Fashion or Failure?

Last Updated on March 20, 2018

Venturing out to purchase a piece of clothing for your tween or teen daughter can be down right traumatic. The clothing choices the fashion industry gives can make your head spin.

I do not aspire to dress my daughter like a woman, especially not a woman who never learned the meaning of the word modesty. More important, my daughter doesn’t want to look older than her years. She does not like what they are trying to sell her and she thinks most of the clothing offered is trashy looking. The necklines are plunging, the fabrics are clingy, and the styles are way too adult.

To borrow my daughter’s phrase, “Are you serious?”

My daughter has found a way around some of these issues by layering her clothing and buying sizes a bit larger than she really happens to be. But she would so enjoy actually being able to buy something without having to figure out what she can do to it to be able to wear it.

She recently went shopping with some friends and upon their return they sat and talked about their frustrations with not being able to find clothing they were willing to spend money on.

The fashion industry is trying to make our daughters grow up too fast and sell them on the idea that flaunting their bodies is a way to garner attention. No thank you, young girls do not need that kind of attention.

Well, I am not going to stand for it. I want to do something about it. But what can I do? I am just one mom, one voice—why would they listen to me?

Happy news! I can join with about 20,000 other women in signing a petition to let the fashion industry know that we are on to them, we don’t like it, and we will not buy their trashy clothing.

Dannah Gresh is a nationally renown speaker (and a fellow contributor here on FamilyLife MomBlog) who speaks and writes extensively on modesty and what it means to be a girl who desires God’s best. Her book Lies Young Women Believe is a must-read for your daughter. Dannah is rallying the troops to let our voices be heard on the subject of fashion and modesty. Each of you reading this needs to be one of those troops! She will soon stand before some powerful people in the fashion industry and let them know that there are lots of us who strongly oppose the sexualization of our tweens and teens.

Please go to her website Secret Keeper Girl and add your name to her petition to the fashion industry. She has about 11,000 signatures and is trying to get 20,000.

Come on mom, take a minute and go sign the petition and tell your friends to do the same. If you have a blog please send your readers to her site and ask them to sign as well.

Your daughters—and your sons—need you to join this battle!