Shaming Girls For “Inappropriate” Clothes Isn’t The Answer
I’m the parent of a fourteen-year-old daughter, so I have skin in the game, so to speak.
She’s had an evolving relationship with her body. When she was little, her body was for twirling, dancing, cartwheeling and generally filling the space around her as she saw fit.
The dark clouds of body shame began to cast shadows at the age of nine when she returned from gymnastics upset that she was the only girl in the class without a flat stomach.
She started covering up with baggy track pants and sweaters, not just for gymnastics classes, but everyday, cold or hot.
She was never going to be a straight-up-and-down kind of a girl and I’m really proud that in her teenage years, she has embraced her curvy body. The baggy clothes are long gone, replaced by scoop neck tank tops and hip-hugging pants.
As with most teenage girls, there’s little distinguishing between the fashion choices of her and her friends. And they carry it off because they’re comfortable in their respective skins. They’re unapologetically, boldly confident. And why the hell shouldn’t they be?
I’m proud of them. But I should also be proud of their mothers, including me. Few of us enjoyed such positive relationships with our bodies. Some developed eating disorders. Others, including me, just never quite mustered the confidence to wear whatever we damn well wanted.
Our mothers projected their own anxiety and unresolved issues on to us which we internalised as our own. We must have done something right if we’ve managed to break the inter-generational cycles of body loathing.
The girls’ pride is a very conscious thing. They know what body shaming is and they won’t have a bar of it.
Which is why some hapless loser copped a mouthful after making a nasty comment to my daughter’s friend when the group were at a bus stop. “Are you slut shaming me”, she asked? Her friends had her back and quickly chimed in with their baby-feminist defence.
I can’t be sure what happened but the tide must have turned, leaving her friend feeling unsafe enough that her parents made a report to the police later that day.
I was torn. Proud of my daughter and her friends for not taking crap from someone trying to make them feel bad about themselves. But terrified that they had been in a situation that was unsafe simply because of their clothing choices.
But I did not for one moment question their right to wear whatever they damn well wanted.
I get cranky when I hear people commenting about teenage girls and their “inappropriate” clothing choices.
I read an article today which was actually a very good article, written by a mother annoyed about only being able to buy short shorts for her daughter take to school camp.
“Why”, she asked, “are teen and tween’s shorts so short?” Her concern centred on the impracticality of trying to run around in them and putting them on over swimming costumes.
The boys section of the store offered more practical options of varying lengths but her daughter wasn’t having it because everyone would know they came from the boys section.
Kids want to fit in with their friends and will go for looks over practicality. Therefore, she argued, clothing manufacturers have a responsibility to produce clothing that meets both needs.
Nowhere in the article did she mention anything about the shorts being too revealing. They were “inappropriate” because they were not fit for purpose, not because they showed too much flesh.
Above all else, she wanted her daughter to feel comfortable and confident in her clothing, to be able to concentrate on having fun without feeling awkward or having to restrict her movement.
I couldn’t fault her argument or her attunement to her daughter’s needs. I share her pain, not only as a parent but an adult female who regularly experiences frustration at not being able to get hold of the most basic, functional items of clothing when shopping.
But I am not a teenage girl but a middle-aged woman I and am far beyond wanting to fit in with anyone else’s clothing aesthetic. I stepped over the line from dressing as performance to dressing for comfort and functionality some time ago and I haven’t glanced back.
I digress — thank you for indulging my rant for a moment. Let’s talk about other people’s rants.
Being a social media post, there were a whole bunch of people who hadn’t even bothered to read the article but thought they’d throw their two cents worth in. Others had probably read it but still totally missed the point.
Words like “modest” and “demure” littered the comments. Plenty derided short shorts and the like as “inappropriate” but not in the way the author had meant. It was an outburst of moral panic so ridiculous it made me want to scream.
It’s not crop tops or short skirts or plunging necklines on teenager girls that are the problem. It’s adults that project meanings on to them that don’t belong there. Children’s clothing is only sexualised because adults deem it so.
Maintaining a link between a child’s clothing choices and the behaviour of others is a slippery slope to go down. You might as well cut to the chase and say she was asking for it.
I see this with a lot of commentary that tries to pretend it’s coming from a feminist perspective but actually has the effect of limiting girls and women — exactly what the mother who wrote the article didn’t want for her daughter.
The narrative of “our girls need protecting”, is but one of the numerous ways in which approaches to sexual assault prevention have gone wrong. How about putting the blame where it belongs? Not on girls, but on the men that they need to be protected from and the societal attitudes that protect them.
Here’s what I’m concerned about: any way of thinking that insists upon girls being subjected to different standards of clothing to boys.
The widespread practice of policing girls’ clothing choices and appearance is far beyond anything boys are ever subjected to. People might think they’re protecting girls from harm but they’re actually fuelling the double standards that embolden violent predators.
Some girls don’t feel confident enough to wear revealing clothing and shouldn’t ever feel as though that is the only option open to them. But for those who feel confident in their bodies, who are we to stop them wearing whatever they damn well want?
The last thing I want do is make my daughter feel bad about her body. If it’s something she’s feeling good about amidst the turmoil of teenage identity, it’s not something I want to mess with.
And I sure as hell don’t want to make her feel responsible for men’s refusal to check their entitled attitudes and vile behaviour. And while I’m at it, I don’t want her to feel that instead of calling them out, she needs to bite her tongue in order to be safe.
The reality is that as parents of teenagers, our control over many aspects of their lives is fast diminishing. While I have very little control over what she wears, it’s pretty low down on the battles I wish to put my scarce energy into fighting.
We need to concentrate our efforts on making people who make girls feel like crap accountable. They’re the problem, not girls’ clothes.
And how about we let girls get on with wearing whatever they damn well want.
