When You Grow Up Wearing Baggy T-Shirts . . .

I was fascinated by a recent post by Lana on clothes shopping as an ex-fundamentalist girl. So much of it rang so very true for me. I’ll be writing more on this topic soon, but I wanted to start by quoting liberally from her wonderful post:

You remember that scene in Tangled where the little girls have to fix Rapunzel’s hair up? That’s totally me in the clothing shop. I’m pretty sure most 8-year-olds know more about women’s clothing to me.

I hate clothes shopping. It’s painfully difficult for me. One would think it’s as simple as trying on clothes, fitting them, coming up with the money, and paying a cashier. Actually its a lot harder than that.

First of all, I never bought clothes at the store as a kid other than the thrift shop. From grade school until high school, I had maybe two or three store-bought dresses that I didn’t actually buy; my aunts/grandma bought them. The rest of my clothes came from thrift shops, garage sales, or were home sewn (the insane part is that some of my garage sale dresses were not only worn by my family for the next six years, but were still being worn by other little girls I knew 15 years later. Classic homeschool). My grandma bought me my first pair of store-bought shoes when I was 16, so I wouldn’t get made fun of while taking driver’s ed at the high school.

Second of all, I wore mostly dresses, or other baggy clothes, and all my clothes were 100% cotten (the Old Testament says don’t wear mixed clothing.  ). So even if all my dresses had come from the store, it wouldn’t have transferred to today very well.

I didn’t learn…..

1) What fits me. I wore baggy clothes. What’s normal size?

2) About undershirts. OMG I had no idea why people wore them until I was in my 20s (I never wore them; I wore baggy T-shifts), and I still wonder what the heck sometimes.

3) Old people’s style verses young people’s style. Technically I was the young person in grandma style.

4) All about pants. When do I need a belt? What’s too low? I didn’t wear belts on pants as a kid. I wore dresses, elastic pants,and skirts that included a belt.

[Read the rest.]

Like I said, more of my thoughts later! I even have a post planned with pictures as examples of how I dressed as a girl and a teen growing up in the conservative Christian homechooling subculture.