A Frump. . .

Well Jessica is growing up, sigh. She was such a cute baby, such a sweet little girl and now such a smart and brave tween. At the moment she is over the moon that her school is having a dance on Friday night for grade six and up which means she can go and I have never seen her so excited. I tried to play the evil parent and say that she couldn't go but I couldn't keep up the charade.

Then there was yesterday when I heard her and Gil having an argument that I didn't expect to hear so soon. It was like a scene from the show 8 Simple Rules to Dating my Teen-age Daughter, it went something like this;
"you are not wearing that to school!"
"yes I am."
"no you are not!"
"Why????"
"Because it is not appropriate to wear that out of the house"
"Why???"
"Because that is something you wear around inside the house."
"not it's not."
"Yes it is and you are not leaving the house wearing that."
"Yes I am!!!"
"NO YOU ARE NOT!"
"But that's the only thing I wanted to wear."
"I'm sorry you will have to find something else."
"FINE I'LL JUST GO LOOKING LIKE A FRUMP THEN!"

At this point I am upstairs trying to figure out what on earth she could be wearing to create such a stir since Gil NEVER notices what they wear, and I have to control myself from bursting out laughing because what the heck is a "frump"? So I gingerly make my way downstairs into the war zone, happy that it is not a war between Jess and I but that for once Gil is the bad, over-reactive parent. She is sitting on the stairs now in nice white pants and a giant rust colored hoodie. The hood pulled over her head to hide her scowl as she glared around her. The cloud of rain over her head reminding me of Eeyore in the hundred acre wood on his worst days.

So I casually ask what's going on as if I haven't heard the tale already word for word from my boudoir. She begins with saying "Daddy wants me to go to school looking like a frump!" She then further explains in the tersest of words and with as much drama as you would expect from a hormonal teen-ager and not the pre-teen that she is, that she had started her day with a tank top/tube top combination. The tube top being a top that her cousin Rose no longer fit in and had given her but then discovered that it was way too big and there were not enough pins in the world to hold it up,(again on the inside I am rolling around laughing trying to imagine that outfit because she really has nothing to put in any tube top and the thought that she would try to strikes me as hilarious.) so she further explained that the next combination she came up with was a dressy pink lace robe with gold stitching over her tank top since they are not allowed just to wear tanks at school.

Well to Gil's credit it does look sort of like lingerie and I know that must be what went through his head at first but it isn't. It's an Indonesian dress robe that a young girl would wear over a tank dress or dress up outfit in Indonesia because the fabric is airy and would keep the girls cool yet at the same time maintain a level of modesty. Bare arms on young girls in a Muslim nation is usually frowned upon. So although here it may look revealing, in a different culture it's the opposite, and it was given to Jessica and Elizabeth from her other cousins from Indonesia since they have out-grown it.

Once I see it I understand her father's concern and so begin to explain to him that it isn't lingerie, etc. So then it's decided if she wants she can wear it, then she says "well what if people DO think it's lingerie?" Now the real test of a parent. I can't promise no one will think it is or isn't, I have not idea what pre-teens think is cool and I don't even want to guess. So I say well take the hoodie and if people bug you then you can change if you want. When she returned from school I was a quiver with curiosity as to the reaction from her peers and in typical Jessica fashion she responded, "yah they said it looked like lingerie, I told them it wasn't and it was an Indonesian dress robe and that was that!"