When I was a kid, I liked Strawberry Shortcake, Hollie Hobbie, Tigger, and Sesame Street. I wore tank tops and shorts in the summer, and because it was the 1970s, the shorts were pretty short. They never approached Daisy Duke, though I did watch the Dukes of Hazzard on TV. I rode my bike, made “witch’s brew” from flowers and grass and leaves and sand in bowls and my Dad’s wheelbarrow. I dug holes in the yard, and played hard on my swing set – including putting the end of my slide in my little plastic swimming pool and putting the hose at the top of the slide, and rearranging where the swings and bar and seesaw were located. I filled the pockets of a jumper with pretty plants at school and found out the hard way that they were cactus. I lined up my dolls and gave them all highly improbable names. I shunned dresses because it was hard to play in them. I fell off the jungle jim, got sick on the merry-go-round, and swam underwater with my eyes open. I wore half shirts because I had nothing to show off, and they were in style.
I got a little older, and more sophisticated (you know how teenagers can be). I started liking to dress up – but just a little. Makeup and hairspray. I bought a tank top at the mall that was black polyester with gold lamé in the pattern of snakeskin and snuck it out under my regular button-up shirts because I knew my parents would never approve. But still, I wore jeans and t-shirts most days, even if the color of my socks did coordinate with my shirt. I rode my bike around town even as a teen, till I got my license and a car. And a job. A month after I turned sixteen, I got a job. Okay, the job was well before the car. I did my share of completely asinine things. But, mostly, I was a typical teenage girl.
And then… I watched the fashions change. And not for the better. In my mid-twenties, I worked for Target, and I was appalled by the clothes considered okay for little girls to wear. The short-shorts, short skirts, tanks… Made that snakeskin-patterned tank look positively modest. See-through shirts. High heels in kids’ size 2!
A few years later, I was shopping for appropriate underwear for my eldest daughter. When tweens’ bras are emblazoned with things like “tart” and the butt of the matching undies says “sweet”… And we’re in the kids’ section… I wrote a letter to JC Penney corporate. Never heard anything back. Oh, and all the training bras were underwire and padded. Not long after that, we had a hard time finding jeans that weren’t super-duper-alley-ooper low-rise butt-cleavage-baring. And t-shirts cut down to there. Another letter, another lack of response.
Fighting your kid on the type of clothes they wear is a battle no matter what. But when the child is conditioned to believe that she must wear push-up, padded, skin-tight, revealing clothes… To school… It’s somewhat futile. And retailers just keep putting this stuff out, making modest-but-fashionable clothing outright impossible to find. If parents didn’t buy it, they wouldn’t sell it – but if there’s nothing else to buy…
And now. Now I have a toddler. I saw a baby swimsuit last summer with a padded bra and string bikini bottoms – size 6 months. That’s not cute, that’s sick. And there’s so much pink! Two outfits I remember clearly from my childhood were blue and green, and red and white. I never had a lot of pink that I recall. So I go out of my way to find other colors for my little girl. And, frankly, toddler boys’ sweatpants fit her better than the girls’ – they’re longer, they have elastic at the ankles, and they have skinny butts. Like my tall, buttless girl. I’m not sure why toddler girls’ clothing has bigger rear ends – kids that age don’t have hips per se…
My girl loves to play, too. With her brother’s GI Joe, her Peek-A-Blocks dump truck, a plastic spoon and a baby doll bottle; empty boxes; MegaBloks, and no, they’re not pink. She has girly stuff, too. I painted her bedroom pale ocean and mulberry; instead of being teal-and-purple it came out looking like an Easter egg, pink and blue. Oh well. She really doesn’t care. Her nursery was originally sage, lavender and chocolate. She loves swingsets, bathtubs, snow, digging in the grass, standing on the dog, and chasing the cats. She loves our cell phones and tablets, too – but we try to limit that.
I hope I can make sure her childhood is as fun as mine was. I hope we can skip all the girly frou-frou crap and gender expectations, so she can reach her full potential.
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There are many ways to be a kid.
Robert Fulghum pointed out that if you ask a kindergartener if they can sing, dance or draw, they enthusiastically say, “YES!” If you ask that same child 12 years later, they will usually say, “no”.
She’s fascinated by electronics, water, and anything Mommy or Daddy is doing that she isn’t. Laptops have a special appeal… Probably because Mommy and Daddy don’t let her use theirs. She has a toy laptop, but it’s just not as fun.
Miracles and Madness 