Would you dress your child like this?

I was already a glamour girl at heart, even then. I wanted this over-the-top white frilly dress with a rainbow skirt that lots of proud french-braided girls seemed to have at that time. I also wanted the princess dress-up kit from Toys 'R' Us, the one with the pink high-heel shoes and fake nails. But did my mother concede? Looking at the picture above, do you really think so?

In case you can't tell, I'm the one in the uglier outfit. So while other little girls were prancing around in rainbow-colored dresses, I was dressed like a clown. It's cute in a cartoonish sort of way, but it put me in a different category from the long-haired princess ballerinas with their bambi eyes and mary-janes. I never got the "what a pretty little girl"s, I got the "she looks just like her father"s and "oh, like the Cabbage Patch Kids!"

So when you become a mother (and don't say you won't give birth because it's painful/fattening), will you subject your daughter to the silliness of big polka dots and short bangs? Or will you let her be as bimbotic as she likes and wear all the pink plastic and frills her heart desires, and let her regret her own fluff when she's older and wiser? Worse still, will you give in to your own fashion temptations and dress your daughter up in "sexy" kids' clothes that would look better on yourself, like those precocious Guess child models and the heartlander kids who take part in community centre talentimes? It's a tough call.

(In my case, I'm glad i don't have any photos of myself in a rainbow-colored dress. Rainbow frills. Eew.)

-julie