As if it isn’t hard enough when a woman starts feeling over the hill....
today’s fashion icons aren’t even teenagers yet.
Here’s the latest kid to be labelled a style setter—Sasha Obama.
She’s following in the fashion footsteps of Madonna’s daughter Lola— who has her own clothing line….
Will Smith’s daughter Willow— who has her own stylist—
and Suri Cruise–wearing the latest styles before she stopped wearing diapers.
Fashion can be one of those tricky areas between mothers and daughters—creating bonds or breaks or everything in between.
Mothers of boys only—you have no idea how lucky you are.
I feel really lucky I was spared dealing with a 6 year old wanting to dress like a sexpot….or like Shiloh.
Fortunately many girls are as fickle about fashion as they are about everything else.
By 18 months my daughter went through a period where she refused to wear any article of clothing unless it was turquoise. A few years later I realized this was a declaration of will rather than a fashion statement—when she started wearing baggy t-shirts tucked into elastic waist sweatpants.
Don’t even ask what it was like buying shoes when she spent six years refusing to wear anything leather-— now she’s morphed into a 20-something who’s addicted to Uggs.
So my feeling is generally to let your kids do whatever rocks their boat, even if it rocks yours. Personal style is….personal.
Which holds true at the other end of the spectrum.
As fashionistas get younger, their moms are going in the opposite direction. And yet people are still making up ridiculous rules about what NOT to wear if you’re over 50— no tank tops, short skirts or bootleg jeans.
Oy. As someone who gets most of my clothes lately in age-inappropriate Anthropologie, my attitude is like most of my tops —very loose.
Having lived most of my adult life in the UK, I am very uncomfortable with the publication of pictures of the President’s daughter on fashion, or any, pages. This would not happen in the UK, where privacy of politicians’ children is scrupulously protected. Politicians choose to put themselves in the public eye, and they know everything they do, say, or wear is fair game. Their smallest gesture is everyone’s business.
But the children made no such choice. I am sorry to see little Sasha and her “style” remarked about in the media in this way, and her pictured reproduced all over the world.
I think we do a better job in the UK. We almost never see our Prime Minister’s children. Not because they are unlovely (I am sure they are not) but because (in the first place) they are irrelevant, and (in the second place) they have rights to privacy. As long as they are too young to assert those rights, society has a duty to demand it on their behalf. Even the press, scurrilous as it mostly is in this country, does not cross that line. I wish that were true in the US!
Let’s let the little Obama girls be little girls, not fashion icons, for as long as they can.
I totally agree with you that this is a sad state of affairs of state in the US—
I could spew out endless words stemming from your comment—since it addresses, on so many levels, more than one of my pet peeves (which I delicately avoided in my post.)
I do think it’s kind of ironic that the press in the UK–such a free for all in some ways—-keeps its distance from political kids. Kind of quaint and British.
I wish we could have a moratorium that allowed all children to BE children—and forbid kids being used as photo ops. Sadly I think we’re stuck in this celebrity culture which has grown into a monster with tentacles everywhere—and I feel sorry for anyone in the public eye who is trying to protect their kids from it.