training them up.

samil and amely had a parent's day celebration last weekend - it was ridiculous on many levels (it started 44 minutes late, the speakers were way too loud and it was kind of disorganized) - but my biggest pet-peeve was on full-blast.

little girls in high heels.

not the little square, 1/2 inch heels that you wore as a child for church with cute little, ruffly socks. no, no, friends there are full out kitten heels or "stilettos" (albeit really low). in grown up fashions. no little mary-jane strap or ruffly socks. we have some friends whose not even two year old daughter wears heels. when i asked her mom about it - she told that she didn't start wearing heels until she was 15. that's the old tradition. but she says that even still her feet get tired and since she's expected to wear heels, and her daughters will be expected to wear heels, she might as well get them used to it now.



these are the trainers that i remember!

i won't even start on all the issues in that theory.
but.
we might as well just slap some fishnets on these girls and call it a day.

it's not just shoes either. it's clothes and underclothes. i've been amazingly surprised to see the underwear that our students wear at school. while amely is still prancing around in little cotton panties with the little mermaid stamped on the front, these girls are wearing their teenage sisters hand me downs - silky, boyshorts, kind-of thongs. i'm not sure that i've come across one pair of regular cotton panties on one little girl since i started working at school.

and. the bras! i remember movies and after-school specials of little girls who had to beg for training bras. once they got over the embarrassment of asking for one, and mom got over the embarrassment of buying one - it was usually a cotton sports bra type thing, right? well. here in the supermarket/superstore you can buy your six year old a padded bra, complete with the playboy bunny bedazzled on the boob.

obviously i'm not of the school of thought that little girls should be taught to conform to ridiculous fashion and beauty standards. in fact, at the very same parent's day activity, we won a raffle and were gifted hair relaxer and some special treatment for the hair - i looked at amalio and jewel and laughed. of all the things on the raffle table, i won the thing that was least apt for us. i can't tell you the last time i even really brushed my hair. amely is lucky that she gets hers slapped into a ponytail every morning.

i think it's even more absurd that we teach girls from such a young age that heels are necessary parts of being a girl and that we should wear these padded bras because - god forbid - you don't get any boobies, you'll have to figure out how to cope with that. whatever happened to letting kids be kids and learning those hard, mean facts of the world later? when they're grown enough to know that we're all different?