They teased her about her clothes. Sometimes she wished that story about the girl with 100 Dresses was true. Maybe her parents couldn’t afford to buy her new clothes, but at a certain point when she reached her teens she was given her aunt’s old clothes to wear.
Her aunt was seven years older to begin with, added to that the years that had accumulated. The dang things were probably at least twenty years old and retro wasn’t in! When all the girls were wearing mini skirts and hip huggers, she was wearing a grey full skirt made from a cotton/polyester blend that hung well below her knees… halfway to her ankles.
Her friends teased her. “You look like you just came from the Goodwill.” They all laughed. She tried rolling the skirt up at the waist to make it look shorter, but the cumbersome material gathered at the waist and made her look fat.
The skirt came with a pale yellow see through blouse which was beautifully embroidered. She wore that to school one day with a little white cotton camisole beneath. Her teacher sent a note home to take the blouse off the list of possible outfits – “unsuitable” was the word used.
There was another outfit – grey and white hounds tooth – with a long straight skirt that had a matching jacket. It might have been OK if it had been made for her, but the sleeves hung well below her fingertips and the length of the skirt was unsatisfactory for present day trends.
Her parents said, “Wait until you lose some more weight and then we’ll buy you something new.”
She only weighed 113. How much weight did they want her to lose? Her sister got new clothes. The truth was they were broke. They welcomed the hand-me-downs as a blessing. But they weren’t looking at it from a wanna be trendy teen.
“You look like a horse’s ass,” her best friend remarked one day.
She went home and had a teenage storm with her mother. “It’s not fair!” she screamed. “All my friends tease me. I need some new clothes!” Her mother convinced her father to let her have a clothes allowance.
She went shopping with her boyfriend who was way cool, had been to San Francisco and seen all the latest styles. She came home with some tan bell bottom hip huggers, a brown leather belt, a lavender tank top with no bra, a black beret, and some love beads with a peace symbol necklace.
Her mother was furious! She made her take it all back in exchange for a sensible wool A-line skirt…below the knees, of course, and a blue angora sweater.
It was then she decided to take up sewing. She made herself three sleeveless mini-dresses just long enough to follow the rules, but short enough to be hip.
(First published 4/17/12)
