Ladies,
Style communicates intention, it communicates manners, it communicates preferences. What is your outward appearance communicating? And what is your daughter’s appearance communicating?
You are Her Fashion Industry & Stylist
I will be brief, but I have seen many young girls look like males. These are not even girls who are trying to look like boys. By default, with modern fashion, we can look like males. Jeans and t-shirt, jeans and sweatshirt. Without distinct feminine features in the way we style things, modern clothes look masculine. You were given the influence as a mother to encourage daughters to look feminine. And you are pushing against the tide, but we get to instill in their senses that it is good to be feminine. More than likely, outside influences will try to make them feel odd or silly for that, but when feminine style is normalized for them, they will not feel uncomfortable in their femininity. It is their God given design to be distinctly female. They need to dress like girls because they are girls. They need to dress like girls because no one should be able to confuse them for a boy. Dressing rightly clears up any possibility for confusion.
Masculine Culture
I was raised in a culture where women did not dress feminine. Most women where I grew up looked very much like men and the ones who did not look like men, sported a casual diminished form of feminine dress. They were uncomfortable looking like women. They dress masculine without questioning it while always questioning feminine things. Women can be so normalized to looking masculine, that they lack a sense of how manly they look, or that this is the odd thing. Their senses were trained to feel comfortable looking like men. On the flip side, when I started traveling to other countries, the women there are bursting with femininity in their style. But sometimes without any sense of modesty in that femininity, so it turns into sexy = feminine to some women. But styling yourself in a feminine way does not mean overtly sexy, or brash, or on display to get attention. But to women who are uncomfortable with dressing in a feminine way, anything they put on that is feminine can feel very showy to them and thus, uncomfortable. But there is a lot of style to be had where women look like women in a classy way.
Older Women Teach the Younger Women
“They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women”
Titus 2:3-5
Titus 2:3-5 talks about how older women are to teach the younger women, with a list of specific things to teach. Many times, we can read things in the Bible and apply them to everyone except our husband and children. But with this verse, it is specific about loving our husbands and children. Yet we could still take the “older women are to teach the younger women” and not apply it to our families but think to apply it to other people. But you are the older woman to your daughter, so you are the older woman teaching the younger woman “what is good” right there in your home. I love that phrase in there “what is good”. While that verse lists specific things that are good, it makes me think of other things we learn in scripture about what is good.
Is it good to dress like a boy? Is it good to be easily mistaken for a boy?
While it may not be the intention of our heart to look like boys or have girls that look like boys, we should be aware that the way we dress should look distinctly womanly not manly. We need to teach what is good and it is good for women to dress obviously like women and men to dress obviously like men. Some people debate what this means exactly, do we just wear skirts and no pants? That is why I said, “obviously like a woman”. There is a way to wear pants and pair them with things that look feminine. No one would ever mistake me for a man when I am wearing my pants. Nor would they mistake a little girl for a boy if she was wearing pants with a feminine top.
Let Them Be Girls
We are training daughters for life. Girls need to learn to value their female design so that they don’t end up perpetuating a culture that feels that feminine women are being some caricature of women from the past. It is important to instill value in being a woman and to not shy away from being a woman because it feels like a liability that makes us a target, or outdated, or silly.
You are the catalyst in this even when children are picky or opinionated. You can help train their artistic eye to notice what is a good feminine way to dress. When you shop for clothing, point out the pretty ruffled sleeve, point out the pretty flowers on fabric. Teach them to recognize feminine styles and appreciate feminine styles. I still remember the guiding comments my mother or aunts would make about clothing items. “These shoes are feminine.” My mother declared about a pair she bought me. It was the first time I had heard this word used in regard to a clothing item. It made me look at the shoes in a new way and notice what was feminine about them. “Look at this sweet top! This is a pretty pink color.” My Aunt held up a sweater top for me to admire, with a glistening eye encouraging me to like it. It helped. I would have passed it by had she not pulled it out from the rack of thousands of other items. At the time, I was drawn to less girly things, but I never forget her encouragement and I pondered that top and her selection of it and how it was different from everything else.
Go Shopping
Here’s an encouragement to take your daughter shopping. Even if you don’t like shopping, how can she learn to have an eye for these things if she is never exposed to it? How will she own anything pretty if things are not offered and bought for her? Maybe this is not fun for you, but this is a part of being a woman. We need to shop and buy things so that we have the items to be well dressed. She needs the tools to have feminine style. This is important for her to learn the skill of dressing herself, but it is an opportunity to instill that this habit is meant to bless her future husband and children as well.
Dress Yourself
We teach by what we do not only by what we say. Show how nice it feels and looks to dress in feminine clothing by wearing it yourself as your normal way of dressing. Infuse feminine style into your daily outfits so your daughters see you looking your best as a feminine woman, and this can be normalized to her. Girls naturally look to their mothers for guidance, and they want to admire their mothers but when the example is not there, they will look elsewhere for it. They will look to a friend’s mom, a celebrity, magazines, or online. Are those women better examples? Do you want her copying their version of feminine beauty?
Let Her Admire & Shop Your Wardrobe
It is nice to have a collection of pretty things yourself to share with your daughters. Some of the highlights when I was young was being allowed to try something on and enjoy it for a moment. What is dress up today will end up being the things she wants to borrow or have passed down to her. Having your own beautiful wardrobe will inform and invite her to have her own. But she will also have memories of her favorite dresses that you wore, your favorite color lipstick and how you put it on before you left the house, or the way you did your hair, or the jewelry you wore for special occasions. They will remember the scent of your perfume. These things are not insignificant, they are her guide and the things you do will shape her into the woman she will be.
Highlight Feminine Beauty in the Home
We need to see feminine beauty to even begin having a sense of style in it. Nowadays many homes are quite masculine in decor, and perhaps there are very little influences in the home of anything feminine at all. In the 1990s our decor was still very feminine in nature. But we had many other types of feminine influences to take in. One was Victoria Magazine around the house. It was one of the most feminine icons in my life the way everything featured was cloaked in classic elegance. From dresses to gardens, to meals, it gave me a glimpse into a world that was absent in the culture around me. We also had books with illustrations depicting womanly fashions such as Little Women, Little House on The Prairie series, A Little Princess, A Secret Garden, among others. Seeing these illustrations of women in their long billowy dresses and coats, or their hair curled and pinned up, instilled in me a strong sense of feminine style. Watching Anne of Green Gables in all of the beautiful dresses and fabrics of that time left a lasting impression on my senses as well, among many other classic movies. Our home library of media embodied the good things of feminine taste and elegance which shaped my appreciation for it. This is such an important part of nurturing a girl’s feminine senses. She needs to see it, to be around it, then she will know to exemplify it and she needs access to these things in order to guide her tastes.
Gift Her Feminine Things
One of the best Christmas gifts I ever received was when I was about 12 years old. No one had ever gifted me anything like this but my Aunt who was impeccably stylish and from a faraway stylish city, sent me a little makeup bag that enclosed a high-end lipstick. I did not even know a girl could receive such a gift. It made me feel grown up and sophisticated to have my own real lipstick. I still have that glossy tube of lipstick in my mind and how beautiful it made me feel as I turned the tube to reveal the most gorgeous shade of subtle coral pink that was just my color.
Enrich Your World with Loveliness
And be a woman to the glory of God.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!
Psalm 150:6
Praise the Lord!
Happy Styling!
