My unwilling surrender to adultwear

Many, many moons ago, there came a time in my life when it became uncool to wear pastel pink, polyester tights, my Girl Scouts uniform, and t-shirts with Cookie Monster on the front. It was also the social kiss of death to have healthy hair. The use of a curling iron, perms and industrial-strength aerosol hairspray became necessary in order to gain the privilege of speaking to anybody who was anybody at my particular high school. So like any desperate fool hungry for a small taste of coolness, I went completely overboard, using enough hair products to make my new coif take on a grayish-colored tint. And suddenly all my free time was dedicated to searching out and trimming newly-formed split ends so as not to die from oppressed OCD because lord knows I wanted to trim EVERYONE’S split ends. They were like shoulder pads and house music… begging for your attention at every street corner. Dark dark times, my friends. Little did I know I could have just stuck with the pigtails because in a relatively short amount of time they made their way back into the category of cool. Or cute. Maybe just ACCEPTABLE in young-adult culture.

But the tides, they are a changin’ once again. I’m a mother. A writer. A “professional.” Above all, I’m a card-carrying thirtysomething. Maybe the tides should have changed a good ten years ago. But I have clung to my “Juniors” wardrobe for as long as humanly possible because the “Women’s” department just seemed so… hmmm…. older-womanly. It doesn’t help that I’ve got the same size body that I had when I was 16. Before you get all sympathetic on me, I want to just stress that it’s not all fun and games constantly explaining to people that, honestly, I’m not petite by mere choice. It also doesn’t help that I work in a profession that requires casualwear since hiking through a field of tall grass and cattle can happen at a moment’s notice. My shoes have been called, and I quote, “Yuppie NONSPORT sports shoes.” The tops I wear have to NOT require the use of an iron or dry-cleaning because it goes against the creed of any decent conservationist to look prim and proper. So t-shirts and polos have been my friends for a very long time. And jeans are an obvious staple as well because they don’t look quite so trashy with mud and grass smeared all over them the way that khakis do.

But the daughter that’s getting “I like you” notes is starting to sniff around my closet in search of anything that’s not hers. See, she too, is feeling the need for a more grown-up wardrobe… something that looks sufficiently broken in. Something that has a cool, foreign saying on it like, “Smashing Pumpkins 1995 Tour.” It doesn’t matter if these items of clothing are three or four sizes too big. Or that they belong to her mother. Nobody has to officially KNOW this information. Unless somebody goes and posts about it on their blog, of course.

But what DOES matter, at least in my mind, is that my nine-year-old is finding MY clothes appealing. I was dreading this day worse than the day I would find myself letting the gray hairs just go ahead and take over. It can only mean that it’s time to go LADY clothes shopping, right? Dammit. This is so much worse than giving up my Cookie Monster tee for a lifetime supply of Aqua Net. I am SO totally bummed.

So when did you realize that maybe you might have to quit wearing a pony-hawk and start dressing like a grown up? Or have you?? Was it when you got your first real job? Was it when you turned thirty? Did you ever WILLINGLY decide to not be so “twentysomething” anymore? Tell me, please. Let’s all be depressed together.