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"You're Not Wearing That...!" By Becky Sweat The scoop on kids' clothing styles and what parents can and should do.
ou're not wearing that to the party!" Have you ever found yourself bellowing out those words to your teenager or preteen? Karen Janatka of Long Grove, Illinois, has. Like a lot of adolescents, Janatka's 12-year-old daughter has a definite preference for clothes that are slinky, skimpy and skin-tight.
Janatka doesn't think it's a matter of her daughter wanting to be provocative, but rather that she just likes how the clothes look. "My daughter's developed kind of early, so she's got a really cute figure and I think she knows it," Janatka says. The fact that all of her friends are wearing these kinds of styles makes her daughter want to dress that way even more. It all adds up to a certain amount of conflict in the Janatka household. "We'll go shopping for a dress for her to wear to [a party] and she'll want to buy one that's really low cut and very revealing -- and there's no way I'm going to let her wear that," Janatka relates. "A lot of times we can come to a compromise, like we'll buy the dress but she has to wear a tank top underneath. Still, clothes are a constant issue for us."
Winnetka, Illinois, parent, Gary Hill, says that when he picks up his 15-year-old daughter from high school, he routinely sees 15-, 16- and 17-year-old girls dressed "like they're 25 going out to a nightclub in downtown Chicago." Besides being a parent, Hill is a clinical psychologist and director of Clinical Services at the Family Institute at Northwestern University. "Adolescent girls today are definitely dressing above their age level," he says. "Many, though, go a lot further than that. They're dressing in a very seductive, promiscuous way." What about the boys? Some of their clothing styles are "on the edge" as well, Hill observes, but their clothes certainly don't send all the sexual messages like the girls' styles do. "The boys tend to wear the baggy, low pants and big shirts -- which doesn't usually bother parents nearly as much as what the girls are wearing," Hill says. Should you be concerned? Of course, part of adolescence is "testing the limits" with the older generation. Wearing different or even outlandish clothes is one of the ways teens do that. Young people made a statement in the 1920s by wearing cloche hats and knee-length skirts. In the 50s, poodle skirts and saddle shoes were the "in" thing for teen gals. In the 70s, they wore bell-bottoms and platform shoes. Many psychologists and educators, however, believe today's clothing fads are not in the same category as the way adolescents dressed in past generations.
The problem with today's girls' clothing styles relates to safety. "When there's a group of girls just hanging out together, they look at each other in a certain way and they understand that what they're wearing is nothing more than being in style," says Linda Marks, Ph.D., superintendent of Golf School District 67. On the other hand, she continues, when the girls go out in public, "What they're wearing becomes a concern, because they may attract the wrong kind of attention, which can lead to rape and unwanted pregnancy. The fact is we live in a real world with many, many sexual predators. But most girls aren't thinking about that." At the very least, Hill adds, by dressing in a blatantly sexually provocative way, "it sets the girl up for being viewed as a sexual object, and for guys to make inappropriate advances towards her." He says this can be very stressful for a girl to have to be constantly dealing with a lot of sexual advances and always having to say "no."
If the boy then makes a sexual advance towards the girl, she may get mad, but he doesn't understand why, Hill says. The boy thinks to himself, "Well, wait a minute, look how you're dressed. Weren't you coming on to me?" "You not only end up with a lot of miscommunications," Hill says, "but the boy might also be charged with sexual harassment." Behind the trend So what's motivating teens to dress this way? The number one culprit in many people's minds is the media. "Kids are seeing images of people like Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton being promoted as teen idols and they want to wear what they're wearing," observes Kyle Sieck, seventh grade counselor at Hadley Middle School in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. These scantily-dressed entertainers appear in any number of movies, television shows, magazines, music videos and Web sites -- all of which are targeted to adolescents. Kids see all the attention these celebrities are getting, Sieck says, and "they feel if they dress the same way, they'll get a lot of attention too. The trouble is, they don't put it together that that's not the kind of attention they really want."
Another culprit cited by parents is clothing manufacturers. Many parents bemoan the fact that it's become very difficult to purchase "wholesome" or "little girl" clothes. They say fashion designers have simply shrunk teenage styles to fit younger girls. "It's just about impossible to find clothes that are appropriate for young girls these days," says Sue Einersen of Morton Grove, Illinois, mother of a 9-year-old girl. "But you can sure find a lot of short skirts, string bikinis, platform shoes, low-cut dresses and blouses that are cut off at the midriff!" Long Grove parent, Cheryl Spencer, agrees. She says she'll often have to drive all over town searching for "decent" clothes for her seventh and 10th grade daughters. "Most of the stores all carry the same low-cut shirts and low-rise pants, so you have to be willing to hunt around a lot to find the few stores that have more traditional clothes," she says. This can take a lot of time, which a lot of parents don't have, so she figures that's why some parents just give in and let their kids buy what they see at the first store they shop at. But while retailers have certainly been flooding the market with provocative clothing styles, child psychologist Sandra Burkhardt, Ph.D., ABPP, maintains that retailers are only responding to a market demand. "There are a lot of 9-, 10- and 11-year-old girls wanting to wear the teenage styles of clothing, and retailers have picked up on this," asserts Burkhardt, who has a private practice in Orland Park, Illinois, in addition to teaching in the psychology department at Saint Xavier University.
"As soon as the individual is of a sufficient body weight and density there's no reason for her not to go into her reproductive years," Burkhardt says. Once a girl enters puberty, all the hormonal, social and emotional changes start -- which includes being more tuned-in to the opposite sex and wanting to wear the more provocative clothing, Burkhardt says.
And finally, truth be told, sometimes its parents themselves who are the driving force behind teen clothing sales. Hill says that 'dressing provocatively has become a source of competition among some parents, basically to see whose daughter looks the best. It's like, 'Look at my 15-year-old daughter. Isn't she a knock-out?' They feel a sense of pride that their daughter looks so grown up." These parents may actually encourage their daughters to wear certain kinds of trendy outfits, to make them look more grown-up, Hill says. It doesn't bother them that their daughter is 15 and dressed like she's going out to a nightclub. Some parents will even buy the same types of outfits for themselves. Laments one school principal: "A lot of times, when we'll notice that a student is dressing inappropriately, we'll call the parent in so that we can talk to her about how the daughter is dressed. Then when the mother comes to school to meet with us, we see she's dressed the same sleazy way! It then becomes very difficult for us to tell the13-year-old not to dress the way she does when her mother is wearing the same kind of clothes." What parents can -- and should -- do It is probable, however, that most parents do not want their daughters -- young or old -- to be dressing promiscuously. But the alternative route is not always easy -- not when your daughter begs, pleads and even insists that you buy her certain types of clothing. What's a parent to do?
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