DRESSING DAUGHTERS
I dreamed of having a daughter and--yes, it’s embarrassing to admit--a small part of that was the desire to dress her. Well before my long-awaited child, Madeline, was born, I went to a sale at an expensive children’s store to buy a present for a friend’s baby. I became so enthralled with the clothes, creating little outfits, that the saleslady kept asking me, “What ages are your kids?” a question I chose to ignore. I was mixing and matching tops and bottoms, oohing over the buttons, the French smocking, the ruffled hemlines. I couldn’t stop myself. I walked out of the store two hours later having charged $480 for more than 20 pieces of clothing. Once I hit the street, I knew I had experienced a lapse of sanity. I marched back into the store, explaining that I had no children and wanted to return everything. The lady looked at me as if I was crazy, then informed me that they didn’t take returns on sale merchandise.
Now Madeline is 2, and our dressing honeymoon is nearly over. She has her own ideas about what she should wear. The journey every daughter takes in establishing her identity and rebelling against her mother starts with clothes. I thought I’d have a few more years, but Maddie wants to pick out her own dress from her closet, and she loves accessories--hats in particular--but likes to mix as many patterns and colors as she can. I do my best to accept her choices.
I can hear my own mother yelling at me as I walked down our street at 14 defiantly wearing a tube top and hot pants, “Do not leave the premises in those clothes. Come back here this minute.” We had battles in dressing rooms that grew so heated that I would cry. Sometimes she would ask the saleslady her opinion on a dress she had made me try on. I would narrow my eyes into slits and stare the lady down. She would always side with my mother--why not? My mother had the charge card. I would not say a word all the way home. I can still see my mother’s smirk when I walked in the door, home from college after freshman year, wearing my favorite ‘40s vintage dress with a great brown felt hat. Or hear her tell me after I’d cut my hair short that I’d lost my best asset.
I’ve asked many of my women friends about who made them feel beautiful when they were growing up. It was never their mothers; in fact, most could remember only their mothers’ criticisms. Yet they also admitted that the opinion that mattered most was their mothers’. Now, as adults, my friends note that women dress for women, looking for that same affirmation.
Still, more than 25 years later, what I recall most vividly are the hours my mother spent searching for just the right dress for me, the fun we had when we’d cover one Loehmanns in Maryland, skip lunch and head straight to the other Loehmanns in Virginia and be done six hours later. Her look as I sashayed around the room, modeling my new clothes, wasn’t the look of a critic; it was the gaze of a mother who admired and adored her daughter.
“Beautiful” is a culturally loaded word. We think of surface qualities; fashion models and movie stars are “beautiful.” A friend told me I should invent a new word for my daughter, one that contains the spirit of beauty but without the hundreds of years of baggage. I could not think of a term as powerful or elegant. Finally, I looked up “beautiful” in Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Its original definition--”Delighting the senses or mind; having qualities of giving great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear and think about” captures its true meaning for me.
I promise myself to tell my daughter that she is beautiful, beautiful in how she expresses herself with her own style. I know she will test me. She will probably pierce her body in all sorts of places and dye her hair many colors or wear six-inch platforms or whatever is the trend in a dozen years, but I hope that I have the love and stamina to say, “You are heavenly.”
In the morning after Maddie gets dressed, I watch her look at herself in her bedroom mirror. She puts her right foot forward, shifts her weight, turns to the side, her eyes never leaving the image of herself. I do a shortened version of the same little dance before I rush out somewhere. The only difference is that after she studies herself, she turns and twirls around, laughing with delight at how wonderful she looks. I could learn a lot from her as I stand in front of a mirror and say, “Oh, I look heavy in this skirt. I look so tired.”
Not long ago, my daughter and I were in an elevator, and Maddie was dancing to the Muzak in front of the mirror. “If we could only hold onto that sense of self we have as children,” said a woman riding with us. “My daughter is 14, and all she does now is complain about her body, worry about being fat, and she once was as happy with herself as that,” she said, pointing to Maddie.
When I was a little girl, after shopping with my mother, we’d have a fashion show for my father. I remember how delighted I was with myself as I pranced around the room. Now my daughter twirls in a new dress in front of her father. He shouts, “Bravo, bravo,” as she spins. Years from now, she will remember how her father and the good men in her life made her feel lovely.
She curls her fingers around the fabric, lifting up the skirt flamenco style in a rhythmic walk. I am in awe of her limber little body, her long neck and brown eyes. Her confidence. I hope Maddie will also know that I feel she is the most blessed being in this world. “So beautiful, so beautiful,” I say. And she spins.
