Your Teenage Daughter’s Taste in Clothes Has Nothing to Do with Her Ability to Keep Them On

Mothers and daughters have argued about the length of hemlines since the dawn of time, but as styles become more permissive and indeed more revealing, what is acceptable for one era, may not indeed be stylish twenty years later (when her mother was young). Rather than arguing about the length of fabric, and the resultant amount of skin showing, a more helpful idea is to examine your daughters music or movie collection and find out what she is actually thinking instead of focusing entirely on what she is wearing. For example an obsession with vampires; movies like Twilight and an entire closet full of clothes from Hot Topic could indicate a girl who is feels so removed from the conventions of “normalcy” that she actually embraces any attempt to be different from her preppy, always preening counterparts who reject her. A girl like this will be attracted to the first boy who gives a crucial sense of belonging, usually a fellow outcast who himself wears lots of peculiar dress, and their relationship will become intense and she will mistake the acceptance of any boy as the manifestation of perfect romantic love, and she will be likely to be sexually active with him, the moment she realizes that his feelings for her aren’t some cruel joke.  To encourage, stable, life decisions from such a girl you need to tell her that you support and love her unconditionally, even if her Morticia makeup skills leave you secretly fuming on the inside. Failure to do so, will ensure losing her to the first boy to appreciate her for who she (thinks she) really is.

But this doesn’t mean that vampire/goth kids are necessarily more ore less moral when it comes to other kids. If your daughter spends all of her disposable income to dress like her social clique, and mirror their mannerisms, speech and attitudes, you can be sure that she will feel pressured to have sex about the same time all of her friends do.  With any luck, it will be a gang of honor roll students, proper young ladies who care much more for going shopping together that illicit liaisons in the cramped back seats of cars. But parents should not lower their guard. As all of media teaches us from Sex in the City to Desperate Housewives, fashion is always associated with sex. Ironic, how women of all ages invite the ultimate naked embrace from men (even if only subconsciously) by adorning their bodies with as many baubles, scent and clothing onto their as possible.  If your daughter is a conformist type, you have several more parenting tools at your disposal than a mother who is no longer on speaking terms with her moody isolationist daughter. First of all, you can encourage her to read books which encourage independent thought, three of my suggestions are the Art of War, Atlas Shrugged and perhaps my personal favorite, Machiavelli’s ”the Prince”.  Moreover, because she has so many girls in her little clique, you can find out detailed facets of your daughters existence, by asking about the behavior of her close friends, because she may not realize that are not secretly judging her by the company that she keeps. One good thing about having a status conscious daughter who is socially conscious, yet certainly insecure, is the fact that you may let her know how much her life would change if she were to become pregnant, and how her carefree days filled with fashion, fun and frolic would be immediately a thing off the past. And then just to accentuate your point, you might ponder aloud rhetorically, “I wonder if Gucci makes maternity clothes?”  That should work wonders at helping keep both of her Jimmy Chu shoes on the floor for the duration of her increasingly intimate relations with persons of potential romantic interest.

Of course, not all teenage daughters fall into such stark social archetypes; different cultures which can be easily interpreted, used to understand and control them.  Your daughter may be remarkable only be her sheer ability to appear so well rounded, being neither popular, nor a pariah. Her clothes will likely be clean, practical without being needlessly expensive. The posters on her wall the gambit from both Katy Perry to Slipknot. You can’t easily assume anything about an already independent child, who still integrates well into society with mainstream manners and dress, this is what makes children like this such a nightmare to predict and ultimately a joy to parent. A girl like this, will have sex based on when she feels the time is right, and will have very little to do with what her friends, you or even her potential lover thinks of the decision.  For such a headstrong child who must ultimately have the illusion of choosing her own path, you can go a long way in offering her information to peruse and review at her own time, and trying to talk with her when you sense it’s appropriate.  A sure way to be cut out of her loop of information forever is to forbid her to do anything, rather it is best just to be a living pamphlet of positive choices that she may consult at times of her own choosing.

Now granted, while there are hundreds of flavors of pop culture your daughter may find herself emulating as expressed through her choice of clothes, music and fashion. However, by using the aforementioned examples you can probably assume what your daughter is feeling by how she dresses regardless of her personal tastes, which at the very least will allow a dialogue with her where you can make sure that she is not dressing a certain in order to attract the wrong type of element, especially when it comes to dating and relationships.  Despite the fact that you may (however correctly) assume that the world thinks only one thing when they see a questionably dressed teenage girl, the motivations of the young lady who dares to draw attention to herself might be asking for your attention as a parent first and foremost.

So give it to her, before someone else does…