Dear Steven,
Your post brings tears to my eyes. What a wonderful father you are!!! That is the absolute tackiest dress I have ever heard described. Most parents, especially moms, would have died rather than buy that dress. But you did the right, the truly loving thing. Your daughter will be a better person for owning that dress. I know this.
For you see when I was 10, I fell in love with a dress while shopping for school clothes with my mother and I begged and wept and my mother wouldn't buy it. She said it was not-- becoming.
I remember this dress clearly- out of what is surely a sea of dresses through my early years. It was a blue and green flowered maternity like jumper. ANd it had a fake white blouse with puffy sleeves and a big lace collar with a black bow.
I have NO idea why this dress called me, it sounds incredibly ugly. But I had to have it. After several days, my mother wore down and we went back and bought it.
I loved that dress. I don't know why, but when I wore it, I felt beautiful and chic and classy. This is amazing, bordering on miraculous, because at 10 I had buck teeth, a bad perm, and pointy framed glasses made of blue plastic with sparkles in them.
But such is the power of clothing for women.
Eileen of Femme Soul would be appalled at this admission.
And she would damn you for catering to the Barbie craze, and me for perpetrating the myth of fashionformed character.
But I am older and wiser than she in the ways of little girls and I assure you that you have done something wonderful for your daughter. |
