Skimpy clothing isn’t going away, so talk to girls about their choices

Posted in teenagers
by Lorain County Moms

By Cristina Bolling, McClatchy Newspapers

Shopping at the mall recently with her mom, Claudia, and friend Sierra Lee, 7-year-old Caira Moore was on trend in a rhinestone-studded hot pink tunic with matching leggings and Ugg-style boots.

Caira and Sierra love fashion and they know what they like. After emerging from P.S. from Aeropostale, they admired a giant ad featuring larger-than-life photos of “The X Factor” judges Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger decked out in black micro-minidresses and striking provocative poses.

“I like how they look,” Sierra says, noting that Scherzinger’s dress “looks like what I’m wearing.” She smoothed her fitted black top and matching short skort.

Sexy is everywhere in girls fashion today. Training bras come padded in hot pink with black piping and matching panties. Abercrombie & Fitch drew fire from parents this spring when it offered a push-up bikini for 8-year-olds. Halloween costumes for young girls are increasingly sexy, mini versions of women’s costumes.

And the TLC show “Toddlers & Tiaras” earlier this fall featured a 3-year-old dressed in a replica Julia Roberts hooker outfit from “Pretty Woman.”

For girls, even as young as Caira or Sierra, it can be hard to keep up with the trends while not baring too much, or squeezing into clothes cut in styles that used to be for older women only.

So can girls revel in the fun of fashion without showing too much — or driving their parents mad in the process? Experts say yes.

Growing up now

Designers have always tried to push the limits of sexy. It’s been more than 30 years since the controversial Calvin Klein ad in which a 15-year-old Brooke Shields teased: “Want to know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing.”

Kelly Finley, women’s studies instructor at UNC Charlotte in North Carolina, says while it’s normal for girls to experiment with fashion, today’s trends thrust girls into an adult sexual light “that’s not authentic for them.”

“From a very young age, our girls start to focus on how they look to other people, and more specifically it’s become how sexy they look, how hot they look,” Finley says. “It starts to become, ‘Is this what’s attractive to boys?’ instead of ‘Do I feel attractive in this?’ ”

And as young boys turn into sex-charged adolescents, sexed-up clothing can’t help being a distraction.

“Girls cannot be expected to handle that kind of attention. They’re not responsible for it,” Finley says.

Parents disturbed

It’s no surprise that the hyper-sexualized trends leave many parents despondent. Shopping trips can become downright battles. Outlawing Bratz dolls or micro-miniskirts in the home doesn’t mean a daughter won’t seek them out at a friend’s house.

Jen Plym, a Charlotte, N.C., mom of four who runs the parenting blog www.charlottesmartypants.com, says she was shocked when 10-year-old daughter Ansley came home and announced that a friend planned to dress up as a “sexy Red Riding Hood” for Halloween.

“’Sexy’ and ‘tween’ should never be used in the same sentence,” Plym says.

She says she’s disturbed by the skinny and low-rise jeans for girls, starting at toddler sizes. “Girls have enough to worry about as they enter their puberty years. They don’t need the added stress of not being able to fit into ‘skinny’ jeans.”

Michelle Icard, creator of the www.michelleinthemiddle.com blog for parents of middle schoolers and author of a school curriculum about the societal pressures of middle school, says nowadays girls don’t get to gradually transform into women.

“It ends up being a switch that gets flipped,” says Icard, of Charlotte. “You are a kid and then, boom, you are a young woman. It’s not fair to little girls who need time to make that transition.”

Promoting modesty

One group that has bucked the sexy trend is a teen fashion club called Pure Fashion, which originated in Atlanta but now has clubs in Carolinas cities including Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro.

The faith-based group teaches girls to have fun with fashion, putting on twice-annual fashion shows, while “living the virtues of modesty and purity.”

Girls are encouraged to enjoy the modern fashion trends, while often tweaking them to keep them more modest.

Spaghetti-strap sundresses are fine, so long as there’s a shrug on top. Shorter hemlines are cool if leggings are worn underneath.

Raleigh Pure Fashion member Erika Forslund, 15, describes herself as a “total girlie girl” who loves skirts and flare jeans.

Since joining Pure Fashion last year, she can’t help hearing the group’s fashion guidelines in her head when shopping at the mall.

“When I went shopping for my eighth-grade formal, I definitely felt a little out of place,” she says. “I bought a longer dress with thicker straps, and a lot of my friends were wearing shorter dresses. … That night, I looked around and thought, ‘Wow, I have the longest dress.’ But I felt proud of that.”

What parents can do

Finley, the UNC Charlotte instructor, says the most important thing a parent can do is to help a daughter feel comfortable talking about why she wants to wear certain looks — even if the parent doesn’t agree.

It’s fine to say no to clothes that are too racy, she says, but find out why the girl wanted to wear them in the first place.

“The big thing is to teach girls to embody themselves in the clothes,” Finley says. “Ask: ‘Does it feel comfortable when you wear that? Do you feel good, or are you wearing that only because of how other people are looking at you?’ ”

Icard warns parents not to “go around bashing stuff her friends will be wearing or that she is intrigued by.” Instead, talk openly about why you don’t like those looks and ask her what it is about them that she finds appealing.

Fashion is an art form, so if a girl is highly interested in clothing, channel that creativity into sewing classes or fashion design courses, Finley says.

Let girls push the envelope of fashion in creative and nonsexy ways, like by painting on a pair of jeans or playing with different hairstyles, she says.

“Once you start talking to them about music or fashion, you see they have a critical eye themselves,” Finley says.

Setting the rules

Back at the mall, mom Claudia Moore said she takes a measured approach with her daughter.

The Lake Wylie resident didn’t spring for the $49 silver sequined miniskirt in P.S. from Aeropostale, instead choosing some comfy sweats for her daughter. But the girls like dressing sexy, she says, and she’s OK with that, as long as there are rules.

“It’s OK if they’re having a playdate where they’re putting on makeup, things like that. They do that most weekends,” Moore says. “But she’s not wearing it to school.”