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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To think there is no reason my 11 yo DS can't try on jeans in the fitting room in Women's Wear

118 replies

SoupDragon · 18/10/2010 10:27

Given that the children's wear one is shut and it's all separate cubicles?

They tried to tell me we had to go down two floors to menswear.

They saw sense in the end.

OP posts:

Original poster

SoupDragon · 18/10/2010 18:39

How is it the same thing? Given that it was not a gender specific changing room.

OP posts:

ChileanMinerWife · 18/10/2010 18:42

i pracne around in and out of changing rooms
maybe at door waitingfor assitant in pants and t shirt
NO WAY to a 11 year old

ApocalypseCheese · 18/10/2010 18:52

Yanbu

Original poster

SoupDragon · 18/10/2010 18:56

But, if it were separate cubicles in the ladies swimming pool changing with no communal area at all, then I wouldn't have a problem. Why would I?
What would he see?

It strikes me that men and boys are demonised in this world. how many of you would not let a girl use a separate changing cubicle in menswear because you were worried about the sensibilities of the males? I rather suspect the reason you wouldn't use it would be because you were worried about those nasty males gawping. Perhaps I should have been worried about those predatory women and girls who may have gawped at my DS.

When I was an 11 year old girl it was all communal changing which was horrific even though it was all female. Women and girls have nothing to worry about now it's gone back to individual cubicles, they have their privacy.

It doesn't bother me that some of you think I was unreasonable, you are entitled to your opinion.
I just happen to disagree with you and agree with the equal numbers who say that i was not. Clearly the store decided I wasn't given that they said it was OK. Nothing the YABU side has said has changed my opinion

OP posts:

domesticsluttery · 18/10/2010 18:58

I think with an 11yr old you might be being a bit U.

However I was once told that my DS couldn't come with me into the Womenswear changing rooms, which was all cubicled. I was expected to leave him outside (in a busy city centre shop) but the assistant wasn't willing to keep an eye on him. He was 6 which I thought was definitely unreasonable!

mathanxiety · 18/10/2010 19:21

What age would you consider not bringing him into the Women's cubicle changing room, SoupDragon? If you had a choice between the Men's and the Women's and you didn't have to go two floors down? How did he feel about using the Women's? Would he have been embarrassed if any of his friends had seen emerging?

I also want to know how you got your DS to try on something, as mine thinks, and always has, that shopping should consist of a ten minute (max) sortie into the shop, with the immediate purchase of anything remotely there or thereabouts, sizewise, and no attention at all paid to fit, colour, style, etc..

(Speaking as a mother of one boy and also girls, and as someone not fazed by communal single sex changing rooms in shops or at pools)

mathanxiety · 18/10/2010 19:22

seen him emerging.... drat

Original poster

SoupDragon · 18/10/2010 19:41

This wasn't a female changing room, Maths. It was the closest open one to children's wear, bar the one in the lingerie dept. Why wouldn't I take him to the closest one?

Clearly he wasn't embarrassed or he wouldn't have gone in there.

No idea how I got him to try something on though. he didn't seem bothered by the idea at all.

It strikes me that we ships designate changing rooms by sexual preference: Likes Men, Likes Women,
Likes Both. That way you can be sure that no one is gawping at you in a lustful manner.

OP posts:

JamieLeeCurtis · 18/10/2010 19:44

Good point [hwink]

mysteryfairy · 18/10/2010 20:05

I worked in (now sadly mourned) C and A through my a levels and then in all uni hols and manned the fitting room on menswear for lots of that time. I don't believe anyone female every tried to use the fitting rooms in all the time I worked there. There was no sign up to say they were mens fitting rooms but I think there is a social convention that the fitting rooms in large traditional stores are gender segregated according to the store layout and generally people understand and stick to that.

Having said that my 14 year old DS, 5ft 10 and skinny emo type was trying school trousers on in what I took to be the mens fitting rooms in M&S recently. (There was no sign denoting them as such but they were in menswear so I went by the social cues.) 15L was still too baggy and short on him so the assistant suggested we go to Next and he try a size 6L on. Maybe she thought he was a girl and was prepared to allow him into the mens fitting rooms regardless or maybe she just wanted to try and piss him or me off!

taintedpaint · 18/10/2010 20:06

Hmmm, I think it is probably implied that a changing room in the womenswear area should be female only. But I sort of see your point (a tiny bit) about them not specifically labelling the changing rooms. Though I do think that's perhaps splitting hairs, I don't know.

I think it would be more acceptable to take a child of that age to the gender appropriate changing rooms, even if they aren't labelled. Personally I think 11 is the cap at which I would find it acceptable for myself to see a boy in there, but I know young girls of a similar age (or slightly younger or older) would be uncomfortable with that age group, and in a changing room that is implied to be for female shoppers, the girls would take precendent.

So YABU, but I do see why you don't think that.

tyler80 · 18/10/2010 21:28

My other half sometimes comes into the womens changing rooms with me, he's 36!

mathanxiety · 18/10/2010 22:20

I would also assume, in fact I did in this case, that if the fitting room is located in Women's Wear, and there's another in Menswear two floors down, that the one nearest the women's clothes is for the convenience for women, and the one nearest the men's clothes is for the men. Shame the children's wear one wasn't available -- but I think 11 is a bit old for the chidren's fitting room anyway.

CardyMow · 18/10/2010 22:40

Would the men in the menswear changing rooms be happy about a MUM swanning in to check that her DC (yes, CHILD) was in clothes that fit appropriately? I wouldn't buy something for any of my dc's that I was unsure of the fit of, and I wouldn't rely on a child, girl or boy, to know what fits properly. DD is almost 13yo, and would happily just grab an age 12-13 pair of jeans, despite the fact that they are too short in the leg, and too tight round the waist, as depending on the sho, she is either in a ladies etite size 6, or ladies petite size 8.

DS1 is the same, and would just grab an age 8-9. Which would be all well and good, excet for the fact that he is the size and build of a 12 year old...would someone object to me helping HIM try on clothes in the womens changing room? How would they know he's not 12? But would they trust their 8yo on the 'fit' of clothes?

OP, YANBU. DD is almost 13yo and wouldn't have a problem with an 11yo boy in there, unless he was pulling back the curtain and perving over her. In which case, she'd probably hit him!

edam · 18/10/2010 23:09

come off it soupy, you know the changing rooms by womenswear are for women, not men.

Not on at all. There may well be lots of people who wouldn't mind, but those who DO mind have a right to expect that you won't find boys or men in there. Small children up to top infants, fine, beyond that, not fine.

huddspur · 18/10/2010 23:34

I wouldn't have any problem with a 11yo boy being in the womens changing rooms particulary if the childrens ones were not availible. Some shops don't have gender specific changing rooms.

DrNortherner · 18/10/2010 23:41

I have an 8 yr old ds and an 11 year old nephew, would not bother me at all.

11 year old boys are mere babes really, but I can see how it would bother some.

GoreRenewed · 19/10/2010 08:01

What loudlass said.

So it's Ok for a slightly embarrassed 11yr old boy to come out into the main shop in whatever he's trying on to show mum? WHich may or may not fit OK? Or should she go in to the mens' changing room?

it seems 6 or one and half a dozen of the other to me.

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