“Mom these shorts look so terrible!” my tween-age daughter moans as she tries in vain to yank her little bootie shorts up an inch higher on her waist.  

When I was a teen we called shorts you wore high on your hips “mom shorts” and died small deaths at the thought of being forced to wear high waisted anything to school where people would actually see us. But not today. Apparently the goal is to have shorts high enough to just graze the nipples (am I allowed to use that word?)

According to my daughters, I’m not all that cool. Since when did I become uncool? I swear, for someone that’s spent the last 20 some years making it my job to be pretty damn hot, I’m seriously surprised that I’m missing the mark. It seems I wear my pants too low and my sense of style is “old”. Really??

I have memories of entering my teenage years, thinking my parents were definitely out of touch. They were former hippies (which ironically enough was a generation of trendsetters themselves, the forerunners of cool) but I didn’t see it like that. I’m sure that they were totally far out man in the 60’s and 70’s but for me, a teenager of the 90’s, if you weren’t listening to Nirvana and wearing baggy jeans and flannel shirt, you were far out. Far out of style.

When I had my first child, it was during the super classy Brittany Spears fashion era of the unbelievably low slung jean with requisite thong pantie peeking out the back. I remember walking one day, pushing my baby daughter around in her stroller near the high school. A group of girls were stopped on the sidewalk near me, one of them was bent over tying her shoe. A lacy pink “T” was adamantly crawling up her low back and out of her hip huggers and let me tell you, that thing must have been causing quite a stir in the wedgie department. You can’t tell me that doesn’t hurt I thought, as I walked by. I looked down at my sweet baby dressed in a candy colored onesie and whispered a small prayer that baggy jeans and flannels would be back in style by the time she was a teenager.

No such luck. The good news is that jeans sporting 2 inch zippers are indeed totally out of fashion. Phew! Thanks to the curvy Kardashians and other fashion icons, high waisted jeans that zip right up to about the solar plexus are the must haves now, which is great!  No thong undies peeking out of those puppies. The bad news: you know what is peeking out? I know you know, because they’re hard to miss. Are you like me? Have you seen more sweet little cheeks peeking out from under high waisted shorts on young girls than you ever wanted to? These aren’t your “mom shorts” anymore are they?

I began to see The Cheeks as I like to call them, peeking out of high waisted shorts last summer. Yes, I sat in judgement. Yes, my inner critic had a lot to say about them; Oh my god! how can any mother let their teenage daughters wear shorts that short? Over my dead body! (Caveat- yes,I sound like that mom don’t I? Not to worry, it was short lived.)

Fast forward a year and my own daughter refuses to wear anything but high waisted bootie shorts. No amount of begging, pleading, cajoling or downright prohibiting will make any difference in how she sees style. Even if she’s wearing loose gym shorts, she rolls them up high on her hips until the edges are just fluttering in the breeze on the north end of town if you know what I mean.  

What do I do here? This is new territory for me. I want her to develop who she is without all of my (perhaps outdated) judgements coming into place and at the same time I don’t think her bum cheeks should be on display. Is this a battle I’m willing to fight though? If my parents had insisted I take off my Jane’s Addiction Lollapalooza T shirt in 1992, I would have had a conniption. I would have taken it off to leave the house and put it right back on when I was out the door. I would rather my daughters at least be open and out on the table with what they’re doing as opposed to sneaking around.

And so for now, until I further develop my stance, or until Poodle Skirts come back into style (shut up- I can hope), bootie shorts it is. Winter will be here soon, right?

 

About the author: Natha Perkins is a mama, an artist, a writer, and an intuitive life coach. For many years she owned a successful jewelry and lifestyle brand called Luscious Metals (featured in Cosmopolitan, Parenting Magazine and more). Making beautiful adornments out of metal and stones was definitely a dream job, but she decided she wished to be of service in a more meaningful way.   Nowadays, she writes professionally and has been published in Elephant Journal, Scary Mommy, Rebelle Society and more. When she isn’t doing that, she’s helping clients from around the world figure out what the hell is really going on in their lives which is still an art, just of a different kind. On a daily basis she also finds herself fighting the age old internal battle of whether to fake being perfect or just go ahead and risk exposing her own truths to the world. The struggle is real y’all.  You can find more of her at www.nathaperkins.com  or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/wellbeingengineered/ to learn more or to work with her personally.

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1 Comment

  1. Thank you for this!!!! I’m going to share the link to this article the next time someone mom shames me for he length of my daughters shorts lol

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