Levi’s, T-shirts, Tube Tops, and Mascara

By Elizabeth Esse Kahrs

Recently, my kids and I went shopping—back to school shopping. We always postpone this venture until a few months into the school year, after the kids have shed their summer clothing. The three of us piled into the Volvo, my thirteen-year-old son and my ten-year-old daughter, and drove to a store known for it’s LOWEST PRICES OF THE SEASON!

First, the shoes. My daughter has a wide foot and is already in a women’s 9.5, so our search was limited to New Balance, although she insisted on trying to squeeze into some other skinnier brands. Nothing seemed to fit her right, not even the New Balance, her foot coming out of the heel etc… So after thirty minutes of me playing shoe-salesman, down on my knees tying laces, blood rushing to my head, we left that department in defeat. Then it was on to Young Men’s and jeans, where my challenge was to locate dark and skinny jeans for my son (as opposed to last years dark, wide, and baggy) While he tried on one pair after another, I spent the time doing research. I counted thirteen varieties of Levi’s: Skinny 511, Slim Straight 514, Low-Rise 527, Loose Straight 569, Low Loose 549, Relaxed Fit 559, Low-Rise Belt Boot Cut 527, Twill Cargo, Carpenter—and for the old guys, stacked up against the back wall—Original Fit 501, Relaxed Fit 550, and Comfort Fit 560. Back in my day, you had two choices: red tag or orange.

My son modeled each pair. Lucky for me, he agreed that the super skinny jeans made him look like a pencil-legged freak. And so we settled on the Low-Rise, Boot-Cut 527’s, the not-so-skinny version, at their LOWEST PRICE OF THE SEASON! –$31.99.

After accumulating a handful of acceptable T-shirts (shopping for my son is relatively easy) we were off to the real challenge—the girl’s department, in search of clothing for my daughter.

I long for the days when my daughter was young, and more importantly, smaller, when she could still fit into a size 6x. But with a size 9.5 shoe at age ten, you can imagine, this was not for long. For quite a while now, we’ve had to pick through the silky, slutty, sequined tops in the land of sizes 7-16 to find something appropriate, say, like something that you’d find in the 4-6x section. Today was no exception: tight spandexy T-shirts festooned with sayings like,  Glamour Girl, Princess, Daddy’s Girl—a black, clingy tank top emblazoned with SASSY in multi-colored sparkles—and my personal favorite, a black pin-striped vest with two gaudy jeweled buttons, something you might have seen Mariel Hemmingway wearing in Star 80. And then there were the shorts. Apparently the current style is to have a chunk of butt hanging out.

As a bonus, I saw something new—an extremely short denim skirt attached to a pair of flesh colored Capri stretch leggings—a “scooter” is what I think they called it. It looked like it had been designed by a pedophile.

Make. It. Stop. Parents complain that their kids are growing too old, too fast, yet they succumb to the pressures of these fashion trends. Allowing their children to dress this way contributes to this very problem. I believe we can fight back—by not giving into this type of marketing, by simply saying NO to this type of clothing. We should dress our little girls in a way that is appropriate for their age NOW. 

They’ll be plenty of time in the future for tube tops and mascara.

As for our shopping endeavor, we did end up finding some things—some innocuous, even innocent, looking tops. A cute hat. A (long) pair of shorts. A nice pair of jeans.

Still, every year it gets a little harder. Soon, we will be bumped up to the Junior’s Department.

I shudder to think about it.