A friend of mine sent a screen shot to our group chat yesterday. (okay, I had to pause for a minute when I looked at my opening sentence. That sentence would not have been even understood 10 years ago. It might not have even been understood 5 years ago. Funny, the winds of change.) Anyway, the screen shot showed two beautiful, gray-haired ladies dressed artistically, almost “punk rockerly”. The caption said: “20 Things Women Should Stop Wearing After The Age of 40 . . . .#1-20 The Weight of Other People’s Expectations and Judgments” – Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
I love my friends! The friend who sent the screenshot said that maybe the age should have been changed to “30”. I thought that maybe we could somehow make it so that there wouldn’t even have to be an age listed on that quote. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our daughters or at least, granddaughters could look at that quote quizzically like it was meaningless and hard to understand? (kind of like how meaningless and hard to understand my first opening sentence would have been to me 10 years ago)
My daughter looks adorable every day for school. She started high school and although they don’t require “uniforms”, there is a “uniform” for the girls who attend her school. Ripped jeans, Vans or Birkenstocks, straightened hair, tops that are not too short to break dress code, but right at that fine line seem to be “the uniform” right now. That is the expectation if you want to be one of the crowd and to avoid being judged.
Recently we were reminiscing about the year that my daughter was a cat for Halloween and she decided that the costume was way too great to be worn just on the one day of Halloween. She wore her ears and her tail for weeks and weeks. She wore that costume to stores, to preschool, and to bed. She wore that costume out. She wore that costume with pride and dignity. Other people’s expectations and judgments weren’t one thought in my 4-year-old daughter’s mind at all. When does that shift occur?
It’s funny, but watching my kids grow up, it sometimes seems like they already had it all absolutely right when they were little and then we adults messed with them. We helped them become uptight little robots conforming to society’s judgments and expectations. They’ll play along with the rules of the game, until they reach our age and then they may get a screenshot that jars their memory that maybe “the rules of the game” are a little ridiculous. And something inside of them that has been sitting dormant since they were innocent little kids in cat costumes at the grocery store, will come roaring out and life will get interesting again. Hopefully that age of awakening will drop from 40 to 30 to not needed, because that future little girl will never have been a prisoner to what other people think.
