Beauty or a beast?

Tasked with outfitting myself for a Halloween party, and wishing to build my costume around a pair of rotten teeth purchased a few years ago for just such an occasion, I headed to WalMart.

Half-an-hour later, I had a complete trashy teenager ensemble — purple crushed velvet camisole with copious bust, push-up bra with molded foam cups and itchy lace trim, fishnet pantyhose on sale for $1, big hoop earrings, matching skull-and-crossbones leather-ette armbands, a red wig, and plastic high-heel sandals (la piece de résistance for $5.88). To all this I added a denim mini-skirt that I had sewn from a pair of Levis in 1980. The total cost: $40.

It’s cheap to look cheap.

Samantha, age 6, declared that I looked beautiful. I looked in the mirror and saw one of those women who strut through the midway at the county fair on a Saturday night. Is this who my daughter aspires to be? I find myself hoping that conservative and preppy comes back into vogue before she reaches an age when what she wears will really matters. To her, and to us. Or will she always have a natural attraction to styles that make her parents wince?

When I was young, my mother’s college friend — a woman we knew only as Olga — would send us boxes of clothes that her daughter had outgrown. Olga lived in New York City and was obviously a member of a socioeconomic group that could afford to dress its offspring in miniature versions of the same clothes that the adults wore to the country club and PTA meetings. My mother would open each shipment and ogle over the Pendleton wool plaid pants and camels hair coats.

My older sister and I would cringe, denouncing each garment as ugly, hideous, and something only old ladies would wear. We would sooner wear our pajamas to school than be caught dressed in any of Olga’s daughter’s cast-offs.

Instead, my favorite outfit was a leather-look vinyl mini-skirt, complete with fetching fringe along the hem, and a matching brown vinyl vest, also rimmed with fringe. I remember wearing this outfit as many days in a row as I could, and my mother didn’t seem to mind, probably because the skirt and vest didn’t require much maintenance other than an occasional sponging. My sister owned a similar outfit, except her vest had longer fringe.

But when our appearance was required at a family event in Boston, where my grandmother lived, my mother would intervene in our clothing selections. At least until I was 12, when one fateful day, she threw in the towel. She had taken me to a local department to purchase “something decent to wear” to my weird aunt's funeral. The funeral was scheduled for Trinity Church in Boston, and my mother must have thought a Vanderbilt or Rockefeller might wander in off the street. But we were never close to Aunt Ann, my father’s older sister, and her passing was not an event that I thought warranted a fashion makeover. She had smoked eight packs of cigarettes a day and, little wonder, fell victim to lung cancer. She had also once had a frontal lobotomy back when that was the treatment for the mentally unhinged, and my sister and I were as emotionally close to her as we were to a floor lamp. Except for the floor lamp in my grandmother’s bedroom that turned on and off with a clap of the hands. We preferred its company to just about everyone on my father’s side of the family.

From the racks at Hovey's Department Store, my mother thought the perfect outfit for a spring funeral was a skirt and matching shirt with giant pink roses set against a light teal background. She insisted (insisted) that we buy it. I looked in the dressing room mirror and felt like one of Maria Von Trapp’s stepchildren dressed in a frock fashioned from the villa’s drapes. With hands defiantly on hips and snarly expression on my face, I insisted I would not wear it. Yet my mother bought it anyway. I felt completely and utterly defeated.

Then on the way home, we stopped at Zayre’s (like Ames, only lower quality, if that’s possible). There, I found a beige gauze skirt with matching t-shirt and brown faux leather belt. Now this was me! Wearing this outfit, I could hold my head high, smile at my fellow funeral goers, even chat up a Rockefeller, should one walk into the church vestibule. I'd like to think my enthusiasm convinced my mother to buy this outfit and return the other. In truth, the fact that it cost under $10 (to Hovey's $30) sealed the deal.

After that, my mother rarely forced her tastes upon me, probably because she realized it would cost her less money.

I choose not to fight clothing battles with Samantha. As long as her outfits are climatically correct and not too skimpy, she can wear stripes and flowers, glitter and leopard print. Not that I don’t wince or make comments. But I don’t put up a fight.

I’m confident that, thanks to peer pressure, her tastes will mature. As long as her peers aren't the ladies at the county fair.