What To Do
PARENTING
SHOPPING WITH TEENAGE GIRLS: RULES OF ENGAGEMENT by Hallie Bandy
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Motherboard
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Of all the teenage experiences I made my mother live through, shopping is the one she recalls with the most disdain. I really have no idea why. The fact that I looked for clothing not yet manufactured at every mall within 100 miles of home may have had something to do with it. Of course I never expected anything similar from my own daughter. But then she turned 13. Despite my determination not to be defined as “mother of a teenage daughter,” you can’t ignore age 13—the zenith of adolescence. I tried not to take things too personally, because, as teenagers go, she really didn’t give me much to complain about. Monosyballic, yes – but she did talk. I must confess, however; despite my best efforts, the shopping experience was completely transformed. No longer a motherdaughter bonding opportunity, it became an exercise in character building and physical stamina. For me. I first noticed this new phase looking for her Easter dress–er, ensemble. It was then I recalled, from the far recesses of my own adolescent memory, the tricky rules to shopping with a teenage girl. The trickiest part: Mom has to figure the rules out on her own. Trouble is, now I’m the Mom. Rule number one is obvious almost immediately: daughter must not purchase anything from a store whose name is on any article of clothing that Mom owns. In other words: mom has one = not cool. The only exception here is if mom splurges on a trendy high-priced item, in which case it will likely be permanently absorbed into the daughter’s wardrobe. Slowly, other rules have come back to me. There must be at least two feet of space between us at all times. (If no one knows we’re together, that’s even better.) If I spot the item, there is no way it is cool, or cute, or in any way desirable. (This is closely related to rule number one but is sometimes circumvented if I nonchalantly placed an item in an obvious place while my daughter isn’t looking. She owns a fabulous little black dress thanks to that tactic.) Another rule: fashion is all that matters. Price and practicality are completely inconsequential. When I ask where she’ll wear something, I may as well be speaking Chinese. I’ve managed to learn and follow the rules, and we do pretty well, though we have had our share of mis-buys. I don’t know what I was thinking when I purchased her track-season sweats. I do know what she was thinking: fashion. Hot pink, slim-fitting fashion. Neither one of us was thinking school colors (blue and red), or 40° and rain. That
is, until a dreary Saturday meet, when, through chattering blue lips, she admitted, “I think I need some warm sweats.” “How hard can this be?” my husband chided me, completely unaware of the numerous times I had made a valiant parental stand for value and practicality. “I’ll take her,” he said with that it-takes-a-man-to-getthis-done tone. I just smiled at his naïve confidence–and kept my predictions of certain failure to myself–when he said they were heading to WalMart. I nearly laughed out loud imagining the fashion debate in the aisle between intimates and electronics. I tried to fill him in on the rules, but he just brushed it off. “We’ll be back in an hour,” he assured me. Secretly, I hoped he would experience what I’d endured. I wanted him to feel my pain. He’d have more empathy, give me a bigger budget. But it was nothing like I’d thought. They came home laughing! I think someone even said, “good time.” The relief that I could check “buy decent sweats” off my list was completely overshadowed by the knock-out blow to my confidence. What in the world had I been doing wrong? I felt really inadequate. Could a man actually make the female teenage shopping experience a pleasure? I was too proud to ask them straight-out. It took several days of nonchalant covert investigation to piece it all together. “I started to reach toward the pink sweats,” she told me, “but Dad shouted, ‘NO!’” He handed me the black and gray ones, and I put them in the cart.” “That’s all?” I asked. “Well, then I went and tried on every shoe in the store, even the ugly ones, just to see what they looked like on my feet.” “Really?” I was trying not to act completely shocked. “What did Dad have to say?” “Oh, nothing. He was looking at guns and ammo.” Of course he was. This didn’t count as shopping. Anyone could have thrown a pair of generic gray, size-small sweatpants into a shopping cart. But I do give him partial credit. He was obeying the two-foot rule.
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