By the time you read this, WBHS
Homecoming 2014 will be just a memory.
By the time I recover from dress
shopping for WBHS Homecoming 2014 it will be time for WBHS Homecoming
2015.
And The Princess will be shopping
without me. It's safer for everyone that way.
Teenage girls are proficient pack
shoppers – provided it is within a pack of their peers. Introduce
an adult figure and the thrill of the hunt and ultimately the bagging
of big game suffers. Ironic, considering it is usually the adult who
controls the funds.
I remember going to the mall with my
friends. No one else will be as brutally honest about the clothes you
try on – certainly not someone whose commission depends upon the
purchase. (“Yes. That does make your butt look like you could show
a double feature on it.”) Your mother just doesn't share your sense
of style, finely honed as it was/is by Seventeen or Pintrest.
And only another teen could hit the food court with equal gusto.
(“Fro-yo and a diet soda will totally not make your butt any
bigger.”)
Unfortunately the pack-hunt mentality
broke down this time. Probably because The Princess does not like to
shop. (I know! Right? I think she was switched at birth.) Believe me,
there is nothing more un-fun than high-pressure shopping (absolutely,
positively, gotta have it) with someone who doesn't like to shop. And
this was a high-pressure situation. There was just a week
before the big dance, and every weeknight was filled with Homecoming
Week activities.
To keep the mood light, I decided to
treat this as a learning opportunity and a chance for mother-daughter
bonding, rather than a buy-or-die situation. What I learned is that
The Princess and I have totally different approaches to shopping, and
that shopping for a Homecoming dress has changed a lot since back in
the day.
How things have changed #1
Back in the day we shopped for a
“homecoming outfit;” typically a wool-plaid or corduroy skirt and
a sweater with bat-wings or a cowl neck. I'm not sayin' they were
good fashion choices, but they were practical – warm, full
coverage, and you could wear them again. (There is photographic evidence...
which will not be shared.)
And the whole thing cost less than a
car payment.
The current Eastern Iowa girls' Homecoming attire trend is a fancy party dress: the shorter, the tighter, the
sparklier, the better. And only good for one wearing. You don't even
want to think about the per-hour cost.
How things have changed #2
These days the pack hunters don't have
to actually hunt as a pack. Thanks to cell phones, Twit-a-gram and
the such, they can spread out and hit many more stores in the same
amount of time.
“Why don't we check out X store,” I'd suggest.
The Princess' thumbs would fly across the screen of her phone and
she'd report haughtily “Randi was just there. They don't have anything.”
Once potential dresses were located,
The Princess' modus operandi was simple: Grab as many as you can –
without looking at the size – and sort them out in the dressing
room. But it took her Fore. Ev. Er. to try them on. At first I
thought she was having trouble with the zippers. Then I realized that
she had to photograph and Snap-Twit pics of each dress to her pals
for an instant opinion.
Did Mom get to see any of them?
No.
Not
until the very end, when it was crunch time and the stores were ready
to close... when I was seriously considering buying the outrageously
expensive (but gorgeous) dress, just to end the pain and
misery. (Mine. Not hers.)
One thing hasn't changed: The Mom Kiss
of Death.
At one store which had a plethora of
fancy dresses (it looked like the sequin factory had exploded) I watched a Happy Mother-Daughter Combo
enter. Obviously they had
just started their shopping trip as they were still smiling, walking side-by-side and talking to each other. They stopped to browse at the front
and center display (designed to capture your attention and build
expectations, only to brutally shoot them down later). Daughter
seemed taken by one particularly fluffy frock, going so far as to
touch the ruffles and check the size before moving on.
Mom then approached the dress, took a
surreptitious look at the (reasonable) price tag and said “This
one's cute.”
You could hear a collective intake of
breath as all the other Moms in the store turned as one, a look of
shock and horror on our faces. We mouthed a silent, low motion warning: “Nooooooooooooooooo.”
Time stood still. Daughter turned
around gave the dress one more look, wrinkled her nose and said “Eh”
before stalking off.
Number one rule of the hunt for Moms:
Never appear too interested in the quarry.
Number one rule of the hunt for
Daughters: Enforce Mom's rule Number One.
Need I point out that the dress The Princess finally bought (rather, I bought) was the same one we saw at the first store, four hours, countless stores and two cities before it was actually purchased?
And it looked beautiful on her.
