Skinny Jeans: They're Not Meant for You and Me

I am not a slave to fashion. But I do follow one rule. Which is this: once you have experienced a fashion trend, you should not experience it a second time, no matter how cleverly repackaged it may be.   

When The Gap started selling tapered jeans again, slyly marketed as 'skinny jeans', I had a scary time-warpy dream where I was trapped in an acid-wash jeans sweat shop while the kids from Fame performed Frank Zappa's Valley Girl over and over and over. It was a nightmare.

The 80s was one bitchin' decade. I, like, totally get that.  When I was 14 I shopped at the mall (hell, later I worked at the mall), and wore layered socks over my pinstriped jeans just like Seventeen magazine told me to. I spent hours sprawled out on the floor of my bedroom, my black stirrup pants tucked magically into my pleather ankle boots, and gossiped with my friends on my new cordless phone (careful not to get the antenna tangled in my hair) as Rick Springfield skipped on my turntable.

I experienced all the teenage hormonal twists and turns while wearing some piece of the 80s.  Break ups required the comfort of leg warmers. Hang outs at the local pizza joint meant big shirts and leggings. A trip to the arcade needed only pegged jeans and a shoulder-padded blazer. Life lessons were learned in ripped sweatshirts; best friends were made and unmade in the time it took to pull on a sweater dress.

I've lived it once. To live it again would be, well, irresponsible.

Once anyone past the age of 40 starts dressing like the Gap mannequins, the teenagers no longer want to. And every generation needs their own fashion statement in which to make their own mistakes and triumphs. Some magic is lost for the 16 year old who, having just made the varsity basketball team, notices her mother wearing the same jeans she is that evening at the dinner table. Part of the teenage rite of passage is muddling through the push and pull struggle of trying to differentiate oneself from ones parents.

And no matter what we, as parents, wear or how trendy we attempt to look, our kids will never think we are cool.  And that's okay.  That's how it's supposed to be.

Which is why I say to all the 40-something suburban mothers wearing skinny jeans, leggings and long dress sweaters at the soccer fields, bus stops and book fairs, please, hold on to your boot-cuts a little longer. You've already been to 1985. There's no need to go back.

Trust me, the kids will be alright as long as they have their own jeans to wear.