. Who wouldn’t be?
But, we’re afraid to get in over our heads with a mortgage. So many people we know are in a scary place with their mortgages. When you change jobs, that’s the only time you can cash out the 401K. We want to buy a house. That’s everyone’s American Dream isn’t it? After the penalties and taxes we’d have about $5,000 for a down payment, closing costs and moving expenses. It doesn’t seem like enough. But, it feels like this might be the only time we’ll ever have even that much all at once.
Dave, I know you say that $7,000 401K should stay in where it is and we should save up a 20% down payment and continue living here in this mold-ridden two bedroom house we’ve outgrown. Financial Peace Revisited
Thank you God, for our new mini-van. We HAD to buy a new car, the other one was dead, Dave. We drove the humiliatingly ugly thing around for 3-4 years but it really was finally dead and we bought the van with cash. Just like we’re supposed to, Dave. I have to admit, it really did feel pretty good. I felt like something brand new, only without any anxiety or burdens. It was definitely worth the wait not to finance a new car.
We gave up the envelopes after two years simply because it was ridiculous to carry around empty envelopes, Dave. We spend all our money in about one day – grocery and bill day – then the envelopes are just mocking us, empty as can be.
I haven’t gone home to see my family in two years because the price of gas is too much to justify. Like losers we’re letting my parents give us gas money to come home this year to meet my brother’s new baby. Two of my siblings haven’t met my toddler either. My parents had to pay for the last trip too. It’s too humbling.
We boycotted Christmas with the extended family and buy all our kid’s gifts and our clothes and furniture from garage sales. But, I confess to adding the expenditure of cell phones. I tried to say no, but my husband, well he HAD to have it. He said he could drive the ugliest car without a radio to work for the mileage, but he wanted to be able to talk on the phone during his 45-minute commute and he needed the “status” of something Dave. He needed it. It was a deal breaker. I fought it, I did. But, he deserved one thing for getting a new job, didn’t he?
We also kept basic cable. Dave, you can’t stick me in the house staying home with the kids, trying to get something done without a TV. We don’t even get ONE free station out here in the boonies Dave. Not even one. But, we canceled the HBO so please, no one tell me what happened on the last season of The Sopranos and don’t tell me about Big Love either. I did keep wearing makeup and doing my hair every 5 months and last week I bought Ainsley a brand new package of panties, as she’d been complaining for months. I sneaked it into the grocery fund. We had to keep the Internet for work purposes, but we’re keeping our receipts for taxes. We’re taking the write-offs this year. We also added a babysitting fund of $20 every Thurs. We figure our marriage has to be more important than paying off my student loan doesn’t it? Never eating out or going to do anything fun pretty much ruins a marriage seems like.
So, maybe we’re not your textbook Gazelles going at our debt with what you would call intensity. But, we’ve paid a full tithe – that’s on our GROSS God, our Gross income – every single payday for several years now.
We’ve made a zero-based budget every single month, Dave. And we’ve stuck to it as well as anyone else without a crystal ball can. We’ve kept our emergency fund as close to $1,000 as possible. I’m working my butt off, writing from home, taking the leap of faith, just like you told me to God. My husband’s taking every freelance job that comes his way. And we haven’t financed one single thing or put a single dime on any credit card, Dave. That’s something right?
Most days I’m optimistic and I’m so sickeningly grateful for this roof over our heads, cars that get us where we need to go and my husband’s job that provides a steady enough income to make our payments. I’m a huge bragger about the bargains I get at garage sales and as proud of being thrifty as anyone you’ll ever meet. I recommend the Dave Ramsey program to everyone I meet and I constantly remind my husband that we’re so close, so very close, just hold on one more minute, in 5 years this will seem like a blip, this is just what it’s like on the way up, just be a little tiny bit more patient.
But, then there comes a morning like this one. Where I wake up with allergies so bad my eyes are sealed shut from a moldy house with no central air, and a sick kid that I’m not taking to the doctor because I didn’t put the co-pay in the budget, and I’m having to mooch off my parents at the age of 33 to buy enough gas to see my family, and I’m kind of sick of it. I’m so totally OVER being the working poor and trying to live within our means.
So God, I’m ready for a major financial windfall any day now. In fact, NOW would not be too soon. And Dave, I’m working on Financial Peace, but sometimes I have to admit this feels more like pain than peace and it seriously sucks!
