What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?

What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111801778.html
http://tinyurl.com/ex83c

By Patricia Dalton
Sunday, November 20, 2005; B01

I heard about it in my kitchen before I read about it in the newspaper:
After visiting the expanded Tysons Corner Center this fall, my
23-year-old daughter said, "You won't believe how weird Victoria's
Secret's gotten: It's all red and black with a bunch of mannequins that
look like porn stars." Some shoppers were so outraged at the raunchy
lingerie display that they threatened to boycott the store; others just
yawned.

I've been hearing a variation on this theme with increasing frequency
in my office. Mothers voice distress over the suggestive clothing their
teen and preteen daughters are wearing, inside and outside the house.
In fact, conflict over clothing is what prompts them to come in for
family therapy. The daughters themselves may be imperious or sullen,
but almost all employ the everyone-is-doing-it excuse. And an awful lot
of girls are doing it.

Women once complained about being reduced to sex objects. Now, their
daughters are volunteering to be sex objects. And while parents
register disapproval, they often fail to take action. In that failure,
they unwittingly place their daughters at risk by allowing them to
bypass girlhood. When a daughter moves straight from little girl to
woman, she's playing a role rather than gradually learning to live her
own life. These girls may seem whole, but they aren't. There is often a
lost girl inside.

Many who endorse provocative styles of dress have picked up on the
liberal message of the '60s and taken it a step further. They see those
who express distaste over the sexually explicit as hung up,
old-fashioned. One young woman pointed out to me, "It's almost
politically incorrect to say that something is inappropriate."

One of the most unsettling sights today is that of little girls dressed
in teeny bikinis at the pool, or walking around in low-rise pants with
midriff tops, or in heels and skimpy dresses, sometimes complete with
makeup and jewelry. And this doesn't occur only at dance recitals. It
can be everyday attire.

Have we come a long way, baby? The Lennon Sisters and Gidget of
girlhoods gone by are light-years from today's Britney Spears and
Lindsay Lohan. The bridge between these two generations of stars was
Madonna -- before she had children and cleaned up her act. Sometime
over the past couple of decades, while we adults weren't looking, class
went out and trash came in.

Think back a few decades (if you're old enough) to the arrival of the
pill, the first reliable method of birth control. What we're witnessing
now is the fallout from the subsequent sexual revolution. Gone was the
fear of unwanted pregnancy. Along came the assumption that sexual
problems were the result of hang-ups, and that relaxing the strictures
and structure would free everyone to live in a kind of sexual utopia.

Well, the so-called utopia is here, and older women have reason to be
alarmed at the dangers young women are bringing upon themselves. These
girls are treated as objects just as surely as in any earlier
generation. It's pre-liberation treatment in post-liberation disguise.
"Turn back before it's too late!" we want to warn them -- because what
awaits them is not Prince Charming. It is more likely to be loneliness
and regret.

For some reason, though, many adult women are failing to follow the
instincts they've relied on for eons to protect themselves and their
daughters. No longer are there common standards of dress and behavior
-- which parents, schools and society used to work together to enforce.
In my high school, we wore uniforms; your skirt had to touch the floor
when you knelt -- and the teachers checked! Parents are left to fight
it out, from neckline to hemline, with their teenage daughters.

Mothers who come into my office frequently express doubt about their
own judgment, not knowing where to draw the line when their daughters
dress provocatively. Girls, meanwhile, freely admit that they are only
aping what they see in the media. One young woman told me, "I love 'Sex
and the City,' but I know it's contributed" to the problem. "Desperate
Housewives" does, too.

It's hardly surprising: Jessica Simpson and her husband agreed to have
an MTV camera record virtually their every move as newlyweds. Paris
Hilton unwittingly personifies the harm that women do to themselves and
their capacity for intimacy when she says: "My boyfriends always tell
me I'm sexy. Sexy, but not sexual." The lights are on, but there's
nobody home.

When I see little kids dressed like vamps, I'm reminded of the words of
author Marie Winn in her 1981 book "Children Without Childhood": "The
age of protection has ended." She described the research of the
Austrian animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz regarding what he called
neotenic characteristics in the young of various species and the
purpose they serve. In children, these characteristics include outsized
heads and eyes, and short, rounded bodily proportions. Lorenz
hypothesized that these traits function as built-in "releasing
mechanisms," eliciting nurturing, protective responses from adults.

Parents -- sometimes without even realizing it -- put their daughters
at risk when they camouflage these features by allowing them to dress
in adult ways. Such dress prompts the child to imitate adult female
behavior that she doesn't understand. This can short-circuit normal
development. It can also encourage older children and adults to relate
to these young girls as sexual beings, sometimes with tragic
consequences.

My younger sister told me a story about visiting the home of friends
when the teenage daughter's date arrived. The daughter came downstairs
in a T-shirt that read, "Strippers do it with poles." The parents
seemed nonplussed; it was the boy who said to them, "You're letting her
go out of the house in that ?"

Some parents are just misguided when it comes to monitoring their
daughters' dress. I will be the first to admit that mental health
experts have contributed to the problem. A good example is the school
of thought once prevalent among psychologists that even young kids need
to have a voice in all decisions that affect them -- with the corollary
that, if they marshal a particularly good argument, they can often get
what they want. Another approach is to give children two choices,
rather than telling them what they have to do. But my personal favorite
is the zany idea that parents should never say "No," because it would
be too negative! It isn't surprising that they also have a tough time
telling their daughters, "You're not going out of this house in that
outfit. End of subject."

Another even bigger problem I see is indecision: Parents lack
confidence in their instincts and in their judgment. Previous
generations had no trouble making hard and fast rules. Parents in those
days looked like and conducted themselves as adults and role models;
kids and teenagers wanted to grow up and get the perks of adult life as
soon as possible. Therapists see the inverse today. There are lots of
parents who are uncomfortable with their grownup role and want to be
young again; their kids don't want to grow up, or wish to postpone it
as long as possible.

There are definitely cases I see in which girls imitate their mothers'
sexy style of dress, with their mothers' blessing. (Although there was
one high school girl who confided that she was glad she didn't have a
mother who looked like Goldie Hawn -- too tough an act to follow!) But
the majority of mothers want their daughters to dress more
conservatively but are afraid to take their daughters on. Fathers, too.

They make the mistake of thinking that a good relationship is largely
conflict-free. One mother said to me, "I hate to rock the boat when
she's a teenager; we got along so well when she was little." They don't
want a child who complains about them to her friends and the rest of
the world on her blog.

I've polled a number of therapist colleagues, and virtually everyone
agreed: We almost never see autocratic, dictatorial parents today; it
is far more common to see parents who have relinquished power, and kids
who have assumed it. Which makes for very unhappy young people. They
are petulant and angry; they lack respect for their parents because
their parents haven't inspired respect through real leadership.

Without that leadership, kids have trouble recognizing lines of
propriety. Boys don't know where the line is and where to stop; and
girls -- or gurrrrrrrrls, as the new terminology puts it -- who have
become accustomed to their deliberately outr styles of dress, are
displaying increasingly aggressive sexual behavior.

One example of this aggression recently played out at a local private
school, where it was charmingly dubbed "robbing the cradle." Two senior
girls each solicited a freshman boy for sexual purposes by wearing a
T-shirt to school with "I want (boy's name)" on it. It created quite a
stir and bestowed some status on the younger boys in question. It also
puts parents on alert that in our sexually predatory culture, parents
also need to worry about safeguarding their boys from the girls, not
just vice versa.

The girls who dress the most outrageously are often those most starved
for adult male attention, first and foremost from their fathers. This
happens most commonly with girls whose fathers have disappeared from
their lives, perhaps following a divorce, or because their workaholic
schedules leave them little time for their children. Children who are
raised with attention and affection tend to identify with and admire
their parents. This identification is the basis for both discipline and
the transmission of values. Without it, parents can't do their job.

I often recommend that fathers be the parent to take the lead in
setting limits on their daughters' dress, because opposite sex
offspring typically cut that parent more slack. Fathers can say,
"Honey, you can't wear that. I know teenage boys -- I was one!" A dad
like this is looking out for his daughter and treating her as someone
special.

While talk and reality shows and tell-all memoirs thrive and a majority
of teenagers today say that they would like to be famous, there are
still girls and women who value privacy and modesty. They reveal a
quiet confidence, a different kind of glamour. Even famous people can
be modest. They don't have to be Britney Spears. Take Audrey Hepburn,
who has no counterpart today. Part of her allure lay in the way she
embodied humility and modesty. Yet she also conveyed spirit and
originality and a strong sense of self.

Even though she worked in an industry that often promotes commonness,
she was an uncommon woman. Even though our daughters live in a culture
that clearly promotes coarseness, they can be uncommon, too.

Author's e-mail:

Patricia Dalton is a clinical psychologist in private practice in
Washington.

I feel for those with daughters. And I wish I had a solution.

When in shopping malls, and the like, I am frequently heard saying
under my breath... "That is why I don't have girls." (I have two
toddler sons.) I can't believe what I am seeing very young girls
wearing. 15 years ago, you would not have seen a hooker dressed so
provocatively. Don't think I am some old lady (well, it depends on
who you ask I just turned 30.

IMO, it is such poor taste, but that is beside the point. I will agree
that it has to do with they way that these girls today want to be
portrade. There is a very clear message that they are sending out...
and they know it. They have such poor self-esteem that the only thing
they think that can get them attention (from anyone... parents,
teachers, peers, strangers, society, etc...) is through shock value and
sexual teasing.

You are so right fgoodwin, when you said: "What awaits them is not
Prince Charming. It is more likely to be loneliness and regret. "

Too bad that it will be probably too late when most of them figure that
out.

Mom of 2 Boys! wrote:

I feel for those with daughters. And I wish I had a solution.

When in shopping malls, and the like, I am frequently heard saying
under my breath... "That is why I don't have girls."
---------------
No, the reason you don't have girls is spermic statistics.


(I have two
toddler sons.) I can't believe what I am seeing very young girls
wearing. 15 years ago, you would not have seen a hooker dressed so
provocatively.
----------------
That's because you were abused antisexually by fundie bigot antisex
parents who believed in the Xtian Sex-model of sin, instead of Jesus'
model, greed and cruelty, since his had nothing whatsoever to do with
sex that was honest.


Don't think I am some old lady (well, it depends on
who you ask I just turned 30.
-----------------
Your beliefs are of a bygone era, time just hastened on faster than
you had hoped.


IMO, it is such poor taste, but that is beside the point.
---------------
There is NO such thing as "taste", your "taste" is no more than a
style both of wearing and of thinking, and you're backward.


I will agree
that it has to do with they way that these girls today want to be
portrade.
-----------------
"Portrayed." And yes, it is advertisement for sex, dress ALWAYS HAS
BEEN!! That is is finally OBVIOUS should not surprise, your pretense
that it surprises actually doesn't reflect your surprise but your own
brainwashed antisexuality. These girls will be equally scandalized,
if their minds are then outmoded, by their daughter going on dates
NAKED!


There is a very clear message that they are sending out...
and they know it.
------------------
Yes, they know they are advertising for sex, they are not deluded,
it's too OBVIOUS for that, they regard your antisexuality as stupid
and tired and your concerns meaningless.


They have such poor self-esteem
---------------------
Thinking that would be a big mistake on your part. If you ask them
what they want they will tell you, they want SEX, they want to GET
****ED, they enjoy sex, oral and vaginal sex, and they WANT MORE OF
IT IN THEIR LIVES! Now teens that have sex know better than toadmit
that to their parents, JUST LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT NOT TO EVEN BOTHER TO
TRY TO TELL *YOUR* PARENTS! They just shake their heads at how lame
and stupid you are!


that the only thing
they think that can get them attention (from anyone... parents,
teachers, peers, strangers, society, etc...) is through shock value and
sexual teasing.
-------------------------
They have little interest in your "attention", they like to scandalize
you, because you're easy to freak, but their attentions are elsewhere.


You are so right fgoodwin, when you said: "What awaits them is not
Prince Charming. It is more likely to be loneliness and regret. "
-------------------------
Don't diddle yourself that way, they won't be any different than
people your age who wore their skirts a little higher or bikini
tops in summer.


Too bad that it will be probably too late when most of them figure that
out.
------------------------
They've already figured that out, and they have more and better sex
than you do. What surprises me is that you're of my daughter's
generation and that she would laugh her ass off at the way you
carry on. She was a rampant pro-sexual when you were still being
brainwashed by your reactionary parents, evidently. She had her
first **** at age 11 in her room at home, with our blessing.
Steve

In article , R. Steve Walz says...


That's because you were abused antisexually by fundie bigot antisex
parents who believed in the Xtian Sex-model of sin, instead of Jesus'
model, greed and cruelty, since his had nothing whatsoever to do with
sex that was honest.

This thread has been hereby Stevified.

Banty

fgoodwin wrote:
What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111801778.html
http://tinyurl.com/ex83c


I'm really surprised this printed in the Washington Post - it struck me
as a poorly written article. The substance of the article aside,
there's something about the style that tries way too hard, and I had a
hard time finishing it. With that said, a few comments:


Parents -- sometimes without even realizing it -- put their daughters
at risk when they camouflage these features by allowing them to dress
in adult ways. Such dress prompts the child to imitate adult female
behavior that she doesn't understand. This can short-circuit normal
development. It can also encourage older children and adults to relate
to these young girls as sexual beings, sometimes with tragic
consequences.

This paragraph made me laugh, because it brought to mind that period in
art history where artists painted portraits of children all dressed up
in adult clothes, and looking like miniature adults, not children. IOW,
it's not exclusive to modern day times, and the same result can happen
even with long, modest, victorian style clothing that covers
everything.


My younger sister told me a story about visiting the home of friends
when the teenage daughter's date arrived. The daughter came downstairs
in a T-shirt that read, "Strippers do it with poles." The parents
seemed nonplussed; it was the boy who said to them, "You're letting her
go out of the house in that ?"

I must be really lucky or something. My girls (11 and 13) consider any
clothing with words on it to be tacky. Especially words on the butt -
makes your butt look bigger, too.

My girls both have their own unique sense of style, and both turn up
their noses automatically at anything too provocative or trashy. They
consider Limited Too "slutwear for preteens." They shop instead at Gap,
Old Navy, Lands End and department stores. The eldest borrows my
hand-me-downs from Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, J Crew. She has
developed quite a taste for quality, and would rather have one nice
sweater from Ann Taylor in a classic color than 5 cheap sweaters in
faddish colors from somewhere else.

Neither one cares for any shirt that is too short - they both want
their bellies covered. DD13 does like skirts, but nothing so short she
can't sit in it without constantly tugging it down. DD11 likes to wear
pants under a skirt, because she likes the way they look together, and
it's practical too. Both also love ankle-grazing skirts. And neither
wants any top that reveals even a glimpse of bra strap, or that can't
be worn with a bra. They do wear trendy jeans, but neither one would be
caught dead in ultra-low-rise cuts, because they consider them tacky.

DD13 has been experimenting with make-up for a year now, the rule in
our house being that she can wear it out of the house once she's
skilled enough that mom doesn't notice she's wearing it. She's getting
just that skilled, having learned to apply with a light hand, and to
use makeup as a subtle accent only.

Both girls also have developed an eye not for fashion fads - but for
choosing only those fads that complement their unique shape. And both
are learning that there's greater mileage out of classics that never go
out of style. Just recently DD13 asked if she could get her first set
of pearls for xmas. Pearls!! That's my girl...

So both are on the more conservative, modest style, but that doesn't
mean they walk around looking like mini-adults. They adapt the
conservative classics as their own and add just the right touch of fad
to make the outfit youthful and age-appropriate. DD11 in particular has
a really wonderful sense of whimsy when she dresses, piling on bright
colors, mix-and-matching patterns, and layering scarves to come up with
a style that is completely unique and expresses her sense of humor and
fun. DD13 also experiments, adopting only those fads that work for her
body type, and often adding at least one element to her outfit that is
not a fad at all.... and then all her friends pick up on it too.

jen

shinypenny wrote:
fgoodwin wrote:
What's Wrong With This Outfit, Mom?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111801778.html
http://tinyurl.com/ex83c

I'm really surprised this printed in the Washington Post . . .

Actually, I'm glad it *was* in the Washington Post. Had I found it on
the Washington Times, NewsMax, etc., it would have been dismissed out
of hand. That's not so easily done with a WP article, which is why I
posted it, in addition to the substance of the article, which is what
attracted my attention in the first place.

it struck me as a poorly written article. The substance of the
article aside, there's something about the style that tries way
too hard, and I had a hard time finishing it.

At least it was written by a female psychologist. Again, had it been
written a male radio pundit, it would've been dismissed out of hand.
But since it was written by a female, and a psychologist, dismissing it
is not so easy.

In article .com,
"fgoodwin" wrote:


But since it was written by a female, and a psychologist, dismissing it
is not so easy.

Practice makes perfect. I have no trouble dismissing it at all.

--
Dan Abel

Petaluma, California, USA

Dan Abel wrote:
In article .com,
"fgoodwin" wrote:


But since it was written by a female, and a psychologist, dismissing it
is not so easy.

Practice makes perfect. I have no trouble dismissing it at all.

And I'm sure the pedophile stalking your daughter appreciates that . . .

In article .com,
"fgoodwin" wrote:

Dan Abel wrote:
In article .com,
"fgoodwin" wrote:


But since it was written by a female, and a psychologist, dismissing it
is not so easy.

Practice makes perfect. I have no trouble dismissing it at all.

And I'm sure the pedophile stalking your daughter appreciates that . . .

And why would a pedophile be stalking my daughter? She isn't even a
teen anymore, much less a little kid.

--
Dan Abel

Petaluma, California, USA

On 22 Nov 2005 09:01:06 -0800, "fgoodwin" wrote:

Dan Abel wrote:
In article .com,
"fgoodwin" wrote:


But since it was written by a female, and a psychologist, dismissing it
is not so easy.

Practice makes perfect. I have no trouble dismissing it at all.

And I'm sure the pedophile stalking your daughter appreciates that . . .

Overreacting a little bit, arent we?