Dress - Teenage dress standards
by Corrie Lynne Player
author of Loving Firmness:
Successfully Raising Teenagers Without Losing Your Mind
I had a simple code for dress standards
for my teenagers:
Clothing and makeup must be clean and modest, and nothing can be done
that’s irreversible.
Our youngest daughter tested us the hardest
on our teenage dress standards. At fourteen she went through a weird phase where all
she wanted to wear was black: black stockings, black shoes, black
sweaters, skirts, and pants. Even her underwear was black, and she dyed
her beautiful blonde hair black. Then she smeared on very pale makeup and
outlined her eyes in black. She walked out the door every morning looking
like a corpse, but I bit my tongue.
Dyeing her hair was okay because—as much as
I hated how she looked—her hair would grow out. All the black clothes were
okay because they were modest. However, when she wanted a black eagle
tattoo, I put my foot down. And when she tried to pencil in a death head
and vampire-like spider on her forehead, I stopped her. Bizarre was okay,
but satanic and violent images were not.
Don’t confuse letting teenagers dress like
Goodwill rejects with letting them wear the latest styles, which are way
too sexy. Currently, there’s a belly-baring style that makes buying
clothes for your teenager a real challenge. Most skirts and pants on the
racks are hip-huggers and the shirts and blouses fail to meet the beltline
by about two inches. Clothes for girls leave nothing to the imagination.
Your creativity will be tested to help your daughter dress fashionably
enough to fit in with her peers without violating standards of modesty. Be
careful you don’t get caught up in the “slippery slope” fallacy. Set
specific standards and stick to them: for example, no cleavage or
bellybutton showing, nothing shorter than knee length, nothing skin tight,
and so forth. Your teenage daughter, depending on her sense of self and her body
image, will either agree or argue and fight with you, but your maintaining
clear standards will comfort her and help her resist inappropriate
influences.
