America's Biggest Threat: Little Girls

It’s been a tough week for 8-year-old girls in America.

In Virginia, Sunnie Kahle was denied return to her current Christian school for not being girly enough. In a letter to her grandmother--her legal guardian--the school inferred that Sunnie’s alternative gender identity was causing confusion among other students and that it was not in line with the school’s biblical teachings. Administrators admitted that she was a very good student and that they “love” her, but I guess not enough to let her keep learning in their institution…unless she wears a dress and grows her hair. 

In South Carolina, Olivia McConnell asked her state representative to sponsor a bill making the Wooly Mammoth the official state fossil. With strong historical and scientific support behind his young constituent’s proposal, Representative Robert Ridgeway brought it to vote in the House, and it passed 94-3. All was a go until Senator Kevin Bryant insisted on amending the bill to include a passage from the Bible explaining the creation of life…which is another banging-head-on-desk essay for another day. Olivia’s bill is currently stalled, not for lack of historical significance, but because a Christian fundamentalist cannot remember that religion has no place in our government, or that the earth is over 6000 years old. He must've missed third grade.

And in Colorado, Kamryn Renfro was suspended for shaving her head, which she did in support of her best friend who was bald due to the effects of chemotherapy treatments. Her crew cut was deemed courageous and supportive dangerous and distracting by school officials.

So we’re punishing young girls for being themselves, for honoring scientific discovery, and for standing with those who are too weak to stand themselves. We’re alienating them, diminishing them, and telling them to hush up and sit pretty.

What. The. Heck.

At an age where these girls should be encouraged in their research, individuality, expression, intelligence, initiative, and ability to connect with others, these schools and politicians are stifling their mental and emotional growth which so necessary is to become well-adjusted adults.

I don’t know the circumstances that led to Sunnie being raised by her grandparents, but situations like that rarely arise because the actual parents are doing an awesome job. So let’s assume she has had some emotional discourse in her past. If she does indeed have gender identity issues, kicking her out of school and away from her friends is not helping the situation. Remember, this is a Christian school... I guess they forgot that line in the Bible about “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Nothing in that passage about just the pretty ones.

Kamryn said she shaved her head “because it seemed like the right thing to do.” And it was. That sense of empathy is to be applauded in a child, because it shows strong character. Instead of being sent home, Kamryn should have been given an assembly in which to explain her action and inspire her classmates.

And really, Senator Bryant. Leave your Bible where it belongs, in your church of choice and your own home. Keep it out of Congress. Try to learn something from this third-grader today. Olivia will lend you her science book. 

Don’t banish these girls for their haircuts and their boyish t-shirts. Don’t dismantle their budding interest in government and science while hiding behind your Bible-shield. The times, they have a-changed. 

Keep at it, girls. When grown men in positions of power are threatened by your drive, your passion, and your fortitude, you know you’re doing something right. 

A Swift Kick in the Pants

In an old episode of Sex and the City, cosmopolitan attorney Miranda invites her bartender boyfriend Steve to a formal event. "So you'll have to wear a suit," she says. "You do have a suit...right?" Having only recently started dating each other, it was a valid inquiry.

"Of course I have a suit," Steve replies. "It's gold."
"Gold?" Miranda asks.
"Yeah...like, corduroy," Steve says, as if implying something obvious.

At this point Miranda's facial expression registers the knowledge that her new boyfriend may not be as up to the standards of current fashion as she'd hoped.

This is exactly the emotion I felt yesterday, except I wasn't judging my significant other. Rather, I was looking in the mirror.

Before heading to the grocery I threw on a favorite pair of jeans and t-shirt. A cursory glance in the full-length mirror caused me to do a double-take. Hmmm...something's weird, I thought. Turning, looking over my shoulder at my backside, turning back around, I scan myself from all angles. Did I shrink? Are the pants too long? I roll them once; no, no, not that. They're not dirty, or wrinkled, or on backwards. They still fit, I don't have muffin top. What the heck? 

I ask my husband. He looks at me suspiciously, trying to guess what underlying issue I'm secretly asking him to dispel, a la do these make my butt look big? "They're fine," he says dismissively.

Finally it dawns on me. These jeans are old. Not in a broken-in Levi's button-fly 501 blues way, but in a fodder for an SNL skit way. Not by any means "mom jeans"; I mean, they're not high wasted, pleated front, and peg bottomed, but they are distinctly of an era past, when denim was faded...really faded. And very evenly colored. I remember that they were deemed "boyfriend cut" by the catalog, but I can assure you that no boyfriend would wear these jeans. I can't remember exactly when I bought them, but I can narrow it down to when I was still single, and I've been married for nine years.

As a means of secondary confirmation I posed a question on Facebook: How old is too old for jeans...style-wise?

Most answers were noncommittal (I'm assuming my friends didn't want to insult me), and a few tried to be funny by referencing designer brands that were de rigueur in middle school (Gitano, I'm looking at you).

When one high school classmate suggested I post a picture on myself wearing the pants so everyone could vote, I panicked. As tempting as it was to relive the teenage experience of having classmates judge my clothing choices again, I declined this option. It occurred to me that had I worn 10-year-old jeans to high school, I would have been laughed right out of the cafeteria.

How did this happen to me? I've always had an interest in, and sense for, current fashion trends. Even when I didn't have money to spend on nicer clothes, I still knew what was hip and I knew what I WOULD buy if I could. I watched Style With Elsa Klensch for 15 years, dammit! But somehow these jeans escaped all of my periodic clothes-purging marathons (probably because I was wearing them each time).

Now that I'm 40, I feel like I need to pay more attention to not falling in ruts. I don't want to be that woman who's 45 and still dressing like she's 25 because that's when she feels she looked her best, but in the end she just looks sadly trapped in the past. Just because something fits, it shouldn't necessarily be worn in public.

(For a glimpse at a pair of jeans I will never...ever...ever get rid of, read I Love the Smell of Bleached Denim in the Morning )

Please Cancel My Subscription to Mean Vogue

If you ever took Psych 101, you probably studied the Nature vs. Nurture argument. Are our behaviors and habits innate or are they learned?

Two personality traits I've always possessed are an attention to small detail, and the perceived notion that the world notices small details about ME. Don't confuse this second trait with narcissism; I don't think the world revolves around me, I simply believe that flaws in my appearance, even the tiniest minutiae, are giant red flags that can't be missed...by anyone.

While I can credit my mom with teaching me to notice details, neither of my parents nor my older brother had a hand in my obssession with the outside world looking in on me. I can't recall ever being admonished to fix some small detail about myself so as not to embarass myself. None of them ever teased me that "everyone's going to look at you if you go out like THAT." But I can tell you that this feeling has always been with me. I present to you exhibit A:

One morning while getting dressed for kindergarten (age 4-1/2) my mom realized there was a hole in my opaque white tights. This was back when little girls still had to wear tights with dresses, as we didn't have the much more comfortable and realistic cotton leggings that little girls have today. So she had to improvise and dress me in a pair of lace-pattern tights. This might have been fine for church or with another dress, but with the flower print dress I was already wearing, lace tights were ALL WRONG. Too fancy, the patterns clashed, it just wasn't right. But time was of the essence, and despite my protests, off to school I went with my lacy legs.


In kindergarten we always opened the day with reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing a few patriotic songs (it was 1976, the year of the Bicentennial). Normally I loved to sing along, but this particular morning I couldn't participate because I was bawling my eyes out. This was unusual so a teacher tried asking me what was wrong, but between my gasps and the noise of the other students singing, she could not understand me. Escorting me into a quieter room, Miss Sherry knelt down and attempted to help me catch my breath so I could tell her what was wrong. Bewteen gasps I finally stuttered, "My...tights..(gasp)...don't match..(gasp)...my dress!!!"

Miss Sherry immediately dropped her head, and at the time I thought she was looking down at my tights to confirm that they indeed looked ridiculous with my dress. But in hindsight I realize she was probably hiding her face so that the hysterical child wouldn't see her stifling a smile.

I don't remember what she said to me then, but somehow I was convinced to go back to class and that everything was going to be okay.

So where did this appearance obssession originate? Why was a 4-1/2-year-old histrionic over legwear? Did my mom read a Vogue magazine while pregnant and the information transferred to me in utero? Did some random older kid laugh at me as a toddler when I had rice cereal drooling down my face and it flipped an appearance awareness switch in my brain?

Looking at me today (or even much of growing up) I'm not the innovative fashion maven, and I was never voted Best Dressed. Even now I don't wear a lot of makeup because I never learned how. But if you could see into the little factory that is my brain, there would always be a department devoted to analyzing incoming potential insults, and a tandem department devoted to damage control and neutralizing those perceived insults.

Sometimes purposely going out in public "looking ugly" (a phrase my husband hates) is therapeutic, sometimes it makes me feel worse.

The feeling of having eyes on me is always there and always has been. It's like an accessory I can't take off, a barrette stuck in my tangled hair. Most days I can hide it, but it still pulls at me.

Look, Ma...No Clothes!

I was mortified to see a public service announcement during primetime hours on television cautioning girls on the dangers of sending elicit photos of themselves to boys via cell phones, or posting them on social networking sites.

Let that sink in. We are now at the point of having to very specifically tell underage girls that it’s not a good idea to take nude pictures of themselves and post them in public places. Somehow this has escaped the basket of common sense.

Girls have always been guilty of trusting boys more than they should. Regardless of what generation we grew up in, we all believed a boy when he said he wouldn’t tell anyone if we kissed him behind the bleachers, snuck out and met him at the beach late at night, or whatever else might happen. Raise your hand if you ever heard, “I won’t tell, I promise,” from a very convincing cute boy.

But they all told.

Maybe they only told their best friend, but the friend in turn had no loyalty to us, the girl, and before you knew it he had spread quite a tale across the school. Everybody knew your business. Any self respecting girl was humiliated or mortified, and undoubtedly was then teased or gossiped about.

Yes, girls, there are no secrets when it comes to boys and their intimate knowledge of you or your parts. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be.

But those of us coming of age in the pre-Information Era benefited from one advantage that no longer exists. We didn’t have to worry about being caught on tape without our knowledge. Cell phone cameras and tiny video cameras weren’t even in our imaginations.

When you were alone with someone...you actually were alone with them. You didn’t have to fear a replay of your weekend night activities being mass-emailed to your entire grade by Monday morning, or playing in an endless loop in the computer lab.

And what a relief that is to me even now. Like most high school girls, I was convinced I was horribly unattractive as a teenager. I hated my legs, my thighs, my hips, my boobs; all of them were misshapen and inferior to the other thousand girls at my school. Would I have EVER sent a nude picture of myself to a boy?

‘Scuse me while I choke on my frappaccino.

As my friend Vanessa said, “Good ol' body dysmorphic disorder kept us chaste.”

It’s true. We were so embarrassed or disgusted by our own bodies that we didn’t even want to look at them ourselves. There was no way we’d take photographs or video of such hideousness for a boy to see! Our low self esteems kept us from doing things we shouldn’t do.

So that brings me to the question: Which is the lesser of two evils, a 16-year-old girl with no self esteem, or a 16-year-old girl with high self esteem but no common sense?

Great Taste, Less Embarrassment

Over the weekend I attended a 4th of July party at the home of a friend whom I’ve known since elementary school. Upon being introduced to the other guests, I was greeted by my friend’s mother, whom I haven’t seen in at least 20 years, but with whom I had been fairly well acquainted in the past. We hugged our hellos, and sat down to chat.

Mrs. B was the mother who was always available to help with end-of-the-year class parties, chaperone field trips, and drive the car pool. She was the super-sweet, always-smiling mom who was helpful to all of her son’s classmates. She made sure we buckled our seatbelts in her station wagon and always offered a ride home to the walkers when it was raining after school. All-American sitcom moms were modeled after this lady.

Strangely, when she next offered me a beer at the party, I hesitated. It was a hot summer afternoon and we were sitting out by the pool, so a cold beer would have been perfect. But I suddenly felt like I was 9 years old again, and a beer suddenly felt like something I wasn’t allowed to have. Surely she should have offered me a nice soft drink instead. Did I hear wrong? No, she definitely said “beer” because she was now reciting the various choices on hand. I finally stammered a weak, “yes, please…thank you…” and took my seat.

When she returned with a chilled Samuel Adams Summer Ale zipped up in a koozie, I found myself unable to take a sip while she was watching. It didn’t matter that she was drinking one herself (after all, she’s an adult!), and it didn’t matter that her son was also drinking one…heck, everyone at the party was drinking them. It didn’t matter that I’m 37 years old and have been legally drinking for 16 years. All I could think was, this is Mrs. B and she just handed me a beer…not Kool-Aid, not chocolate milk, but an icy cold beer. Just like I can’t call her by her first name, I couldn’t sip a beer in front of my childhood friend’s mom. I waited till she distracted by one of the grandkids before I could imbibe.

As the evening progressed my self consciousness faded, and I couldn’t help but laugh at myself for once again reverting to the shy, always-does-the-right-thing girl I once was. It was another reminder that time marches on; another chapter in the book of Hey, When Did Everybody Grow Up?