Sunday, September 09, 2007

New for Fall

My daughter, Neo, has always disliked shopping in the junior section. Skimpy spaghetti straps, plunging necklines, skinny low-rise jeans, and lots of gathering and ruching in odd places.

We gave up a few years ago and struck out for the Misses section. Her wardrobe now is mostly straight leg jeans (almost boot cut) or Dockers twill pants, solid color T-shirts with maybe a satin ribbon around the neckline, and the occasional striped or ribbed sweater. She has wonderfully thick wavy dark brown hair. Lots of it, and she usually coils it up into a loose bun with a plastic clip or scrunchy. When it's down it's cut in layers and falls to her shoulders.

Friday she came home and asked if she could go to one particular store in the mall to buy black fingerless gloves. Mind you, this is a kid who Never asks to go shopping for Anything. We don't do trips to the mall unless it's 100 degrees and we're trying to beat the heat.

"Sure. I'll buy you gloves. Fingerless? Do they have lace?"

"No. Not lace. But they're stretchy and there's a pattern and I want them in solid black."

"OK. How do you know this store has them?"

"Asked a friend."

I did point out to her that fingerless gloves weren't really going to go with the Lands' End look she's sporting now. "Yeah, I know. I kinda want to go Goth."

Well, it's hardly a surprise -- she's been into a wide range of music for a while now, along with Japanese techno. So I said, "Emo? Or Goth."

"Not Emo! Those guys are weird. Goth."

"Wait. To me Goth is long black dresses, torn lace, black lipstick, black eyeliner, boots, trenchcoats, and a thing about vampires. But the vampire thing is kinda over the top. Is that Goth?"

"NO! Goth is torn T-shirts, black leggings, short plaid skirt, vest or droopy hoodie, black boots, fingerless gloves, black leather jewelry, and colored hair. No spikes in the hair, but Chelsea has spikes on her boots."

"OK. That's not Goth to me. That sounds Emo to me, or maybe just rocker."

So we decided that we're calling it rocker, although it's still Goth in school. (Emos are the ones at school who wear their hair in spikes, pin their clothes together with saftey pins, wear lots of chains on their pants, and cut themselves. That sounds "punk" to me, but I'm elderly.) My only concern is that she wants to pull off this change this weekend. She has two outfits from Hot Topic -- I predict a lot of laundry in my future as she cycles through those two and only those two for the next week or so.

And just so I'm clear. I couldn't be happier. I love that she's trying to find her people and her thang. She asked what she was allowed to do. (Watch me fall off my chair.) So I told her no nose piercing and no white eyeliner. I hate white eyeliner. Hate. It. She sorta shyly asked about hair color and then she fell off her chair when I said that hair color doesn't bother me at all. I'll even help her streak a color into it if she wants. I used to streak dark pink into mine (without bleaching, so it looked more like a weird highlight more than anything else). We did agree that dying all your hair black does do odd things to your face, and she's said that she wouldn't ever die all of her hair, because she likes it too much the way it is.

I am a *little* concerned about what the reaction of her comrades is going to be as she studs, dyes, and tears herself a new identity, but we'll weather that storm too.

So to recap. She's going from this:















To this:












Hee. Very excited for her.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those chains. They're so, so . . .

Okay, I'll be nice.

Just to clarify, I think the girl in that photo looks fine. It's the guy who looks dippy.

Suisan said...

Yeah, the chains are dumb.

But the chains aren't allowed in her school. (Not that that stops anyone. Flip-flops aren't allowed either, but my daughter says the teachers wear them. Set a good example. Yeah. OK.)

Interesting that now the stores are coming out with those same pants, but with fabric "chains". They're called suspender pants, but the suspenders drape from areas of the leg that never before saw a suspender.)

(Just noticed that in the post I misspelled "dye" as "die". Duh. Too lazy to go back and republish, so there it stays.)

Anonymous said...

My daughters say there are also punk-emos or wemos (wannabe emos) who don't listen to the hardcore music, and don't cut themselves, just act a bit depressed.
(All baffles me - perhaps they are depressed.)
They did tell me their dress code, but I get hopelessly lost. Black and neon, I think.

Just makes me profoundly grateful for school uniforms.

(And I agree with you about the hair - it grows, they might as well have fun. I'm less sure about the permanent stuff - my 16 year old intermittently campaigns, with no real expectation of succeeding, for a tattoo.)

CindyS said...

Okay, it's probably not a good thing that I figured the guys with that weird bang look (emo) were gay. Wouldn't that send them into heaving spasms of despair. But then they aren't trying to attract an older woman ;) And I would have called that a 'skater' look (90's)

It's probably wrong for me to say that I like the current Goth look for girls. Edgier instead of 'victim' looking from the 80's. *shudder*

CindyS

Anonymous said...

you rock :-D my mom has similar ideas as you regarding hair; my dad, not so much. my grandma tells me it'll give me cancer. oh well. i like doing highlights in my hair and then using henna to turn the highlights orange. it's good for your hair and looks really cool.
anyways. i really like that you're letting neo do her "thang" :-D
oh, and i once got goth-ified by a friend of mine. i scared people. and got lots of attention. it was fun ;-D

Bob & Muffintop said...

My daughter loves that look too. Honestly I have to say thank heavens the chains (she says pants with chains are called bondage pants) are against school dress code & her dad forbids piercings other than earrings. Currently her favorite outfit is a plaid miniskirt (infuriates her father every time he sees it on her, lol) with a skinny black tie, white blouse and a giant hoodie wrapped around her waist.

We've started on changing haircolors. We're on our second color. From nearly platinum blond to strawberry blond so far. Poor anime queen (the daughter). She had baby fine hair and has had to be very careful of the color & process for fear of losing her locks for good.

I'm sure you'll have good times with Neo as she experiments.

Bob & Muffintop said...

Sorry, that should be "she has baby fine hair" not "she had." Anime Queen is not bald. Yet.

Also, if you buy from Hot Topic buy it a bit big. Much of their stuff shrinks. Or bleeds.