Trashy

I wrote this awhile ago....It is still true....

My oldest daughter learned the term “trashy” at a very young age. When I first took her clothes shopping as a toddler, finally moving past the little creepers and the independence that comes once they emerge from them, we tended to butt heads quite a bit. She liked to stand a good 3 yards away from me and browse the racks on her own. Naturally anything that sparkled was in her fists and her eyes would glaze over when talking to me about how much she NEEDED that particular shirt or skirt or dress. This was infinitely frustrating. It needn’t be, but someone in our marketing society decided to sexualize three year old girls.

When you browse the racks in the little boy departments you see the same t-shirts with trucks, trains, and cars on them that have been around since screen printing began. They aren’t marketed shirts that say “Hot Thang” “Girls love me” or other inappropriate sayings. It is preposterous to think about it. But the girls section is a different story. I fail to see why a 3 year old would need a shirt that says “Hot” on the front and I live in Texas. It gets pretty damn hot here.

To make it easier to navigate through the world of halter tops and mini skirts that someone decided that my little one needed and actually find clothes that covered her freshly un-diapered bottom, I taught my little one the word “trashy”. It was easy enough. She had a cousin that at 6 was well into the over sexualized world of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. My daughter wanted to know why she couldn’t listen to the music or watch the videos that her cousin so freely perused. I explained that Britney Spears was trashy. That young women should cover up their belly. That women don’t behave like that. I told her that I didn’t want her to watch things that she didn’t understand.

Shortly after that conversation we landed at JC Penney’s. The little one found a particularly horrific shirt and came up to me and asked very simply “mommy, is this trashy”. I responded in the positive and she gladly walked the shirt back to the rack and began looking for something else. Another mom was clearly not pleased with the vocabulary and I simply stated to her “Well, it IS trashy” and returned to searching.

It was very easy then. Because I was at home my daughter was with me 24 hours a day. Her environment was completely monitored and censored. Now, as she is in school with other children whose mommies think belly shirts or tube tops are great for 8 year olds things are getting difficult again. I find that we argue again. I tend to shop on my own for her clothes.

We don’t have cable so there is no MTV or other pop culture kiddie porn for her to watch. I explain to her everything that I can about being a woman and the difference between our morality and the morality of Abercrombie and Fitch and The Limited II. I explain that someday she will be buying her own clothes and she can wear as much or as little as she chooses then. I have drawn lines on her tummy with a permanent marker so that she knows where to pull the pants up to and the shirts down to. But somewhere, somehow, my daughter was exposed to enough of our societal trend to turn tweens into tarts that it is a constant uphill battle. It makes me angry and it makes me sad.