Eeeeeewwwwww, Ike said “panties”!
I am an identical twin. My sister and I were dressed alike until we could do it ourselves (and then shared clothes until we were old enough to shop for them ourselves. Same haircuts, too, until I took the initiative and got a freind in high school to lop mine off and my sister left hers long). Don’t do it. I LOATHED this. As a twin your identity as an individual is already precarious enough. Many people don’t really care which kid you are anyway, and giving them extra reason to confuse you and not bother differentiating just worsens it (and I think a lot of twins end up defining themselves away from the other in order to finally be their own person).
My two cents.
I would not, especially as babies, mainly because it would be easier to tell them apart if they’re wearing different outfits. Naturally, some people would buy them matching outfits (like grandparents), but they wouldn’t have to wear them at the same time. Well, maybe just when whoever it was was visiting, to make them happy.
However, once they were old enough to understand the concept, I’d buy them a bunch of matching outfits so that they can have fun messing with people’s heads if they so choose. More fun than the “pretending to be the other one” would be something like the story I heard once about identical twins who worked at the same office and arranged their schedules so that one of them was in the break room at all times.
[hijack]
I heard on the news the other day there was a set of identical twins born. One had six fingers on each hand and the other one ( I think) had six toes on each foot. They both had freckles *but *one had them on one side of the face, the other on the other side of the face.
The parents said they thought of having the extra digits taken off ( I’m supposing they-the fingers and toes- worked) if only for the shoe/glove conundrum in the future, but they didn’t want to do it because it was the only way they could tell their boys apart.
They just celebrated their 15th or 16th birthday.
Thus endth Shirley’s vague no-cites-allowed posting.
/hijack
I suppose then that they ** weren’t ** identical?
“and stop calling me Shirley”
:ducks and runs:
My mother-in-law works with a pair of twins who must by this time be in their early '60s. They’ve been working there at least 20-25 years. And, even at this age, they live together, sharing a bedroom, and they dress identically, down to hair and makeup. They even bring identical lunches. When you look at them, the first words that spring to mind are “bizarre murder-suicide.”
I am 18 months older than my sister, and they used to dress us alike all the time.
I would never do that to my kids, twins or no.
The " DUH" factor on my part is a 10 out of 10. ( My family is so proud.)
I went to high school (yay for me) and there were two guys (twins) who were dressed alike every day. Their matching plaid polyester pants outfits made them irrisistable to all the girls and the envy of all the guys. It made us all wish that we could have been born twins too.
But seriously, thses guys had it really rough and were the butt of many jokes and pranks. I never participated and actually discovered that they were okay guys. Few people even talked to them. Their father was one of the teachers at the school and he dressed just like his kids. VERY FREAKIN’ SCARY.
I would never dress our kids alike, just suggesting that one of the boys wear a dress does not go over well. Ike… you came that close to making me spew coffee all over the monitor, I really feel bad for “Jack”.
I was thinking that maybe when Lola and I get older we could start dressing alike, perhaps identical velour track suits or matching jackets with our names sewn on would be so cool. I wonder if people would have trouble telling us apart? Just remember that I’m the one without breasts.
PL—are those twins your Mom knows in New York? There’s this pair of sixty-ish twin sisters I see strolling around midtown from time to time, arm-in-arm.
They dress identically and wear c1950 makeup and hairdos. They give me the willies, and it’s obvious neither ever had a social or sex life . . . With anyone else, I mean. Always wonder what happens when one of them dies first . . .
I am an identical twin. I can remember being dressed like my sister when we were very young - but usually not EVERY DAY. We were always dressed alike for school photos until 5th grade. After that we only dressed alike when/if we wanted to.
My sister and I have always been BEST friends. Looking back, the best part of being a twin was that I always had someone to hang out with. After high school, we lived together, worked together and shared a car. Then we joined the Navy together. We started together in Florida then she was sent to Alaska and I went to California. It was the first time we were apart. This was hard for me because I was the ‘shy’ one. We even had a “double wedding” - which was so much fun.
Now, we live in the same town and are still best friends. We don’t really look that much ‘alike’ anymore but people will still mistake us for each other.
Ike, you’re the man. 
My aunt and uncle do that with all their kids, i believe. They have two little babyass twins, and one kid who’s like seven to ten, and another kid in the five to seven range. They’re all boys. It’s creepy as hell.
We do it both ways. Sometimes they insist on the same, sometimes they insist on different, sometimes one insists one way and the other the other. But they always insist. So we let them. At five, they are old enough to know what they want.