Age 13 and dressed like that?
The mother deserves a good, hard, “what-the-hell-were-you-thinkg?” slap upside her head.
What the hell?
Not this girl. When I was a teen, I had to wear clothes within certain limits. I could choose, to an extent, but more than once through my teen years my dad took one look at me and told me to march back into my room and put something on.
If you mean when the parents aren’t around, sure even I chanegd my clothes behind their back. But not in front of them!
Since when is it a good idea to let kids do whatever they “feel” like doing?
Well, as others have already said, this girl’s thinking for herself appears to equal copying others as much as possible. Not something to be encouraged, methinks.
Kids are stupid. They need parental guidance to keep them from making complete asses of themselves, or worse, hurting themselves.
I had a liberal upbringing, myself. I was allowed to read and watch whatever I wanted, and I was pretty free to choose my own clothing, but that’s because I had already proven myself to be responsible enough to do so. Had my selections tended toward Floozy, I would not have had such freedom.
Encouraging a child to think for themselves does not mean complete license to do whatever they please. It means guiding them toward responsible decisions, meaning that if you see the child making a poor decision, you, as a parent, put a stop to it.
This girl needs to learn that she cannot do whatever she wants in public. When she’s grown and has a job, she won’t be able to dress however she pleases-- she’ll be expected to look professional. Her mother should be teaching her that one must tailor ones clothing to the situation. Going out to a pizza parolor does not call for dressing like a whore.
Individuality is all well and good, but it doesn’t play well in real life if it appears flamboyant or antisocial. Childhood is a time when kids should be trained to control their impulses, not give them free reign, hoping they’ll learn to control them once they become adults.
Whew, I’m glad I’m not the only mother who accepts what I always assumed was the mandatory parental responsibility of having final say over what their kids wear/don’t wear (at least when I’m around). Fortunately, neither of my kids wanted to dress to that kind of fashion – my daughter didn’had no desire to dress like a slut, and my son liked clothes that actually fit him instead of fitting someone 200 lbs bigger than him – but had they pushed the envelope the way I tried to with my parents, I’m sure I would have pushed back just as hard as my parents did.*
I honestly thought, looking at this girl, that we have a genuine candidate for early teenage motherhood here. I strongly suspect she lives in a neighborhood near here where such a thing is far from uncommon, so I suspect that had something to do with her clothing choices. But it still bothers me that clothes like that are even made for young girls, let alone their mothers buying them for them.
**Well, except for one time when we were staying at my grandparents’ house and I wanted to wear this purple slinky minidress I’d just bought, and my father had an absolute fit. He was overruled by his mother, who lectured him, “Now, you stay out of this! You let little girls will wear what they want to wear!” And then she sent me an orange minidress for Christmas. Sometimes she was a really cool grandmother. 
*
I’ve seen this phenomena myself and it always amazes me.
I mean, why would any parent allow their child to dress like bait in a world filled with predators?
Having thought about it a long time I could not help but remember all the women I’d watched, who’s marriages having failed, rush into another relationship directly, followed by another and then by another.
Maybe they want so much to partner because their ex fell right into someones open arms, it doesn’t matter. When single mom’s seek active social lives, move potential partners in and out of their lives, openly in front of their daughters, I think it sends a message. Especially where the mother is really more interested in gaining male attention than time with her kids, a rare commodity for a child with a single Mom. As soon as she prioratizes time with partner over time with child, isn’t she communicating that the real measure of her worth is her abillity to attract male attention?
Of course whenever anyone asks any young girl, “Do you have a boyfriend?” they are sending the same message. If I ever heard anyone ask a young woman this question I would immediately point out it’s certainly not an appropriate measure of a womans worth and as an adult they should be more responsible around young people.
I have a friend who was shocked her 8 yr old daughter wants to dress all hoochie mama. She’s truly shocked. Yet it’s clear to everyone who knows her that it’s her measure of her own worth, how much male attention she can attract, being reflected back at her through her daughter. It is so painfully obvious that everyone falls silent when she begins with, “I don’t know why she wants to dress this way…”.
I’ve often fantasized about trying to get male friends and aquaintances to start approaching parents who go out with teenage daughters and asking, “How much? Do you charge for her by the hour? Can my friend and I get a two-fer?”, etc. and when the parental unit gets all huffy, expresses outrage, says something to the effect of, “My daughter is not a hooker!!!”, reply with, “Well, then, why do you take her out in public dressed like that? Obviously you’re advertising the goods. Or is she giving it away free?”
Of course, I’d want them to leave the scene before it came to blows, but really, it would drive home to the parents that it is not appropriate for teenage girls to go out in public dressed like hookers.
There’s the answer to your question. A responsible parent wouldn’t. Ivygirl is 13, and she may want to wear shirts that say “Boy Toy” but it ain’t gonna happen. There’s a thing called “boundaries” and “limits” and that little word “no” that I fear is falling out of parenting vocabulary.
My parents often told me, “Go upstairs and put on the rest of your outfit, and then you can leave the house.”
It worked then, I don’t know why it wouldn’t work now.
Teen girls have seen enough movies, magazines and talk shows to know that dressing skimpy will get attention from boys. And that’s just what a teen girl wants: Attention, acceptance, to feel pretty. The thing that these girls don’t realize is, the attention that dressing like that brings is never good. Before long a lot of these girls are ending up abused, raped, pregnant at 14, or worse, killed by some psychotic pedophile.
And therein lies the problem with a teen girl dressing like a hooker.
Maybe she’s an Indigo Child. :rolleyes:
Then again, maybe she’s saving up for college by cutting down her wardrobe expenses. :eek:
Agreed, and as a minor related hijack, can we smack the parents who don’t seem to realize kids grow?
I’m talking the pre-puberty kids, say around 8-12, when suddenly the favorite pair of perfectly good shorts becomes hoochie simply because the kid’s grown out of them?
Sure, that was your favorite dress honey, but now that you’ve got the li’l pre-boobie fat and you’ve grown another 3 inches, it’s embarassingly short and tight and this is not a look you should be sporting at 10.
Hey, I’ve got a growing boy myself, one who’s sentimentally attached to every t-shirt he owns, long past the time it still fits. So, alrighty then, it’s my job to help him notice when he’s outgrown stuff, sneak out the too-smalls during the laundry process, take him shopping for new stuff that fits, etc. How are these people not seeing what their kids are wearing?
AFG hits the nail on the head here. When I was a teenager I wanted to have a boyfriend so badly. I wanted the attention. I wanted romance. What I didn’t quite have figured out was the difference between love and sex. I didn’t know how to make myself look attractive to boys my own age without going over the line. I knew where babies came from, but I didn’t have human sexual behavior figured out yet.
I’m always afraid that girls are thinking “love and romance” but the boys are thinking “getting laid,” and they want to do so more to show off to their buddies than even for their own pleasure! Girls without supervision get into trouble because they’re speaking a different language than the boys are, even in this sophisticated age.
Heh. When my nephew’s mother (15 years old then,) showed up to schedule the appointment for paternity tests with her father, my brother and my mother, she was wearing a tight little shirt that said, “I make good boys bad.”
:rolleyes:
Yeah.
I think I was the only teenager in the world who wanted to dress more conservatively than my mom wanted me to.
I’m a sloppy dresser. All I want is clothes that don’t show anything that shouldn’t be showing, no matter how I stand or sit. Given the choice, I don’t tend to wear skirts knee-length or shorter, in case my underpants would show when I sit (I have never learned to sit in a short skirt, and there are many, many things higher on my list of Things I’d Like To Learn).
My mother, on the other hand, doesn’t like longer-than-knee-length skirts. I got very angry with her for shortening one of my favorite skirts… :mad:
You weren’t the only one. My mom often urged me to “show what you got.” :eek:
While I agree with everyone here, can we not say, “Well, she’ll just get raped!”? I think we’re smart enough here at the SDMB to know that a woman does NOT get raped because she wore a short skirt, and that just perpetuates the stereotype of “she was asking for it-look how she’s dressed!”
That being said, she will be looked down upon and not be respected if she dresses up like that.
What about when the offended parent calls the cops and you get arrested for solicitation of a minor?
It probably gets a lot less funny at that point.
<hijack>
How she doin’?
</hijack>
Aren’t there any tomboys left?
I’ve worn a skirt less than a dozen times since I was old enough to dress myself.
Well, I don’t know if it’ll last, but my five-year-old is a bona fide tomboy. She doesn’t like to wear dresses of any length because they “might show my butt”; she’s comfortable in shorts or jeans, T-shirts or sweaters or tank tops. She likes to run, climb and play in the dirt. She prefers her hair short and needs to have her hands and face washed about 20 times a day. I keep teasing my husband that she’s the son he always wanted. 