Plain Jane and the Glamour Queen

I admit it: I’m a fashion Luddite. I don’t wear make-up or shave my legs. I have almost no jewelry and the few things that I wear every day (and never change) have sentimental significance. My hair-do is a one-trick pony. I have never had a manicure. I’m allergic to deodorant and perfume. The former gives me a rash and the latter makes my eyes swell up. I have twelve pairs of flip-flops, two pairs of UGG boots, walking sneakers, gardening sneakers, and one pair of Birkenstocks -- and that’s my repertoire. By now I expect you see the picture clearly. I am a Plain Jane. Not ugly, mind you. I was attractive in my youth and now that I’m a middle-aged lady my husband says I’m an “older Babe.” Thank you very much. I’m just saying that I haven’t a clue about style and fashion. So how did I raise a Glamour Queen like my daughter?

My daughter has been selecting her own clothing since she was fourteen months old. Before she could talk she had already figured out that she couldn’t trust her mother to meet her standards for excellence in the clothing department. She chose each day’s ensemble tastefully, although not always with common sense because, after all, she was a toddler. On more than one occasion she had a fit because I wouldn’t let her wear her slip to preschool without a dress over it. When she was three she went on a two-week swimsuit jag in the middle of March. Not only did she want to wear her swimsuit to preschool every day, but she insisted on wearing it backward so she could see the big bow. All this aside, that girl knew her own mind when it came to fashion and clothing almost from day one.

I realized my daughter was a Glamour Queen in a flash one evening in Tower Records when I glanced over at my two-year-old and my heart stopped. She looked twenty-two. My husband is Black and I’m Jewish so my daughter is an exotic multicultural gal. On that evening in Tower, she wore her hair swept up in a hair clip with her thick curls tumbling out the back. She wore a jeans jacket over a pink scoop-neck top and a thin silver bracelet on one wrist. She had on tight gray jeans and little pink plastic jelly shoes, which matched her nail polish and earrings. At two years of age, she already looked more stylish than I had ever looked in my life. She had one hand in her back pocket and with the other she held a tape (this was before CDs), which she studied as if she could read the words written on it. She looked like a college student. It was at that moment that I realized I was out of my league with this child. She was destined to have all the style and grace that I lacked.

During her elementary school years, she became a trendsetter among her peers. Whatever she wore, however she did her hair, wherever she shopped, the other girls followed her lead. By the time she entered high school, she had perfected the art of shopping a bargain. If I gave her thirty dollars at the mall, she would come home with four shirts, a handbag, earrings, and a pair of sandals. She had shoes three layers deep in her closet, a pair for every outfit. When she came home from her first high school dance, she said she thought there should be a “Fashion Police” at the door for school dances and that they should turn away all the girls who wore hideous cupcake party dresses.

One day, running late to get out the door to school in the morning, she asked me to close a gold chain around her wrist. I couldn’t figure out how the catch worked and she couldn’t do it with one hand. In frustration she chewed me out, “Sometimes I really wish you cared about girly stuff and fashion, then you would know how to do this kind of thing.” She got a part-time job at a clothing store and used her earnings to have her hair and nails done regularly.

She left home for college with three large boxes and a suitcase full of shoes. She took one look at the size of the closet in the dorm room and threatened to forego a college degree altogether. I took the summer shoes home again and she kept the fall and most of the winter ones with her. Every few weeks she called and asked me to mail her a pair of shoes. During her college years, she worked as a model, a dancer, and a fashion writer for the school newspaper.

When we took a family trip to New York City, my daughter went missing at every street corner. The rest of us would look back down the block and see a sign that said “shoe sale” or “handbag sale” or “belt sale” and we would know exactly where we could find her.

On the phone with me one evening not long before my birthday, she lamented the fact that I have no interest in style and female accessories. She said she couldn’t figure out what to get me and she complained, “I wish you liked perfume or jewelry, then it’d be easy. What am I going to do when I get rich and famous and I can’t buy you a mink coat?”

“Sorry, Babe,” I answered, “but a mink coat would trigger my allergies and make my eyes puff up. Besides, you know I’m a vegetarian, and wouldn’t wear a dead animal.”

“I guess I’ll have to buy you a tofu coat,” she said.

Even though we don’t have the “girly stuff” in common, we do have other common interests. For instance, we both have a weakness for fancy underwear. I should have bought stock in Victoria’s Secret twenty years ago. Also, my lovely daughter recently received her college degree in journalism and, like myself, is a writer. (I hold a degree in English.) Thus, despite our style differences, we do have significant defining qualities in common. At her graduation ceremony this past spring, she paid me a high compliment when she said to me and her father, “You guys actually look good for a change.” We had dressed for the occasion. I even bought a new skirt. My Glamour Queen approved.

It continues to amaze me that a regular gal like myself managed to raise such an elegant, poised, beautiful daughter. We share many of the same values, interests, and perceptions of the world. Nevertheless, we are very different women. In the end, the way a Plain Jane successfully raises a Glamour Queen is the same way that every successful mother raises a successful daughter, by supporting her and giving her the space and the resources to become her own woman. I worked hard to allow her to blossom and discover who she was and what she wanted to do in life. Our children are not creatures for us to tame, shape, and mold. They are spirits for us to discover and nurture on their own path.