Dear 13 Year Old Girls:
When dressing for a Bar Mitzvah, or a school dance, or some other event, here are some tips which might help you. Please understand that this is not intended to be mean or to be a lecture. I was a 13 year old girl, too, and I fought my mother to wear clothes that made me feel more grown up. It’s normal. However, now that I am a grown-up who goes to these parties and stands with other grown-ups and hears what they say about you, I can tell you that the tips I offer below are really important and will save you, and your parents, embarrassment.
1. Spandex clothing - You do not look cool or hot or anything but silly and very, very young when you wear spandex dresses which you cannot help but pull down and/or up every 10 seconds. You might have a rocking body. However, a great body at 13 years old is not an invitation to dress like Kim Kardashian. It is simply not age appropriate. You look ridiculous and every adult standing around and looking at you is thinking “Where was her mother?” and “Her father let her out of the house like that?” They do not think you look hot. In fact, they talk among themselves about how stupid you look. Right now, when you insist that your mother buy you that band-aid dress and she objects (and I hope to heaven she is objecting and not voluntarily dressing you like “Lolita”) keep this in mind: When you convince your mother to buy that dress, you are not only making a fool out of yourself, you are making a fool out of her. One other thing, it is also more than likely that you do not have a rocking body, yet. You just think you do because you are getting boobs and that makes you feel older and more mature. However, know this, if you don’t have a great body, dressing in spandex does not make you look mature. It makes you look like a stuffed sausage. Not older, not hotter, just fatter.
2. Sky High Heels - There are some things that simply need to be left to adulthood. Sky high heels are one of them. It takes years of practice on an ever increasing grade of heel in order to perfect your walk in high heels. Most mature women have not yet mastered this (just spend a day in NYC and watch). When you clomp around, teetering like some pubescent Tower of Pisa, those of us who took the time to learn to walk in heels cannot help but laugh at you. We think you look stupid.
3. Black - This goes with spandex. Do you know why women wear black? Because it is slimming, elegant, and not overly attention getting. When you are 13, there is simply no reason to wear an all black dress. You don’t look older. Again, you look like you’re trying to look older. This is the one time in your life when you can wear colors and not be accused of being a show off and trying to draw attention to yourself. Enjoy it!
4. iPhones - When you stand in a group on the dance floor holding your iPhones and pretending to dance on the high heels in which you can barely stand, you look...say it with me...stupid. There is simply not one reason in the world why, when you are with all of your friends, that you need your phone in your hand at all times. Unless of course, you think you may need help. Which brings us to #5...
5. Boys - No 13 year old boy is looking at you when you dress in spandex and high heels. Do you know why? Because they are completely intimidated by you. 13 year old boys are not mature enough to know how to deal with their own burgeoning sexuality, let alone know how to deal with you dressed as a 20 year old. So, if they are not looking at you, who is? Well, if you get away with it and don’t look like a 13 year old prostitute, the 24 year old cousin drinking at the bar is looking at you. He doesn’t know you’re 13. And he has plenty of ideas of what to do with a girl who dresses like you. Plenty.
I hope that this resonates with you because, quite frankly, I am embarrassed for you. I stand there and look at you and listen to what my friends are saying about you, your parents, their judgment, your judgment, etc., and it makes me cringe. It’s like watching a train wreck. There is no reason why, at 13, you should be marked as “one of those girls” simply because your parents were too weak to say no. There is no reason why someone should say “what was (insert name here) thinking dressing her chubby little girl in a spandex mini-skirt with a zipper up the front?” None. And if you don’t have enough respect for yourself, have some for your parents, because it is their friends laughing at them behind their backs – and we all know how horrible that can be.
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