Little Lolita

by Patti

Those who know me know I am a little on the liberal side. I tend to be free with expression and thought and am pretty accepting of other people's choices. I'm also a little...opinionated. I will argue with a rude cab driver, tell somebody to bleep off, and stand up for the underdog over and over. Mostly? I just want to be free to be me. After all - this is the girl who wore black garbage bags to school with a studded belt around my waist, and even now, any perception that I am being held back from wearing a black garbage bag to school if I wanna does not sit well with me.

I want my daughter to grow up with the same sense of independent thought and freedom of choice. I want her to be able to fend for herself, fight for what's right, and not be afraid to stand out. And, if she happens to fall in love with someone like her papi - a strong, also opinionated, somewhat conservative ball of fire, I want her to be able to able to love him back while still holding her own and staying true to who she is.

And it all begins with shoes.

I bought S a pair of wedge booties for the fall.  In my eyes, they were totally adorable, totally harmless, totally fashionable. See?

But in M's eyes? They looked like this:

And because he felt he was sending his daughter off to work the streets instead of into the halls of middle school, he refused to let her wear them. We actually had an argument about ANKLE BOOTS.
"She is too young to wear high heels!"
"They are NOT high heels - they are wedges. They look like HIKING boots, for crying out loud; how is that high heels?"
"She wore them with these pink pants that looked like stripper pants!"
"Stripper pants? My daughter does NOT own stripper pants - what are you talking about?"

(Apparently, Children's Place is now in the business of selling hooker wear? Did you know this? I did not know this.)

We discussed her gray ankle boots for nearly an hour. I tried to pinpoint what was causing my anxiety over his disdain for the harmless shoes, and I realized that I was kind of projecting my own fear of being stifled into the matter - and he was projecting his own fear of his daughter growing up. We were both projecting our neuroses onto S, and all the poor kid wanted to do was wear her I STILL SAY TOTALLY HARMLESS boots in peace.

A couple of days after our conversation, I spotted the boots on the shoe rack by our door and picked them up, marveling at how even MORE conservative they appeared to me under the shadow of "slut wear!" that had so unfairly been cast upon them. M was watching TV and I held one of the shoes up to his face. "Really? REALLY? THIS is what you were freaking out about?"

In the end, she will wear her boots, but she will wear them with non-stripper pants to appease her father. And to satisfy me, she will wear them with a confident smile on her face that says, "I won this battle; I will one day win the war."