What is up with junior size clothing? I went to get some shorts for my daughter a few weekends ago. I wanted a pair of reasonable shorts so the poor thing doesn’t have to wear long pants everywhere. There were two extremes—itty bitty micro-shorts, or capris that go past her knees. And it took hours of shopping to reach this conclusion
It was ridiculous. The micro shorts were designed to sit on a girl’s hip bones and end right past the buttocks. You have about five inches of material at the hip from top to bottom. Maybe.
My daughter is a study lass without being overweight. At ten years old, she’s almost five feet tall and wears a size nine. Little girl clothing no longer works for her.
I ask you, in a world where we are so concerned with sexual predators, why are we dressing our daughters like this?
When my daughter was born, I had some hopeful optimism that the low-waisted designs then currently in fashion would have passed out of fashion by the time she was in junior clothing. After all, the bowl cut finally went out of fashion for boys after an absurd amount of time. But no, the low-waist designs persisted. And those fashions have gotten more ridiculous. Almost no girl looks good in them. Little girls tend to have poochy tummies, and those tummies are going to stick out over any low-cut pants that aren’t too big. There’s even a new word for them: muffin tops.
When I was in junior sizes, blue jeans were practically like corsets. We had wonderful little hourglass figures. We lay on our beds to zip up our pants. Yes, they were too tight, but at least we were covered. We didn’t wear low-cut shirts. Tucked-in buttondown shirts were in fashion, and only the sluts wore them very low, and even then, not as low as today. The cut of bras available back then didn’t allow for it. Now you have bras that allow for a shirt to be cut all the way down to the bottom of the boobs. And young girls, looking for attention, often wear their shirts that way, and for boys, it’s a boob paradise.
Back to the microshorts—they went up to a size seventeen! They shouldn’t go beyond a size seven. Any size seventeen girl wearing one of these shorts would look awful. I feel sorry for the poor size seventeen girl who has no choice but to either wear these or wear long pants.
So, my daughter now has a fashionable, low-waisted pair of capris pants. I refuse to buy her microshorts. And she’s constantly trying to pull them up. She doesn’t like them. They were twenty bucks.
I went on line and googled “modest clothing”. There are some sites that cater to LDS, Muslim and other religious communities. But none of them carried shorts. There are some cute dresses, though.
I guess what I’m going to have to do is buy her a pair of pants, cut them off a few inches down the thigh, and hem them. Anyone have any other ideas, or know of a good place to get modest clothing?
I need a sewing machine.
I agree. I have a problem with women’s clothing, too, so I’ve decided to start sewing again so I can make modest, tailored clothing that flatters the figure. I keep thinking, “I should start a business doing this”…but I need to get back in practice, first! 🙂
I have actually been eyeing sewing machines. I like the look of the Singer Creative (I think it’s called). It’s not a beginner machine, but not too advanced, either, and has enough of the fancy stitching to appeal to my creative side.
I learned on a foot-powered Singer! My sister still has it, and it still works.
I have so much empathy for you and your daughter! This has been going on for years, now. My daughter is 19, and is really into dresses, fortunately. Junior high/high school was a nightmare for clothing–particularly because she had actual breasts. Jr. clothes are made for stick figures.
You might have to spend a little more by going to Lands’ End or L.L. Bean for modest shorts. They’re preppy, but mostly have a modern cut. Lands’ End has some good sales–and L.L. Bean clothes wear a good long time. Good luck!
I am going to look there tonight! Thank you. My daughter is going to be busty, so I need to prepare now. Vicky likes skirts and dresses as well. A good skirt seems to fit for a lot longer than a pair of pants or shorts.
This is going to sound odd, but I’ve had more luck searching for uniform shorts for my kids to wear rather than what’s usually found on the racks. More and more colors nowadays (LL Bean, as the previous commenter noted is great) but no extreme cuts.
Just don’t tell her they are uniforms 😉
What a great idea!!! Yes, those would be perfect!
I went straight from girl’ sizes to misses. They happened to fit both my body type (longer in the torso, shorter in the limbs) and my taste in clothing (classic) better. I know they had a wider range of shorts available. Yes, they’re often “older” styles, but even in grade school I thought that old ladies tended to have better taste in clothing than teenagers. {Smile, wink}
A size 9 junior’s should be mostly equivalent to a size 10 misses, if you want to check. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
The difference is mostly in shape. You must have had a waist by the time you were ready for those sizes; I didn’t and my daughter definitely did not. I didn’t have a waist until I was 19, when I realized odd sizes would no longer work for me.
As long as I can remember, my waist was one size larger than my bust, and two larger than my hips in misses. That made picking out clothes catalogs interesting, since we always had to figure out which the deciding measurement was. However, juniors sizes worked even less for me, so we were stuck until I hit women’s sizes. Now at least my bust and hip agree on the size, tho the waist is still a size larger. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
Oh, I just remembered the big difference: juniors was just discovering petite about the time I was getting too big for them anyway. When I started with adult sizing, the only way to get petite was in misses (or women’s). Since I was barely over 5 feet until I gained an inch and half in college, I still had to hem full-length petites, but at least the hem wasn’t too ridiculously deep. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin