Closing in on Teenage Clothes

This weekend, I went to the Monroeville Mall with my family. School started for both teenagers this , so it’s time to do some school shopping. I don’t know why I keep expecting things to be different, but, again this year, school shopping was really aggravating.

In 2003, I published an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about drop-waist pants for little girls. My complaints were that children’s clothing designers aren’t paying any attention to school dress codes, and that designs were at best tacky and at worst inappropriate. Here we are nearly a decade later, and I have mostly the same complaints.

Case in point: reference the photographs I’ve included here. The Forever 21 ads, currently found on every table of the Monroeville Mall food court, are targeted to teens, two of which I now have (one female, one male). Looking at these ads before we’d even done any shopping, I knew we were in trouble.

One photo shows a girl with an impossibly high skirt that my daughter would get sent home for wearing; presumably, a girl might get away with wearing leggings underneath the skirt, but the girl in this picture is wearing the skirt with just bare legs. The other girl photographed is wearing a “blouse” (I use the term loosely) with torn-up sleeves that would also not pass muster at my daughter’s school.

A boy has three choices, apparently. He can go the hip-hop route with uber-baggy pants that aren’t allowed at school; he can look like Mr. Schu from “Glee” in a sweater vest (and likely get his butt kicked); or he can wear a pair of jeans with bleached creases which point straight to his crotch. Seriously. He might as well hang a neon sign over his junk. I have gotten used to a lack of propriety in girls’ clothes, but this was the first year I was also aghast over what was being advertised for boys.

Taking a deeper look into what these clothes say, it seems like young women’s only choice for popular clothing is to show more of their bodies and be over-sexualized. In these ads, young men are given the choice of being neutered by a sweater-vest, adopting a baggy-pants style that started in jail (seriously…look it up), or wearing jeans that call attention to their penises. Something is wrong here!

Dr. Lynn Ponton, in her book “The Sex Lives of Teenagers,” discusses the double standard of how western society deals with male sexual maturity versus female sexual maturity. Ponton notes that when a girl seems willing to explore her budding sexuality, she’s called a slut; the same behavior in boys will result in the boy being called a stud. When I saw this particular group of photographs, I was reminded of Ponton’s book and saw an example of what she meant, even in this advertisement.

Perhaps I’ve become a prude in my old age. I can’t tell, because in high school, I was never someone who wore what was popular. I’d take $20 of my $200 clothing allowance, buy a garbage bag full of things I liked from Goodwill, and bank the rest of the money. Like Molly Ringwald’s character in “Pretty In Pink,” I would rip the sleeves from one thing and sew it onto something else, or take an old pair of jeans and paint, sew, or glue stuff all over them. Maybe this is also why I can’t fathom paying $50 for a shirt or $75 for a pair of jeans, for kids who are still growing.

I have a core belief that most people who design clothing for teenagers have no children of their own. I wish “Project Runway” would address the issue of how most clothing being marketed to teenagers is banned by their school dress codes. What a challenge that would be, to give the designers a school’s handbook, and say, “Design a cool look for a teenage girl, and one for a teenage boy, which adheres to the dress code in this handbook.” I’d be thrilled to log onto Piperlime.com and buy the results, if they were reasonably priced. Maybe, locally speaking, ModCloth could help us out here.

As school nears, I’m guessing that once again, we’ll forego the crazy crap at the mall. Fortunately, my daughter has practical, subdued fashion tastes and puts together great, tasteful outfits from pieces she buys at Plato’s Closet and Old Navy; also fortunately, my teenage son loves Goodwill and Gabriel Brothers as much as his mother always has. I am hoping their schools continue to tow the line in terms of expecting teens to dress appropriately, and even that they enforce their dress codes a little better.

Am I the only one who feels like clothing for teenagers is out of hand?