Back-To-School Shopping Ramble

   It's that time again; time to start getting the kiddo ready for her next school year. Another round of shopping and mayhem. I haven't done the big school clothes shop yet; this year won't be as bad as last year though. She's grown, but we bought a lot of her pants larger than needed, and they fit her now. Undoubtedly, she will need those pants replaced as the year goes by, but I have a little time, thank goodness. I don't have to buy a whole, entirely new wardrobe before school this year. Last year I did, and I was fearing the same for this year.The child that once didn't even reach the tops of my knees is now merely a few meager inches shorter than me. We did do the whole shoe shopping bit, and to my shock, my daughter is now, at age 12, wearing the same size shoes that I am. How big is this child going to get? That's what I wanna know.
  This year will mark the first year that my daughter does not want Tinkerbell plastered on her backpack. For the longest time, my daughter was obsessed with Tinkerbell. She had Tinkerbell toys and Tinkerbell games, Tinkerbell shirts and Tinkerbell movies, Tinkerbell blankets, Tinkerbell posters, Tinkerbell books... I'm sure you get the picture - even when I shut my eyes, I was seeing Tinkerbell plastered on the back of my eyelids.
   These days, my daughter is more into Fairytale and Sword Art Online. That is good by me - I can get into some anime. Of course, that means that she wants anime plastered all over the stuff that she gets for school. Grandma bought the lucky dog a Sword Art Online backpack, and thanks some help from the anime store at the mall and Amazon, she was able to score a few anime T-shirts for back-to-school. But anime themed stuff - that, my friends, is expensive.
   Just in case you are wondering, those of you with small kids or even thinking of having kids, they don't get cheaper as they get older. Sure, you don't pay for diapers, and eventually, daycare, but little girls - not as expensive as big girls, in my own personal opinion. Okay, I could save money by going thrift-store shopping. I do by her new stuff, and I know that this is the pricey way to go, but all her clothes gets handed down to my little niece, so I feel like I am getting good value for what I buy. But you have to look at all the other things that a growing girl needs. They don't get less expensive when you are looking at bras and shoes and school fees (even for public schools, good grief), and a long list of things that no one really wants to read about. I'm not really looking forward to my daughter dragging me around the mall, going from one brightly colored, designed-to-make-your-eyes-bleed garment to the next, all the while complaining about how she's not goth like me (I'm not goth at all, by the way, I just prefer to wear the color black) while she searches for the perfect neon yellow shirt and fire engine red pants. Who taught this child how to dress??? Kids rebel in the strangest ways... Well, school clothes shopping is a few weeks away, so I have a little time to mentally prepare myself for the chore. I like to wait as long as possible, because I'm sure that this kid is drinking Miracle Grow on the sly, and I'm worried about growth spurts. Also, I'm dragging my mom along because misery loves company, so I have to wait for a good day for her as well. After raising two girls of her own, I'm sure she's used to head-scratching, you-want-to-actually-wear-that??? moments herself, so she's good to have along, although, sometimes, she does tend to enjoy feeding my daughter's bizarre fashion choices... Yeah, I see what you are doing there mother, but you're still drafted, regardless. 

Who The Hell Is Designing This Shit?

   Last weekend I took my daughter school clothes shopping; an event that can be hectic, crowded, and headache inducing. Not to mention the fact that my budget is going to be in recovery mode for several months. Of course, I could do the Goodwill thing, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but lets face facts here: I get pissed off just searching the sales racks at JCP. Do you really think I am going to be able to go through bins and bins and racks and racks of discarded crap searching for the diamonds in the rough? I know people who can come out of the Goodwill store with donated goods that would make you drool with envy, but I am not one of them.
   So I face the crowded mall instead, and crowded malls suck. There are rude-ass teenagers, which all I can say about that is God help my daughter if I EVER catch her acting like that. God help her if I catch her thinking about acting like that. As the woman who changed her diapers for the first few years of her life, I can remind her with all assurance that her shit does stink, and if she is gonna be a rude little douche, she can do so with no TV, no phone, no games, no outside activities, and no social life. Good thing for both of us, thus far, she has shown no inclination towards that type of behavior.
   Then there are the poor, flustered moms with screaming babies, and I always feel somewhat bad for them. I was there, so it's an empathetic response. People without kids sometimes fail to realize that a parent needs to get things taken care of just as much as the next person, and you can't always drop everything and run home because your kid is being a butt. Yet moms who do what should be done in those situations (the ones where the kids are just having a hissy-fit and not really hurt or sick) and ignore the caterwauling kiddos, get major stink-eye and rude comments on their parenting skills. Heaven help those moms if they actually try to discipline the kids, because there are gonna be twitchy fingers dialing CPS all up and down the mall. I feel bad for those moms, and I am glad the throw-a-fit-public phase is long past.
    But get past all the people, all the crowds that accompany the mall on a Saturday in the month before school starts, and you actually get to the clothes shopping. Since my daughter is now too big for the kid section, this now means that she has to shop in juniors, which means good-bye standardized sizes and hello to trying every single thing on. I'm not kidding, because by the time the day was over my daughter had a range of pants spanning from a size 0 to a size 3. And her tops spanned from small to large. All I can say about that is: good grief.
    But what I really want to know is this: when did it become appropriate for little girls to wear the type of clothes that are now offered to them? Call me crazy, but many of the manikins that where set up in juniors seemed to be displaying clothing like a see-through top with nothing but a bra on underneath. No layering of tanks, just flesh and boobs. Not what I want advertised to my eleven year old daughter. Then there are the tiny little barely-there tanks, and what I noticed was that a lot of these little girls around me and my daughter were wearing similar tanks. I have nothing against a tank, but I like that tank to cover all of my daughter's no-no bits and I don't think the world needs a view of her belly button. I am sure that you can guess that she has a belly button without actually viewing it. And don't try to sit or bend in some of those skirts offered unless you have shorts on underneath. Why is this stuff being offered to teenage girls? Why are we sexualizing our daughters in this manner?
   I don't consider myself an uptight, rigid person. I don't care what grown women chose to wear; they are adults and should make their own choices. I don't look at someone dressed in skimpy, barely-there clothing, make assumptions and start slut-shaming. I am against that type of judgmental behavior. But that doesn't mean that my preteen daughter should dress in any kind of sexy, alluring manner. This makes her a target and gives people the wrong image of her. And while I try not to make those types of assumptions, this doesn't mean that other people won't. Many of them will, and it's naive to think otherwise. Some of those people assuming things could be predators, and want to harm her, and while I don't believe in victim-blame, I don't want to put out the welcome mat either.
   Beyond some perv seeing her as a potential target, I don't think that these displays cater to a full range of potential customers. Many of these displays would not look very good on girls who are not small breasted and very thin. I think that this sends the wrong message across to little girls. Because really, only the waif-like body type looks good in some of this clothing. So you send little girls the message that to be a beautiful woman, you have to look a certain way -- a way that is not going to be natural for many women because no two people are built alike. My eleven year old daughter is going to be a curvy girl. She is not overweight, but she has a large-breasted mom, and the kiddo is already developing. Nothing but plastic surgery is going to change her curves, so I don't want her holding herself to this standard of beauty. This is not the right standard for her, but this standard seems to be all that the department stores are advertising.
   Also, I mean, for a designer to look at a little girl, all of them underage and full out jail-bait, and to put that little girl in a see-through, made-to-display-a-lacy-bra shirt with a barely-there skirt or peek-a-boo, torn-so-you-can-see-my-ass jeans, that seems a little sick to me. We aren't talking about displaying a grown woman's body here, we are talking a NOT LEGAL, don't go there unless you want momma-bear to cut you in bad places, little girl. And by little girl, I mean any girl under the age of eighteen. Pervert clothing designers.