12 year old DD's obsessed with slapper-style clothes

[theMostBoringMumInTheWorld]

My 12 year old DD is convinced that I am being totally unreasonable to object to her taste for slinky cocktail minidresses in animal prints, and hooker-type silver platform shoes - basically Jane Norman type evening wear.

Don't worry, I'm not going to buy her anything like that, but how can I convince her that I'm not just being mean?

She can't see that these clothes are totally age-inappropriate, apart from just being in really bad taste. She also has no idea of how silly she would look if she ever did go out dressed like that, without even going into the whole issue of attracting unwanted attention from boys and men. She claims of course that all her friends are allowed to wear such outfits - surely that can't be true?

It is causing a lot of bad feeling between us and I feel sorry that she is focussing on these clothes when there are such a lot of really lovely fun teen clothes that would really suit her and be acceptable to me as well.

She is 5'6" tall and a size 8, so she does need to wear adult-sized clothes. How can I convince her of my good intentions?

I don't have any good advice, but I am dreading getting there with DD.

mums aren't meant to be friends - so i think this is a 'tough shit' situation

she'll get over it

Ugh, poor you... I teach in a secondary school and a lot of teenage girls do seem to aspire to dress like strippers. I was reading something recently about the way girls are presented in TV shows - stuff like 90210 and Hollyoaks; it might be worth trying to curtail that kind of viewing, if it's not too late. Although that sexualisation of teenagers and young women permeates our culture so thoroughly that how you protect against it I don't know. Am dreading it already and DD is only 16mths!

yup. same here.
hooker chic is what 13 year olds wear.
have been to a number of nightclub type parties recently and was horrrified by the outfits on view.
Dds party is this weekend. we went to get her a nice outfit. all my suggestions were rejected because they 'weren't slutty enough'. her words
IME they only wear the hooker outfits to parties. more casual stuff the rest of the time.

can i add we didn't get a hooker outfit. got a nice but grown upish type dress. still v short and strapless but pretty and girly.

'weren't slutty enough'

I think I probably would have thought that when I was 12. I don't think I would have said it to my mother though.

Does she know what 'slutty' means? Explicitly, I mean? When I worked in a boys' school I was shocked at the way the boys would use the word 'gash' to describe girls. But they were often equally shocked when I explained to them exactly what the word implied and why it is so offensive.

Thanks for your input everyone. I am open to a certain amount of compromise, for example, after seeing the figure-hugging animal print mini dress mentioned in the first post, we then saw a prom-style animal print dress in another shop which was similar but more suitable. However she was adamant that it was the tarty one she wanted.

We were actually out buying trousers to wear on a walking holiday in the lake district, so the whole dress issue was a total red herring..

I keep saying that when she earns her own money she can buy what she likes, but she is like a dog with a bone and keeps returning to the subject. She has ASD and can be pretty obsessive about things. I think she imagines that wearing a 'cool' (to her) dress will make her more accepted by her peers. When I point out all the teenagers we see in town wearing cool but non-tarty clothes she just refuses to listen.

I think I shall just have to put up with the unpleasantness while sticking to my own standards regarding sluttiness. Hmm, she's 12 now, so that's only 4 years to go...

agree with custy

I'd much rather have DD in a grump with me and not dressed like a hooker, than have us on best terms but her going out tarted up like a girls aloud wannabe

Was it this?

What custy said. I think it's time to embrace your inner harridan - not a parent's job to agree with teens. You need to give them something to rebel about!I don't think all teens dress like that but I've picked up dd from a few parties recently and been quite horrified at the stuff some of the girls wear.