Why, look at you . . .
it’s mommy’s little hooker

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

As a mom of three girls, back to school means one thing and one thing only in our house, and that’s finding "the-perfect-first-day-of-school-outfit."
Apparently one’s entire school career is based upon how you look during first period on the first day. Heck with grades and sports and school spirit, it’s all about the clothes.
As a woman who hates to shop, I don’t know how it is that my girls view going to the mall as an Olympic event. On the car ride over, I always make it a point to play the theme from Chariots of Fire, just to psyche myself up.
The first clothing store we enter is 800 glorious square feet of fluorescent lighting, incandescent tile flooring and the eardrum-damaging screechings of a post-rhinoplasty Ashlee Simpson. It is also jam-packed with hundreds of teeny tiny outfits that entice pre-pubescent girls to spend their allowance.
I won’t mention the name of this store; suffice to say I endearingly refer to it as the prostitute Barbie store. This is mainly because the first time I set foot in this prosti-tot clothing mecca, my immediate thought was that if I were going to dress up as Prostitute Barbie for Halloween, this would be the perfect place to shop.
In the garishly lit display windows, the mannequins are dressed in all the latest styles to give us moms, who grew up on Garanamals, a visual as to what skirt goes with what shirt. In reality, these mannequins aren’t really dressed. They’re more like a third of the way dressed.
Because I didn’t want the heavily made-up, gum-chewing 14-year-old store manager to be reprimanded, I discreetly pulled her aside and asked why no one had finished dressing the other two-thirds of each mannequin.
She informed me that they were indeed sporting complete outfits. She also seemed a bit put out by my question.
"So lady, like, what’s your problem?" she asked in a low voice.
"Nothing dear, my mistake."
Meanwhile, back at the dressing room, let’s listen in as some mothers and daughters engage in the time-honored tradition of a battle of wills that typically begins with, "No daughter of mine is going to leave the house dressed like that!"
As daughter emerges from behind the dressing-room door, her face bright with a confident expression that seems to say, "Hey, I look totally hot, mommy will you please, please, please let me get this?", mother’s expression contorts into a look of revulsion. She recoils at the sight of her formerly sweet and innocent 13-year-old looking as though she’d just left the wardrobe department during filming of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
"Ummm, honey, I can see your butt crack."
"Mom, it’s the style!"
"Really? The style girls today are going for is the plumber-under-the-sink look? And where’s the shirt? Sweetie, that’s a bra, not a top."
"It’s a camisole, mom. It is a top."
"If you’re a backup singer for Tina Turner."
"Who?"
"Doesn’t matter, just change your clothes, we’re outta here!"
Never having been one on the cutting edge of fashion myself, I began to wonder how clothing styles had deteriorated to such a point. Whatever happened to those chaste good old days when nothing got between Brooke and her Calvin’s? Where is newsman Anderson Cooper’s mother, fashion queen and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt, when we need her?
It’s all so different. Remember when a couple of oversized sweatshirts, custom cut to let just a little shoulder peek through, sort of like what Jennifer Beals wore in the movie Flash Dance, was enough?
I say to all us ’80s survivors out there, keep fighting the good fight deep in the trenches of the dressing-room wars. Stand firm, do not falter, knowing that fashion is cyclical and this too shall pass.
Besides, we know that paybacks are a you-know-what, and who knows what the fashions will be when our babies have babies?
If some mean-spirited, insecure high school kid wants to shun one of my girls for attending school fully clothed and not looking like she could pose for the cover of Cosmo Girl, so be it.
I might add that we did stop at Staples on the way home to search for the "perfect backpack." I may refuse to buy skirts the size of premature baby onesies, but I’m not heartless. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net