"Homecoming Dresses"

[Anonymous]

I just saw a FB pic from a cousin's Southern-area society party. Many of the women were wearing pretty slinky outfits with spaghetti straps, and these were 40-yo's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, some of them are very short. What I don't get is how their mothers let them out of the house like that?

My daughter is tall and has long legs. She's also athletic. Basically, she's got a great body. As long as her butt won't show, I don't mind her wearing a short dress. I told her you either show off cleavage or leg but not both. She chose to show off her legs. I made her jump up with her hands over her head both facing me and facing away from me in dressing rooms. Then I had her bend over as if writing something leaning on a table, and I took a picture of her ass and showed it to her and said "are you really comfortable showing this much?" It turned out to be a brilliant idea - she picked a dress two inches longer because of that pic.

But she's got a great body, knows it, and dresses for it. She likes how she looks in the shorter dresses. There is zero correlation between skimpiness of dress and having sex.

Then why did you go such great lengths to encourage her to get a longer dress?

NP. Length of dress has nothing to do with body shame, the wearer's worth as a human being, or the likelihood the wearer will have sex. However, in our family some things are just not appropriate, and skimpy excessively revealing, short or tight dresses on my high school age daughters, especially when worn to a school event, are one of those things. We required a dress that we felt met the spirit of the dress code for the event and sufficiently covered the private areas of the body. Young men's formal outfits do not typically have the problem of being inappropriate/indecent, but if I had a son and his choice of homecoming outfit were immodest I would also steer him towards something that met these basic standards.

The short skimpy barely there dresses do not look very good, and they do not send a very good message. I discourage them. In general clothing does communicate things about the wearer, and most people choose clothing at least partially with an eye towards social appropriateness for the occasion. These styles of dresses are widely regarded as tacky, showy, and indicative of a poor sense of both taste and propriety. That's not the impression I would like my daughters to make, and honestly they mostly don't really want others to think such things about them either. It is possible to look good and fit in to the high school crowd in a more classy outfit so that is what I guided them towards.

At the very least someone choosing an outfit should be aware of both how they look in it -- the picture from all angles that the PP mentioned -- and how the outfit is likely to fit in at the event and be perceived by fellow attendees. If the wearer is comfortable with the answers to all questions and the outfit doesn't violate the family standards of a minor child's parents, individuals should be free to wear what they like. Similarly, others are free to think what they like about the outfit including thinking that it looks tacky or was a poor or unflattering choice, which is what I generally think of when I see a woman of almost any age in the type of dress OP was describing (because it's not only HS girls' dresses with this problem, you should see what some women choose to wear to formal or professional events!). I know exactly what sort of dresses OP is talking about and I am not a fan.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, some of them are very short. What I don't get is how their mothers let them out of the house like that?

My daughter is tall and has long legs. She's also athletic. Basically, she's got a great body. As long as her butt won't show, I don't mind her wearing a short dress. I told her you either show off cleavage or leg but not both. She chose to show off her legs. I made her jump up with her hands over her head both facing me and facing away from me in dressing rooms. Then I had her bend over as if writing something leaning on a table, and I took a picture of her ass and showed it to her and said "are you really comfortable showing this much?" It turned out to be a brilliant idea - she picked a dress two inches longer because of that pic.

But she's got a great body, knows it, and dresses for it. She likes how she looks in the shorter dresses. There is zero correlation between skimpiness of dress and having sex.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're living through your daughter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:18: 32

This is what I would consider ugly/ill designed

http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/teeze-me-juniors-lace-strapless-dress?ID=1739738&CategoryID=18109#fn=SPECIAL_OCCASIONS%3DParty/Cocktail%26sp%3D1%26spc%3D250%26ruleId%3D%26slotId%3D9

Whereas I don't mind this one so much.

http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/emerald-sundae-juniors-ruffled-peplum-bodycon-dress?ID=1418976&CategoryID=18109&LinkType=#fn=SPECIAL_OCCASIONS%3DParty/Cocktail%26PAGEINDEX%3D2%26sp%3D2%26spc%3D250%26ruleId%3D%26slotId%3D77

Funny - both are strapless, show the same amount of cleavage and the same amount of leg.

Yeah, is it the color that made it more acceptable?

[Anonymous]

Jesus, ladies. Unclench. And enough with the slut shaming. Because that's what it is.

[Anonymous]

I agree, the girls look like skanks. They could be nice, smart, virgin etc... But they don't look like it. My grandmother used to say the higher a dress goes up, the lower your IQ will seem.

All the posts of homecoming on FB are like whoa!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesus, ladies. Unclench. And enough with the slut shaming. Because that's what it is.

No it's not. Slut shaming would be trying to humiliate or insult ("shame") a person who has lots of sex with lots of different partners (the actual meaning of the word "slut").

This discussion is about how many parents don't think short tight dresses that show off tons of cleavage and the butt is a good look. It's tacky, it's rarely flattering, it's unnecessary, and it's particularly objectionable at a school event.

Nobody except the wearer of the dress, the romantic partner of the wearer of the dress, and any close confidantes of the wearer of the dress knows how much sex if any someone wearing a dress like that has been having, and it doesn't matter anyway. Because the point isn't that wearing a dress like that makes a girl a "slut" (it doesn't; someone wearing that kind of dress could have had any amount of sex ranging from none to she lost track of how much. And it still wouldn't matter.). This isn't about sex or "sluts"; it's about dressing in an appropriate and flattering way.

Clearly, many parents do not believe that certain types of dresses are acceptable for their high school aged daughters. Is having standards for acceptable manner of dress for your children no longer part of parenting? When and why did this become a bad thing to monitor?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, some of them are very short. What I don't get is how their mothers let them out of the house like that?

My daughter is tall and has long legs. She's also athletic. Basically, she's got a great body. As long as her butt won't show, I don't mind her wearing a short dress. I told her you either show off cleavage or leg but not both. She chose to show off her legs. I made her jump up with her hands over her head both facing me and facing away from me in dressing rooms. Then I had her bend over as if writing something leaning on a table, and I took a picture of her ass and showed it to her and said "are you really comfortable showing this much?" It turned out to be a brilliant idea - she picked a dress two inches longer because of that pic.

But she's got a great body, knows it, and dresses for it. She likes how she looks in the shorter dresses. There is zero correlation between skimpiness of dress and having sex.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're living through your daughter.

No it doesn't, it sounds like she's giving her daughter some good solid guidance. Most of what she said is how I still choose dresses to this day. Pick one aspect of your body to highlight -- several at once will likely be too much. Try to move around in the dress -- can you? Figure out how you look from all angles. Decide if this is a look you like and are comfortable with.

Most teens and young adults need to be taught to be good dressers and find things which look good on them rather than just following the trends even if the trend isn't good on the individual.I say good on the mom for helping her daughter out. She will probably appreciate it later.

What part of this is "living through the daughter"? I typically hear that phrase when the parent is pushing the child to have/do something the parent always wanted but never had a chance to experience. That doesn't seem to apply here.

[Anonymous]

What I notice is that cleavage and leg that were meant to be this side of tasteful start to cross over to the other side when the girl wearing the clothes is too plump and flesh becomes too noticeable. Which makes sense, because designers usually draw for slim models, not your average large woman, and the effect is absolutely not the same. Young women have to learn to dress for their figure and shape. Same goes for too skinny.

Tasteful and elegant. Highlight one part of your body. For me it used to be the waist. Long tight dresses.
On the other hand, I'd rather the girls make mistakes now than in the workplace ten years later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need some perspective. I took my oldest son to his first homecoming event where pictures were being taken. There must have been over forty couples there in various groups. I expected to see some "sexy" dresses but I was taken aback. The first 30% looked appropriately dressed in pretty dresses, the second 30% were dressed in dresses I would say are "too short" or "too low cut" but at least not both, and the third category of 40% of the girls, in my opinion and please excuse the harshness, looked like they were dressed as hookers -- super-tight ("bandage"), crazy-short (how can they sit?), strapless or very low-cut dresses with four-inch heels. Is my opinion regarding the third category out-of-date? Anti-feminist? Too prudish When my daughter gets to that age, will I "mellow out" about it? It felt so weird, because I was actually shocked and no one else seems to be.

You may or may not mellow out about it, when your daughter gets to that age.

But what you need to be very careful about, right now, is giving the message to your oldest son that girls/women who wear revealing clothing have less worth as human beings than girls/women who wear less revealing clothing.

But is it ok to give the message that those girls have bad taste, and they lack dignity and class? You're fooling yourself if you think how a person dresses says nothing at all about the person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need some perspective. I took my oldest son to his first homecoming event where pictures were being taken. There must have been over forty couples there in various groups. I expected to see some "sexy" dresses but I was taken aback. The first 30% looked appropriately dressed in pretty dresses, the second 30% were dressed in dresses I would say are "too short" or "too low cut" but at least not both, and the third category of 40% of the girls, in my opinion and please excuse the harshness, looked like they were dressed as hookers -- super-tight ("bandage"), crazy-short (how can they sit?), strapless or very low-cut dresses with four-inch heels. Is my opinion regarding the third category out-of-date? Anti-feminist? Too prudish When my daughter gets to that age, will I "mellow out" about it? It felt so weird, because I was actually shocked and no one else seems to be.

You may or may not mellow out about it, when your daughter gets to that age.

But what you need to be very careful about, right now, is giving the message to your oldest son that girls/women who wear revealing clothing have less worth as human beings than girls/women who wear less revealing clothing.

But is it ok to give the message that those girls have bad taste, and they lack dignity and class? You're fooling yourself if you think how a person dresses says nothing at all about the person.

Not that poster. I'm not sure, but I lean towards saying yes that's OK because that would be how I feel about the choice to wear such outfits. But maybe that's a bit harsh especially when applied to young ladies whose personal styles are still evolving, so if I were at my best during the conversation with DD I might try for the message that the choice of that particular dress was in bad taste, and that the look the girls selected for the event lacked dignity and class. Because in theory it is possible that their style could change especially if someone guides them towards more tasteful choices for future events and I wouldn't want to have made too sweeping a judgement at first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I need some perspective. I took my oldest son to his first homecoming event where pictures were being taken. There must have been over forty couples there in various groups. I expected to see some "sexy" dresses but I was taken aback. The first 30% looked appropriately dressed in pretty dresses, the second 30% were dressed in dresses I would say are "too short" or "too low cut" but at least not both, and the third category of 40% of the girls, in my opinion and please excuse the harshness, looked like they were dressed as hookers -- super-tight ("bandage"), crazy-short (how can they sit?), strapless or very low-cut dresses with four-inch heels. Is my opinion regarding the third category out-of-date? Anti-feminist? Too prudish When my daughter gets to that age, will I "mellow out" about it? It felt so weird, because I was actually shocked and no one else seems to be.

You may or may not mellow out about it, when your daughter gets to that age.

But what you need to be very careful about, right now, is giving the message to your oldest son that girls/women who wear revealing clothing have less worth as human beings than girls/women who wear less revealing clothing.

But is it ok to give the message that those girls have bad taste, and they lack dignity and class? You're fooling yourself if you think how a person dresses says nothing at all about the person.

No, it's not. Do you sincerely believe that wearing dresses that you consider too tight/too short/too high/too low takes away a girl's or woman's dignity? And class (however you want to define that)? I don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Clearly, many parents do not believe that certain types of dresses are acceptable for their high school aged daughters. Is having standards for acceptable manner of dress for your children no longer part of parenting? When and why did this become a bad thing to monitor?

Having standards for acceptable dress for your children is fine.

Relating the clothes people wear to their human value, dignity, worth, or intelligence is not fine.

And, really, I am tired of the obsession with the clothes teenage girls wear. They're young, they like to wear what their friends wear, they're just figuring out their sexuality, they want to wear clothes they consider adult, they like to shock the prudish fuddy-duddies who were never young -- whatever. Sexy clothes don't make you have sex, and sexy clothes don't make people rape you. Sexy clothes are just sexy clothes. I wish that people would find something else to obsess about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Clearly, many parents do not believe that certain types of dresses are acceptable for their high school aged daughters. Is having standards for acceptable manner of dress for your children no longer part of parenting? When and why did this become a bad thing to monitor?

Having standards for acceptable dress for your children is fine.

Relating the clothes people wear to their human value, dignity, worth, or intelligence is not fine.

And, really, I am tired of the obsession with the clothes teenage girls wear. They're young, they like to wear what their friends wear, they're just figuring out their sexuality, they want to wear clothes they consider adult, they like to shock the prudish fuddy-duddies who were never young -- whatever. Sexy clothes don't make you have sex, and sexy clothes don't make people rape you. Sexy clothes are just sexy clothes. I wish that people would find something else to obsess about.

Do you even have a HS student. Do you know girls give away BJ's like it is Halloween candy. This generations "spin the bottle" has been taken to a whole new level.

No. Sexy clothes are not just sexy clothes. A white dress with a black thong clearly shows there is no parents present at home and hence... the girl has little guidance and is more likely to make bad decisions.

These are not college age girls who are "figuring out their sexuality"... super short dresses are being worn by girls that have no guidance at home.

[Anonymous]

Where do you live? I've found the dresses here to be mostly appropriate. Bethesda.