Posts Tagged ‘clothing’

 The simple act of buying pants for my kids is pissing me off.   And here’s why.

 My son and daughter are twins.  They are five years old, almost exactly the same height and weight.  So, off I go to the store to buy pants in a size 5. 

 In the boys’ section, it’s a snap.  A few pair of jeans, a couple of khakis, and I’m golden.  In the girls’ department, I have to be a little more on my game.  I have to dodge clothes I wouldn’t even buy for my daughter if she was fifteen instead of five.  The pickings, therefore, are slim.  I persevere.  I find a few cute pairs of jeans with the jewels or embroidery, some cargo pants, and a couple pair of leggings.  Size 5 for everyone.

 Fast forward to later that night, during the “try on” session.  Imagine my surprise and confusion when the boys’ size 5 fits my son perfectly (in fact, they are a tad big) and the girls’ size 5 is so tight on my poor girl that she has to suck in her gut just to get them buttoned.  Some of them are skin tight all the way down her leg.  Most of them are so constricting that she can barely sit down  let alone run and play.  What is going on here? 

 I have her try on a pair of her brother’s jeans.  They fit perfectly.  She can walk, she can sit, she can breathe.  She can do something other than stand around and look like a stick figure.

 Disclaimer time: OK, I lied.  I’m really not surprised at all.  Because I have been dealing with this same issue in one form or another since the kids were in toddler clothes.  The girls’ pants have always been cut slimmer and tighter than the corresponding boys’ sizes.  Back in the day (like, when they were 3) I dealt with it by buying loads of boys’ jeans and having them share.  But as God as my witness, now that we are out of toddlers and into girls, I swear the pants are EVEN TIGHTER.

 My daughter is not overweight.  She is right where she should be, as is my son.  The fact that his pants fit her perfectly and her pants don’t illustrate this perfectly.  And it’s becoming more of a problem now.  She doesn’t want to wear “boys’ pants” anymore. She wants to wear “pretty pants.”  Who can blame her? 

 And I can’t go up a size because then they would be several inches too long.  Crap.

 I’m angry.  Angry that none of my daughter’s choices here are acceptable to me, or to her.   She shouldn’t have to unbutton her pants when she sits down to have dinner as if she is a forty year old man who just ate Thanksgiving dinner. She shouldn’t be limited to just standing around looking pretty because her clothes are too tight for her to move.  She shouldn’t have to roll up her pants and look like a dork, or let them drag and look like a waif whose mother can’t be bothered to get her the right size pants.  Nor should she have to give up on “looking pretty” because she would like to be able to breathe while she is playing, thank you very much.

So I choose the lesser evil, and I return the 5’s for 6’s.  We will hem them, or something.

“But Mommy, why do I need sixes.  I’m only FIVE.  My brother doesn’t have sixes.  He has FIVES. We are both FIVE.” Very concrete at times, these kids who are five.

What do I say?  Size is just a number?  Girls’ pants are cut smaller than boys’ pants?  Will that even make sense to her?  It seems too early to go into a diatribe about my conspiracy theories.  Sheesh, all she knows is that she needs bigger pants.  I am holding my breath waiting for her to tell me that she is too fat for fives. 

I’m sorry, but five year old girls are built like, well, five year old girls.  They don’t have washboard abs.  They also like to play like, well, five year old girls.  Skinny jeans (which most of them are, this season) make that difficult, if not impossible.  If boys can be comfortable in their clothes, and have them fit properly, don’t girls deserve the same?  Am I being paranoid, or is there someone, somewhere, who WANTS my daughter to start thinking she is too fat, at five?

Not to mention that I don’t exactly want her to get the message that wearing tight pants is normal, typical, expected.   Is she being primed for a lifetime of sleazy dressing?  Is this merely her introduction into the world of hypersexualized clothing, a focus on looking a certain way to attract boys, and worrying that any problem with the fit of her clothing means that something is wrong, not with the clothing, but with her?  Conspiracy theory, indeed.

I know I can talk to my daughter about these things, but I don’t always know what is going on in that smart little head of hers, so I don’t always know what to say.  I worry that she is forming ideas about herself, unknown to me.  I know, as all mothers do, what its like to be a girl and have doubts about your body.  And I know that these doubts are, sadly, often silent. 

 That’s why we need to keep talking…..

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Sue Carney is a mom to twins, middle school counselor, and writer with a passion for educating kids and teens about the harmful effects of media and marketing.  Follow her on twitter @targetingteens or on Facebook at Targeting Teens.

This picture came about through friends of Pigtail Pals, Nic and Jenn. They have a friend who was shopping at Target and found this shirt. No sooner did I get a tweet from Nic and Jenn hollering “Has @PigtailPals seen this?”. Whenever I see that come across on twitter, I slowly take a sip of coffee and prepare for my head to explode.

Last week it was a singing, potty training pink toilet with Princesses all over it. *Boom*. Yesterday it was a mother who had dressed her infant daughter in a hot pink bikini and fish nets, and held her up to the pole of a floor lamp, suggesting the babe was a pint sized stripper. *Boom*

And today it was this t-shirt. *Boom* Head. Exploded. We all know how I feel about the Princesses, this is exactly why.  So as I thought about writing a post, it just felt very yadda yadda yadda. Instead, I asked good Pigtail Pals buddy Jenn to write a post. Because she, and her little gal V, do like the Princesses. Below, Jenn makes an excellent point.

And here’s what she has to say…….

My husband and I tend to be a fairly liberal parents. Permissive, if you will.

OK, lets just say it.

Our daughter is completely spoiled.

There’s not a lot that we veto in our house. If she shows an interest in something, there’s a good bet that soon or later it will show up in our house.

Our living room looks like Disney exploded in it.

For a long time it was everything Winnie-the-Pooh. Now that she’s three, Disney Princesses are where it’s at.

She has Disney Princess figurines, castles, coloring books, dishes, clothes, wall decals, every Disney Princess movie known to man, you name it. She even has her own Disney Princess bouncy castle. No, I’m not even kidding. Remember when I said she’s spoiled?

It would be fair to say that, as a family, we are pro-Disney. I grew up watching Disney every Sunday night with my family. It’s a warm and fuzzy place for me.

So it was with great dismay that this TwitPic came to my attention this morning via my follower @VampireSmitten after she saw @posielove post it.

Go take a look at it above. I’ll give you a second.

Got it?

Yeah… so… about that shirt. Oh, where should I start…

My first reaction was an all caps ‘OMG’, followed closely by ‘my kid would wear that over my dead body’.

I understand the makers were going for a ‘You too can be a princess!’ message. However, they missed the mark completely.

I also recognize the Disney Princess are drawn with, shall we say, rather ample bosoms. I get that, and I’m pretty OK with it. It’s been a source of many jokes between my husband and I.

I do NOT want those same ample bosoms superimposed on my three year old.

As I said in conversation with someone about this earlier, I don’t want to think about someone staring at breasts on my kid (fake / drawn / otherwise). The ‘ick’ factor is high.

But it’s not just the fake boobs I take issue with on this shirt.

Take another look at the shirt.

Look at where Cinderella’s waist falls in comparison to the waist of the shirt.

What sort of message is that sending to young girls who are wearing that?

Here’s Cinderella’s waist <-> and here’s yours <——–>.

I don’t want my daughter to ever look in a mirror and think that she should have a waist like that. Ever. Why? Because it’s not realistic. Unless you’re closely related to Barbie. But in the real world? Not going to happen.

So why even put such an thought out for consideration?

As with anything in life, there can be fine lines when you’re discussing hypersexualization of young girls. This shirt jumped over that line.

It’s one thing for little girls to dress up in princess costumes that are falling off them as the run screaming around the house. It’s another entirely to overlay a completely unrealistic picture of what a princess ‘should’ look like over my daughters body image.

When Jenn isn’t busy being a spoiled wife or taking care of her beautiful special-needs daughter, she is running her mouth on her blog, Princess Prose . Her spare time is spent designing, coding, and prettying-up other people’s blogs and websites at Designs By PrincessJenn.