"You're not leaving the house in that, Missy!": a fight I dread

My oldest daughter is six and thankfully, still too young to want to wear sexy, grown-up, skimpy outfits. She's still very much in the throes of the princess bug and though her outfits get provocative, they only provoke attention because they are wildly colorful, over-the-top and unorthodox, like when she wears her white tulle ballgown over her azure sweatpants with her fur vest to complete the look. But I know the power struggles about what she wears, the "You're not leaving the house in that, Missy" fights are coming, because my daughter is headstrong and cares deeply about what other people think. Regrettably. exactly like me. So I found this piece in the NY TImes incredibly insightful and on a practical level, really useful:

Clothing Straddling the Line Between Sweet and Skimpy 

As someone who did change clothes on her way to high school, stripping off my jeans in the Ferry bathroom to slip on the mini skirt my mother wouldn't let me wear -- I know I won't be able to control what my daughter wears at a certain point. But I feel like these experts give a good overview of how to set guidelines for your kids, and help them to make good choices about what they wear, how they see themselves and how they present themselves out there in the world.

And, most importantly, it gives you slightly more elevated comebacks then, "Because it makes you look like a slut!" which is pretty much the reasoning I got.  Faulting "the pornification of culture" may not be a similar explanation but it sounds smarter, anyway.

My little debutante

My daughter dresses like a debutante. She wears ball gowns every day. You know the kind of big poofy floor-length dresses people put their kids in to go to weddings and for Christmas and Easter? We have a closet of hand-me-down ones from a bunch of friends and Sec wears them to school, to the playground, to friends' houses. Its like one unending cotillion in our house. But she's not your conventional deb. Her fanciness has many facets.

Masquerade Ball Deb:



Victorian Deb:

Drunk Deb: