When I was a kid, my mother dressed in shifts, lace trimmed black dinner wear, or in jeans (and those only for gardening and outdoor chores.) She dressed us girls in cute cotton and woolen dresses, and those hemlines were never more than 4 or so inches above the knee. As I grew up, I dressed myself, of course, in maxi skirts and midi skirts (between the ankle and knee). So the clothing styles of today that the girls are sporting? Not familiar. No likey.
The newest thing is the short short dresses the girls today are wearing and this is nothing really new because in MY DAY or a few days before my day, meaning in my older sisters' day, teens wore what were called mini skirts. Today they are dresses, and I have to say they are VERY CUTE baby doll type affairs. You know, empire waist and just hang down like the ladies in the first season of Downton Abbey? Or they are Lucille Ball, Donna Reed types with the tight waist and the flair skirt. Cotton. One color. Blue. Red. Black. Sometimes they throw a cardi over it and sometimes wear heels, but usually pair the dresses with flats or strappy sandals. Very sweet. I do have fleeting thoughts that these co-eds look like 5 year old girls who just drank that Alice of Wonderland concoction and grew big fast, but their dresses stayed the same size. So at first glance you may smile and think of your own childhood Sunday school dresses, minutes later you may have to suffer the embarrassment of following them up the stairs of a Bed and Breakfast or stand down-under a ladder for one of these girls as she reaches for a vase at the bath store.
The tights masquerading as PANTS get me every time. Now, I don't mind yoga pants on anyone. Or sweats, pajama pants or those lounge pants the college kids roll out of bed in and wear to classes. Even if they are ridiculously baggy or tight. The "leggings" are really just thick tights and on ANYONE they leave me in jaw-dropping horror. Mostly because nobody looks good in them and one can see through them. Plus? I am pretty sure they were made to go WITH those shorty skirts instead of substituting for them.
Another fashion faux pas is dresses that are just too tight over underwear that is also too tight. I don't want to see that and I'm relatively certain nobody else does, either. And let's blame it on spouses of these women. They may not dare say anything, but they really owe it to the rest of us to do so. When a woman dresses for the evening and comes out of the bedroom looking like she parachuted INTO the outfit she's wearing? Its time to say something. Steer her away from the outfit she "likes" and toward the one that actually holds in her ass.
Let's face it. A man in this society can wear a greasy, bloody, sleeveless T shirt and have his hairy chested gold chains hanging down past his navel while sporting black, way too tight Speedos and he will not get the crap a woman will get if she dares eat an actual bagel and show her "muffin top." And as unfair a statement as that is? You know it's true. Men don't judge women, either, on the way we look. It's other women. Women like me, I guess.
As we age we really need (like Stacey London says in TLC'S "What Not to Wear") to dress the body we have; not the one we want. It's really sound advice. And although diamonds may have been a girl's best friend back in Marilyn Monroe's time when women ate salads for lunch and martini olives as dinner...right now? A full length mirror is a girl's best friend. Get yourself one or get one for a friend and then she will see what we all see, and although it will make her shop/stay home more and take longer to get ready to go out into the world? It will all be well worth it when she gets compliments instead of gasps. Smiles instead of grimaces. It's really a win-win situation, if you ask me.
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