Dress shopping was something that I thought my daughter would prefer to do with her mother rather than me. But as it is, my daughter asked me to help her when I suggested that she buy a dress for dinner when we go on vacation. After the initial sneer and objection to putting on a dress, she became agreeable and even got a bit excited about dressing up for dinner!
We popped into the first few women’s clothing store and she breezed through them quickly. She was looking at color and if it didn’t appeal to her, then there was no point looking at style or material. I thought that was a pragmatic approach. By our fourth store in the mall, she slowed down to browse through the racks. Then I told her, “Why don’t you pick a few and then try them on?” You want me to try them on? “Yes! You try on a winter coat before buying it so you’ll definitely try on a dress to make sure it fits in all the right places.” Oh, dad!
I am convinced the couches outside the change rooms are placed there for guys like me. I sat down and started playing games on my phone as my daughter disappeared with three dresses. She never came out but instead snapped photos and texted them to me. She finally came out and told me she liked two of them but couldn’t decide on which one. I asked her what she liked about each of the two. One was dressy without making me look old and the other was fun.
You like the dressy one because it made you feel more mature but not like an adult. And you like the fun dress because it allows you to glam up a little bit and still feel like a kid, right?
Even though we went dress shopping, I am realizing that dress shopping has less to do with the garment and more to do with how it made her feel. On the way to the checkout counter, I paraphrased her comments into something that I could understand. “You like the dressy one because it made you feel more mature but not like an adult. And you like the fun dress because it allows you to glam up a little bit and still feel like a kid, right?” Her eyes were wide and she nodded. “When why don’t you get both dresses, they are reasonably priced and you can choose to express a difference you at different dinners on vacation.”
Dress shopping for girls, as I had learned, isn’t something as mechanical as a guy slipping on a pair of jeans and pulling a t-shirt over his head. A dress is a painted canvas. It expresses visually a message to the beholder. As the wearer of this opus, my daughter needed to ensure that the dress broadcasts the right message of who she is and how she wants to be seen. And finally, she needs to be assured that the canvas is properly hung on her physical frame. There’s a lot going on in her head. As I am not the wearer, I cannot simply look at the price tag and make an arbitrary decision.
We walked out with two dresses in a bag and a big smile on her face fully looking forward to glamming up. She can’t wait for dinner to come. And I can’t wait for her to ditch her tank and summer shorts to have dinner at a decent restaurant with my old friends. But she did wear her runners with her fun dress. Well at lease we didn’t have to go shoe shopping. That will be another day on another couch and definitely another lesson for me!
