Cuteness

My hope for my girls is that they can go beyond physical appearance, and focus on something deeper. To that end I consciously make an effort to not talk about appearance, or about whether they are looking "cute". The media does enough to focus on appearance as it is.

However, I do want my girls to look nice - clean faces, neat hair and occasion-appropriate, clean, unfaded, somewhat coordinated, clothes. You know, the basics. If I am going out I do brush my hair and apply lipstick, but I never did that in front of the kids or drew their attention to it. Most days I just let them wear whatever they want.

Unfortunately this has backfired in the sense that my kids have no sense of appearance. As a mother I think it is my responsibility to teach them about grooming, but I am still not sure how best to approach it.

A few days ago we were going for dinner to a friend's house, I asked the kids to get dressed and one of mine shows up in her favorite faded sweatpants that she has grown out of so they ride up her ankles, hair sort of brushed but definitely needing pinning or something because she is growing out her bangs, and I knew in a few minutes she is going to have hair all over her face. The second one has a bit more clothing sense but what she was wearing was way too dressy, and also made her sister look even worse. sigh.

So finally I broke down and addresses the "cuteness" question. The girls put up a fight when asked to change, and I ended up saying "Don't you guys want to look cute!" There goes my whole not-focus-on-looks plan out the door. I reasoned some more "Don't I let you do whatever you want with your hair and clothes most days? When we are going out you have to wear what I say. I know much more about looking nice as I have been in the world for many more years than you." Then through many more arguments, negotiations and tears I managed to get the girls looking, I hate to say it, cute, and we finally arrived at the dinner party an hour late.

Later in the week I helped the kids pick out a few "going-out" outfits and had them put those separate from rest of the clothes, and off-limits for school. I also made the rule that when going out they have to take my advice - I give them a couple of choices and that is what they wear. Same goes for hair. They still put up a fight, but at least they look nice when we go out.

Since then we have had more talks about how people judge you on your appearance, and how that is not right but that is how the world is etc. All this doesn't sit right with me though, and I am still wondering if I could have handled this any differently.