Short Shorts

To Mothers of Daughters Everywhere:

One day, maybe on a weekday evening, you will be sitting in a fold-up chair at the park during sunset, watching your ten year old daughter’s soccer practice.  You will be watching her run and kick amongst your friends, and suddenly you will wonder to yourself, “When did her legs get so long?” And then your next thought will be “Or… is it that her shorts are too short?”

Closer scrutiny will reveal that it is a bit of both, actually.  You’ll realize that she’s wearing the same practice shorts that had brushed the top of her knees last year.  Last summer she grew three shoe sizes and four inches taller, but her waist remained the same size.  

You’ll pause in reverence for the feats performed by a young metabolism. 

The momentary awe will dissipate quickly however, and be replaced by slight dread.  You’ll sigh, because the time has come.  You have to have “the modesty talk” with her. 

The bad thing about the modesty talk is not the bottom line (no pun intended).  The bottom line is easy.  Don’t wear revealing clothes.  Don’t show so much skin. Cover up.  In other words, your shorts need to be longer. 

See? That’s all. Easy.  What is difficult is everything that is not said.

Don’t wear revealing clothes, because boys will look. (Wait. She’s not wearing her shorts so that boys will look. You have to imply that boys will look? She’s not there yet, but you have to make her go there?)

Don’t show so much skin, because people will make assumptions about you. (But you’ve always taught her that what other people think of her isn’t as important as what she thinks of herself.)

Cover up, because men are visual creatures and you want to make sure they don’t get the wrong idea. (This one rankles the most- the idea that it falls on a girl to make sure that boys don’t think of her “in the wrong way”… but not too much so, right?  We still want to want to catch their attention, just not too much attention.  Nice tightrope we’re on.)

The truth is, you don’t care if she wears shorts that are considered too short.  She has long, beautiful, strong legs.  If you had her legs, you’d be wearing short-shorts on ALL the days. You would be celebrating those legs; running with them, jumping with them, do crazy yoga poses with them and thinking the whole time "Man, I LOVE these leg!"  And you know that when she wears shorts, she is not trying to be alluring.  She wears them with t-shirts and converse. She’s not trying to make anyone look…she’s just being her ten year old self. 

However.  

You still go ahead and talk with her.  Not because you think it’s important, but because the rest of the society thinks it is important. You've heard moms talk in disproving whispers about the ways they see the middle-school girls dress.  They describe them as slutty.  Middle school is next year for your girl.  You don’t want anyone to think she’s a slut based on her clothing choices. 

Nor do you want boys- or worse- older boys approaching her and putting her in any kind of situation that she doesn’t know how to handle.  

You don’t want pervy old men to look at her.  

You don’t want pervy young men to look at her.

Then you wonder how much of this you’re putting on her yourself.  Are you overthinking this? Are these all of your hang ups that you’re projecting onto her? You try to think….no, you were her age when the mechanics at the auto body shop on the corner starting cat-calling to you.  Song lyrics from today’s popular music still objectify women.  The Disney stars that are on many of the shows she watches are dressed like their twenty instead of twelve.  It’s pretty clear that girls are still prey to the world around them.   

Also, you realize that you don’t have control over much of this.   The world has sexualized your daughter, and she’s not aware of it, or even knows what that is.  

But you do have control over the short-shorts.

So you go to Target to buy longer shorts.  Neither of you are happy.  In the dressing room, she turns up the attitude to full adolescent volume.  “These are the ones I hate the least.”, she sasses, opening the door to show you the third pair she’s tried on.  You snap back at her.  The ride home together is silent.  She’s stares out the window, full of resentment.  You stare ahead, full of equal resentment, and you realize that you are both angry because you’re being forced to do something that doesn’t sit right with you. 

You think about how confused your own adolescence left you.  You realize that you’ve spent many of your adult years untangling the misconceptions about being a girl that were constructed while you were a teenager.  That was a lot of BS to sift through, and some of it you are still working on.   Yet- even as you’re still struggling with this pile of crap- you’ve still turned around and spoon fed it right back to your daughter.  

And you don’t know how to stop it.

What are your thoughts? 

*Disclaimer- Okay, guys.  This post isn't just about short-shorts, (in case some of you of thinking of commenting that your daughter wears short-shorts and you are okay with it.  Short shorts are in style, and I'm okay with it too, although the school dress code says otherwise).  What I'm trying to convey here is that fact that girls do have to deal with a lot of stigmas, many that are based on their appearance.  I'm having a hard time navigating around it.  How do you address this topic with your kids?