My mom didn’t dress me. I guess she felt that it was bad enough having to get all my clothing from Dollar’s Worth (a thrift store in Worcester - you grabbed a garbage bag at the door and filled it with clothes - $2 per pound) that she at least let me pick what I got stuck with. My 2 older sisters were super thin and I was pudgy so there was no chance I’d fit in their clothes. But there was no way she was going to get me new clothes so off to Dollar’s Worth we went.
I mostly chose jeans and t-shirts or sweatshirts. I was pretty bland. Actually, that’s still pretty much how I dress. I didn’t get stuck with the terrible fashion sense my mom had/has but I tended to look as poor as we were.
I was lucky with the hair. I have naturally thick, straight, red hair. I usually had it fairly long, until the lice incident which resulted in all my hair being chopped off and kick-started the worst summer of my life.
I did get stuck with the glasses though. MassHealth had certain frames they would allow and I always ended up with the huge, red wine colored, plastic frames with really thick lenses. I was stuck with those glasses until 1996. My first job was obtained for the purpose of buying my own glasses and contacts.
Considering how my mother dresses herself, I got off lucky with her not dressing me. In the 80’s, she wore mostly rainbows or ALL FRIGGEN PEACH!! I hate peach. At work, she wore the blandest suits she could find at the thrift store (I wore one while giving a report on the Great Depression and I won an award for most authentic costume). These days she takes the red hat thing a little too far. She is so out there that even What Not To Wear probably wouldn’t take her on. But, her clothes make her happy so I have no problem being seen in public with her.
My mom wasn’t too bad. I do remember wearing tight purple stretch pants with an oversized yellow sweater, but back then everyone was wearing stuff like that.
I’m sorry but…that is hilarious! Horrible, but hilarious.
The key to my dorkitude was being kid #5 out of 6. Nothing but hand-me-downs and thrift store stuff, pretty much until I was “done growing”. I recall it being a bitter point of contention when all the other girls were wearing the coveted Levi’s cords in baby blue, and all I had was raggedy-ass Mavericks or “Plain Pockets” with iron-on patches at the knees.
At some point, my mom had invested in a gross or so of horizontally-striped navy & white tee shirts (Bobby Brady! Oh yeah!), and we wore them until they were practically dissolving - all the cotton was worn out of the cotton/poly blend and they were totally threadbare. Pictures of every brother & sister spanning at least 6 years document us wearing those frigging shirts. Of course we laugh our faces off about it now but holy crap we hated them and took a lot of shit for looking like total twats then. I don’t think our douchey faux Shaun Cassidy bowl cut home haircuts helped, and I remember really hating the KMart Converse knockoffs.
Now that I think of it, these days we’d be right at home in Williamsburg.
I lucked out in that, until high school, when I was old enough to have some say in clothing matters, I wore the ugly, plaid uniforms to school.
Lucked out, you say? Considering the clothing that my mom bought or made for me, they were an improvement.
I was a fat kid and the oldest girl. Mom was under the illusion that she could put a pattern together and sew well. The dresses, skirts and jumpers that she sewed for me were reminiscent of the plaid seats of a seventies-era sports car. The hand-me-downs from my cousin (eight years older) were almost as bad. The old-lady, polyester pant suits from the thrift store were even worse. And then there was the hair! I had a heavy head of curly, red hair that Mom didn’t know what to do with. Alternately, it was hacked off into a boys’ cut and cut into a mullet. Glasses and braces topped the look off in late elementary school.
It’s no wonder I was among the fashion impaired once I hit high school and could wear civvies on a daily basis.
I spent most of my schooling in uniforms, so we didn’t have much choice, thankfully!
I did have glasses, and braces, and my hair was past my waist and I kept it braided, thankfully no bangs =) I took care of my own hair from the time I was about 6.
I can remember up until I was about 8 years old having this godaweful mustard colored corderoy dress that always stank of drycleaning fluid, I absolutely hated it. The smell made my sick to my stomach. It always got worn with tights.
I had a fantastic red velvet with white lace dress that was seriously party dressy, I loved it. Worn with white tights.
About the age of 8 or 9 she started letting me pick my own clothing.
I don’t even remember what I used to dress in, because my hair was so awful. It’s curly, thick and dry.
I basically was a fat white girl with an afro for a long time there.
I don’t blame any of that on my mom. I remember a lot of screaming and crying with regards to my hair. It went from straight and silky to afro over a few years and poor mom with her beautiful straight healthy hair had no idea what to do with me.
It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that I figured out how to work my hair.
When I was about 11 in the early 90’s, the baggy untucked shirt look was starting to become popular. Well, my mother thought this was horribly sloppy and we had a constant war over my shirt being in or out. Finally, my mother decided to compromise one day by putting one of my dad’s belts around my baggy untucked shirt and poofing out the top a bit.
My mom had (well, I think she still has it, she just doesn’t get to indulge her beliefs anymore because I am an adult now) the notion that if she kept my hair short, it would get thicker. So for years, my hair was short like a boy’s.
I HATED it. I was not a tomboy at all, and I wanted long hair. Like a princess.
The weird thing is, my hair is not thin at all. HER hair is thin. My hair is fine, but thick, as in the actual strands are quite fine, but there’s a lot of it. My mom STILL thinks my hair is thin, and frets about it a lot.
I’m beginning to think projection is involved…
My mom dressed me in lots of thrift store clothes when I was a kid, another thing I totally hated. In retrospect, it makes sense - why buy expensive clothes for a growing kid? But at the time it was the meanest cruelest more horrible thing she could do. I just wanted Guess jeans, mom! It was 1989! Come on!
I was too interested in my brother’s cool hippie beads and beard to notice that my mom and aunt had dressed me up as a girl.
How embarrassing.
As far as day-to-day appearances, going to school? Yes.
Though it was the 70s, she dressed us both as if it were 1955, complete with some strange goop in our hair that gave us the “greaser” look.
It wasn’t Brylcream either—at least that stuff had some give to it. No, the stuff my mom used was like egg whites, it dried quite hard. She special ordered it by the boxful. The other kids used to tease us about our hair and touch it, “Ewwwww… it’s like wire!”
We wore dress shirts, good pants, and wingtip shoes.
I sympathize with the fellow curly-heads out there…my mom had straight hair and had no clue how to help me tame mine. She didn’t believe in girls growing their hair long until they could brush/detangle it themselves so my hair was cut in the same shingled bowl-cut that my dad and my brother wore.
Most of my clothes were hand-me-downs from my cousin, who was EIGHT years older than me, so all the clothes were just a shade out of style. She was also a girly-girl and I wasn’t, so I was subjected to many frilly blouses. There is one Christmas photo of me (age 5ish) wearing a full-length quilted skirt that looks like someone wrapped a gaudy blanket around me.
My mom also had a fondness for homemade clothes and “making do”. I remember my famous butterfly-butt sweatpants (they had developed a hole in them, so instead of ditching the pants she bought an iron-on butterfly patch).
My other major embarrassment was my white chorus pants. God knows who decided that our middle school chorus had to wear white pants, but when I came home and told my mom that, she declared we had bought quite enough clothes for the year. She made me a pair out of this thin white cloth and I spent the year in humiliation, knowing that everyone could see my underwear each time I wore those pants.
Hand-me-downs from the slightly older neighbor kids? Check. Horizontally-striped shirts, the brand with the little alligator on it. Zips brand sneakers? Yup. I did at least have some jeans though. They got worn just a wee bit more than the cords.
Oh, and try being a boy with curly hair. No regular barber shops because (and say this with the usual maternal horror) they cut out your curls!!! Not that she’s any more fond of the buzz cut I’ve had since 1995. WTF, mom, I’m almost 40, you don’t need to start with the “but doesn’t your head get cold?” thing.
YES.
My mom made my sister and I each a pair of something called Diaper Shorts. I believe I was in 3rd or 4th grade. Basically a strip of cloth with ties on each end. Tie one end around your waist like an apron, pull the cloth through your legs and tie the other end at your waist. Like a diaper but shorts. Mine were made of this horrible white hawaiian print.
My mom didn’t shop at thrift stores, but until I was in high school or so she insisted on buying my clothes at KMart. KMart’s buyers apparently went to great lengths to purchase only the most sloppily, shoddily made clothing known to man. We’re talking trousers with the zipper apparently *engineered *to undo itself while I, unknowing, sat at my desk.
KMart also specialized in clothing diabolically designed to look like poor copies of popular, trendy sportswear. I’m not talking about Infovore’s humiliation by saddle shoe in the '70’s - that’s an obvious anachronism that embarrasses the wearer by being outdated without being stylish. I’m talking about sneaker-shaped footwear made of unidentifiable material in strange colors with appliqued decoration vaguely reminiscent of a well-known, instantly identifiable, sports shoe trademark. These were shoes that telegraphed to anyone who was not actually blind that the wearer was poor, socially clueless, pathologically cheap, or all of the above. We lived in a well-to-do community, and my family was not poor. It was abundantly clear to my classmates that I was the child of cheap and clueless parents.
Ironically, my mother was a talented seamstress who was capable of making quite nicely-constructed clothing, and I do, in fact, have fond memories of wearing clothing that she had made because I had begged for it.*
*Including a suit made of a stretchy, sparkly gold-and-silver knit. If I weren’t sure that homosexuality is inborn, I’d say this outfit made me the man I am today.
I had trouble has a younger child–think 4-5ish–with zippers, ties, buttons, and snaps. I couldn’t figure them out. They mystified me. They made me cranky. My mom, however, had my sister when I was five, and decided, well, I’d figure it out on my own.
Of course, this meant that she didn’t buy me jeans. Nonono. I got cloth pants. Ones that matched my top, even. I got stirrup pants, for god’s sake. Sweatpants. Pink polka dotted fucking pants*. Cloth shorts. Bike shorts. Track-motherfucking-pants. Almost everything I owned was part of an outfit. And no skirts
I didn’t own a pair of jeans until I was, like, eleven. I hate wearing anything other than jeans or skirt now. Like, vehemently, oh-my-God-get-me-out-of-here hate. Business casual just gives me a sort of fundamental disconnect. Cloth pants to me–even if they’re slacks or khakis–just seem sloppier than jeans.
*[sub]Seriously. My chubby ass should not have been in pink cloth pants with black polka dots. I don’t care if it was the early 90s. Seriously, Mom, I love you, but wtf were you thinking?[/sub]
Oh Og yes. My mom loved polyester because it was so easy to wash and I had outfits of every color imaginable, all in polyester. I don’t think I had a pair of denim jeans till I hit my teenage years. She also thought I looked adorable in shirts with huge collars and ruffles that would hide small animals.
