Fashion 101

Edith and I are both learning about clothes these days. First lesson, the basic question of how to dress ourselves. Edith has started at the bottom, trying to master the tricky business of slipping one's sock over one's heel. She is eager to make it work but doesn't have much patience for the effort involved in learning how.

I am starting at the middle, trying to determine which pair of pants on the mile-long sale rack at Ann Taylor might fasten comfortably at the waist when, in the six years since one last had to wear professional attire, one has dropped down through several sizes while living in a developing country, then ricocheted up through pregnancy, then had it all sucked back out again (and more) by a hungry critter...until the sizes in the closet run the gamut and all you know is that nothing seems to fit. The scale says I should look like I did in eighth grade; any woman who has been pregnant says "Ha, right." All things I considered, I'll take the stretch marks over the braces. But much like eighth grade, I have no idea what fits me well. And while I am eager to appear respectable in front of my students, I don't have much patience for figuring it all out.

As to respectability, another curious thing has happened since I last dressed for an office job: The skirts I considered perfectly professional at 24 now strike me as somewhat embarrassingly short. My legs are no thicker or flabbier now than then--quite the opposite--but it suddenly seems that a hemline three inches above the knee needs to be let out by at least half a foot. Have fashions changed? Is it motherhood? Is it the decade-age gap between me and the bulk of people wandering around this campus? What are these unseen forces that morph our sense of self, making us feel older mentally, quite independent of what may be happening to our bodies?

Edith is also expressing clothing preferences for the first time, within the limited range presented to her. I seem to be much better at figuring out cool for 17 months than cool for 30. On instinct this fall, I started buying her clothes depicting some of her favorite objects. It turned out to be an excellent strategy. The other day she asked to wear her new (used) apple dress. She pointed out the apples to all and sundry. When her father put her in new tights lined with dogs, she burst into the bedroom to show me not only her canine-covered legs, but how she administered Tylenol to each of the dogs. I guess they were teething. Last Friday, she locked in on a ladybug costume hanging in her closet, courtesy of Aunt Janet. We wound up delivering a ladybug to daycare that morning--to the great amusement of the boys in her class.


Edith tends to stand out sartorially at daycare even when she dresses as a little girl rather than an insect, because she is the only such in her class. The other seven children--Harrison, Torrey, Joshua, Zeke, Gavin, Reuben and Timmy--have yet to arrive in a skirt, pigtails, or pink. At age one, I don't think the children themselves are conscious of sex difference, which doesn't seem to make much of a difference in how they play. Edith shoots baskets, gawks at trucks, and wrestles her buds to the ground. The boys tote dolls around the classroom and clamor to use the miniature stroller. All this is well and good.

But the teachers, whom I generally think are fantastic, can't seem to check their own recognition that one of these things is not like the others. Each morning when we arrive, they greet Edith by commenting on her looks. She is told she is pretty in her pigtails, that her outfit is cute. Yesterday the "What I Did Today" section of her daily box score started, "Edith was so lovely in her dress..." If that's an action at all, credit goes to her father for dressing her.

I don't want to complain and sound humorless when everyone is trying to be nice. On the other hand, I worry that the message will sink in pretty fast that her looks are very important, much more so than the boys'. It's amazing to see the kind of social conditioning you swear you won't tolerate unfolding before your eyes. Any one instance seems harmless, hardly worth getting worked up over. But taken together, they start to seem damaging. At the same time, I don't plan to dress Edith in camoflauge sweats just to make her blend in. I just wish they'd ask how she was feeling, or what she ate for breakfast.