I’m not certain exactly when the hem lines on the girls’ dresses started to get shorter. I think it was Junior High though. I can remember as the girls started to go to dances, the first dresses they started out wearing had to meet Dad’s approval and I can hear him in my mind…too short…too short, where’s the rest of the dress?
There were many times the girls had to go back to the drawing board when it came to their choices of what to wear. Their Mother, however, didn’t seem to be as vigilant when it came to the whole short skirt thing because when she would take them shopping they would come home with some things that frankly made my jaw drop. You know these kids are exposed to so much R rated content so young, I just don’t think they feel the same about revealing flesh as people of my generation do. To us it’s shocking to see someone under the age of 15 in a provocative, sexy get up, it just doesn’t compute. To these guys, I really have come to understand it doesn’t mean the same thing. They have become anesthetized to nudity and sexually explicit content. It’s sad, but it’s the world we are bringing them up in.
Now back to the kids’ Mother. At around the age of 12 I think, she took the girls to Pink, which I like, but it’s really just a lingerie store for teenagers, let’s be honest. Anyway, our oldest twin all of a sudden starts to want to do her own laundry so knowing something was up, I inquired. Turns out she didn’t want her Dad to know that she was now wearing thong underwear. She’s 12, I am shocked. I asked why in the world…and she said her Mother bought them for her. Good lord. So that’s when I figured out when it comes to the opinion of what is and isn’t appropriate for young tween girls to wear, we were on different playing fields.
The years roll on, the dances keep coming and so do the boys, the first boys the girls brought around don’t really even count because they seemed to be incapable of speaking so I’ll dismiss them and call them practice boys. Dress rehearsals… Ha, I crack myself up! Anyway, one of our girls started having boyfriends before the other one. Her choices were interesting. Her choices seemed to be blind to race or social economic status. That I actually respected. None of the guys she saw when she was in Junior High were of interest to us because we saw so little of them and when we did they had no clue how to interact with adults. Our other daughter was quite certain she would live her whole life with no boy ever being interested in her; an old maid. I laughed at her at the time, assured her she was wrong. She hasn’t disappointed.
The occasions for dresses became let’s see…prom, weddings, winter formal, birthday parties. One of our girls, the cheer leader, even when she was little had a bit of the exhibitionist in her. She’d prance around the house half dressed most of the time, particularly proud of her flat tummy and long legs. We all got it, she had a cute figure. This was all particulary annoying because her sister struggled with weight and we all knew that…so we couldn’t help see this behavior as in her sister’s face. It wasn’t nice of her and I began to wonder if she was going to be one of those “mean” girls. To his credit her Dad used to bark at her all the time to go get some clothes on! Each time she would shop for a dress she would gravitate to the little strapless short numbers. I was able to moderate with both girls the first dance or two, helping them make choices that were, I think, age appropriate yet still really pretty and current. I think show off girl got wise to parental interference by starting to shop on-line for her dresses. I kept telling her how risky it was. I prefer to be able to actually try something on, plus what if something doesn’t ship on time, or it doesn’t fit and you have no time to get another dress? She doesn’t seem phased and has purchased almost all her special occasion dresses this way without disastrous results, yet. However, I’m sure not coincidently, what this has done is take the whole Dad approval thing out of the equation. This way he’s left no time to give his opinion and have her change the dress. She thinks we’re stupid, but we know her game. There were a couple of dresses, one in particular that made even me cringe; you put that kind of skirt on legs the length of hers with those dad gummed 6 inch heels she wears and oh man, it sure looks short. That time even I had to comment that she looked like she was in a shirt and forgot her pants. For the most part as she’s gone through High school though, her choices of dress have actually become, for the most part, more sensible. Daughter two has a different figure than her sister and just had to learn which cuts looked best on her. She always chose sensible lengths and in fact was on our side when it came the the short length of her sister’s dresses. Now, funny enough, as this one has gotten older, she’s paired down a bit and keeps getting taller and her dress length is getting shorter. She’s wanting to show off her body a bit I think and that’s somewhat understandable. She is our late bloomer. This last winter formal, she tried on her dress for me and I about fell over. She looked good. I had just never seen her dress like that before. My husband has taken a giant step back on this whole deal. The girls are now 17. I think he’s just of the opinion that he has to turn loose sometime. All the young ladies of this generation are dressing this way and as long as it isn’t too far over the top (no visible cleavage and at least some coverage of the hind quarters) I think he figures it is what it is.
Now let’s talk about the crazy boyfriends again. As the girls started to have more “serious” boyfriends, these dances became all about timing. If they fell on a night when they were getting along with the boy, ok…if not, drama.
One time our oldest twin was going with a narcissistic Senior, a baseball player who at the last minute, after leading her down the garden trail, informed our daughter he was taking someone else to the dance. He actually did this to her twice. What a creep. Publicly humiliated, I think she rebounded well. She ended up being accompanied by the Student body president. They made a handsome pair that night. Crazy boy friend number one has since moved away to go to college and play ball and to this day still tries to reinsert himself into our daughter’s life. Don’t think so, buddy. Right there to pick up the pieces of her broken heart was crazy boy friend number two. We really liked this kid, he really has many good qualities; it became apparent though that he had major insecurities. They went to his Senior prom together and it was the biggest night of her life thus far, they looked awesome! We sort of figured when he went to college and was surrounded by all those pretty little co-eds without curfews that his head would turn and we’d be scooping our daughter off the floor again. Not so. Actually what happened was quite the opposite and he ended up being such a jealous and possessive person, it drove our daughter away. That relationship did not end well. After countless long phone calls and sleepless nights for both of them, he actually boxed up everything she had ever given him including his senior graduation gift which was a home made scrap book she worked really hard on…put it in a box and left it one night in our driveway. It wasn’t pretty and we were all left kind of sad. He has so much potential, but if he doesn’t get a grip on his emotions he’ll be no good for anyone, least of all himself. This daughter has gone quite a while unattached after that deal. She went to this last winter formal with a fellow she said was just a friend. He seemed very nice, it was a light hearted daughter who left our house that night to go have some fun and she did. As I had predicted and shared with her prior to that night, I was willing to bet this would go down as the most fun dance she’d been to. I knew this had been the case for me at that age, different story but same outcome. I’m glad it turned out that way for her too. He isn’t a crazy boy friend. She’s sort of interviewing a guy now for the boy friend position. I think and hope that she’s learned a little bit about what some trouble signs may be in a relationship and use that knowledge to steer clear of full blown trouble for the remainder of her days.
Other daughter goes stag or with a group of girls to her first few dances and was set up with a boy for last winter formal. They posed for pictures, but probably ditched each other once they actually got to the dance. She had a boyfriend as she called him, I called him card board. He was a player as it turns out…crazy boyfriend. Then she brought home a guy who had good manners, got along with us all but showed signs of that insecurity thing along the lines of constantly saying things to get our daughter to affirm her feelings for him, you know, like I’m not good enough for you…oh yes yes you’re the greatest…I’m just trouble, you should stay away from me….oh no..you’re the one for me…you don’t really care about me…oh yes yes I do, you’re my everything…you know the type. Drove her away and unfortunately into the arms of the next crazy boyfriend. So as the dress length went up for her, here comes this next guy. A Senior, she was so excited about that. This was the one who just knew she was going to be the old maid. We should have known this wasn’t going to go well, their initial meeting was on the sly behind the back of Mr Pitiful me, at a park unbeknownst to us. Not a good way to come into this family. This guy was polite, interacted with the rest of the family but alas another guy riddled with insecurities and this one ended no better than her sister’s experience. We found out later, from his Mother, that this past winter formal was the first dance this guy had been to. He was a Senior. Knowing what we later found out about his level of instability…well let’s just say it wasn’t surprising this was the case. He was jealous and possessive and our daughter was already having trouble with him prior to this dance. I heard on several occasions her sobbing on the phone. Somehow he would get angry at something, she would apologize over and over and over then beg her way back into his heart…it began to piss me off for her. One night my Mother was here and we decided for fun that we’d order pizza from the place this guy worked and of course he arranged to deliver. I made nice, paid him, over tipped him and tried to say goodbye at the door like a normal pizza delivery. No dice. He sort of made his way in past me saying can Pizza man come in for a minute? He came in, looked around, spoke to everyone, then left. I know now, that really he just wanted to see who belonged to the car in our driveway. Once he saw it was my Mother and not some other guy I guess, he was satisfied. So he is the first guy to actually ask her to a dance and she was so happy. She did the hair, the nails, the dress, the shoes. I hate that her first experience ended this way. I kind of had a feeling this wasn’t going to be great when she asked me the morning of the dance at breakfast what they should do about pictures and where and when they should go to dinner. I guess I thought geez…shouldn’t he take the reins here? Anyway, the night unfolded badly. I write about it in my post “Save the last dance for anyone else but me”. He actually broke up with her at the dance, walked out and everyone knew it. What a jerk. After much a do by him, and his entire family (except his horribly hen pecked Father from what I could see) and my Husband blocking his phone number and his family member’s numbers from our daughter’s phone, we’re rid of yet another crazy boyfriend. He exited just as poorly as he entered. The girls car has been broken into and their wallets stolen and their car damaged since that break up so I’m not 100% sure we’ve heard the last of this last crazy one.
I’m not here to say I don’t think our girls play a part in the creation of the whole crazy boyfriend thing. I think they haven’t made great choices. I think they weren’t savvy enough to recognize signs of trouble when they saw them. I think they forgave when they shouldn’t have. I think one, in the beginning, enjoyed the whole making her guy jealous thing and of course that backfired big time; hopefully she learned you don’t play into someone’s insecurities and push those buttons purposefully. That’s not nice and it’s not smart. Our other daughter has developed a bad habit of looking for her next relationship while in the current relationship. So if she chooses a guy who already happens to lack self assurance, she sure isn’t helping the situation by some of the things she has done. And as we’ve seen, it can all certainly backfire can’t it?
Lessons learned.
I’m not sure. Ha ha!
I’m glad I had a boy.
Teenaged girls take a lot of work and ours are no exception.
As your kids get older the consequences for their actions of course become greater. If I had it to do again, I would have sat with our girls and talked to them about the importance of pre-screening boys they elect to bring home. This is our home, and if we get a crazy nut in here, it exposes the entire family.
I’ve asked the girls why they think that so often girls pick “broken boys”. I hope they learn to make better choices, and land on guys who treat them well, above all else. I don’t care what his address is, how much money his Mom and Dad have, what kind of car he drives, none of that matters to me and down deep it shouldn’t matter to them either. All the crazy boys drove really nice cars.
As the skirts get shorter and your daughters start to make choices, it’s a balance between letting go and holding on. I am very thankful that my husband refuses to just turn the girls loose, in fact he has tightened the reigns in some ways. I think it’s a good thing for them and sends the message to other kids that there is someone in charge at our girls’ house and he pays attention. I don’t think the boys really want to test the degree to which these girls’ Father will defend them.
Your kids have to be allowed to make choices and they have to be allowed to flop and fail; otherwise they won’t have the chance to really mature. You just have to hope you’ve given them the basics and enough respect for others and self regard that they make the best decisions they can.
What’s that saying…if it ain’t broke don’t fix it? I think when it comes to these boys maybe the saying should be if it is broke, walk away quickly, don’t look back and throw your wrench just as far as you can!
Good step mom
