Wednesday, March 31, 2010

A Fashion Makeover for a Teenage Guy

Philip has grown at least four inches in a very short period of time. He’s started shaving. And the muscles in his arms are rapidly catching up to his six-pack abdomen. Earlier in the year, Philip looked decidedly grunge with jeans, sneakers, sunglasses, a t-shirt and an unzipped hooded, zip-up sweatshirt falling off one or both of his shoulders. But what was decidedly grunge in September was looking boyish by January and beginning to even look effeminate by late February. At least that was the way I was seeing Philip’s standard attire appear as the body underneath went through such a rapid change in such a short period of time. The jeans, sneakers and even the sunglasses were fine. It was how he was layering his upper body that no longer looked right to me.

But Philip is no longer the child whose parents can dress him as they choose. A father or a mother can only influence such choices at this point. Control over my son’s attire would be absurd. I know it. And Philip knows it. Philip likes his growing independence as he should. And Philip, like most teenagers, is willing to defend his growing independence. In fact, those parents who insist on controlling such trivial aspects of a young adolescent’s life meet stern resistance and sometimes even rebellion. It is the stage in life in which carving out one’s independence is essential to emotional health and personal development. But I was still convinced Philip’s attire was looking more effeminate as the body beneath shed the last of what resembled a middle-school boy. And maybe he was at least wondering if I wasn’t the only person who was rapidly losing admiration for his attire of choice.

I knew I couldn’t make Philip change. But I did succeed in getting him to explore. And as long as I did not require him to change and as long as I gave him a broad range of options, he was willing to entertain my idea of updating his wardrobe. I showed him images online during the week and then took him to the mall on Saturday. The first store we visited was his first choice as opposed to my first choice. But I was just fine with that. The store catered to a variety of youthful grunge-like styles. At first, we simply needed to find his size which turned out to be medium. He brought one style of shirt to the dressing room in medium and small sizes. Once he had decided upon medium, I brought him one shirt after another to try on. All were button-up. He put them on over his dark t-shirt the same way he had put the hooded sweatshirt over his t-shirts. But somehow this looked better. The button-up shirts did not effeminately slide off his shoulder and they hugged his torso more evenly.

Philip rejected most shirts quickly. About half of them he did not even want to try on. But that was consistent with my unwillingness to propose perhaps half the styles in the store. The colors just did not look right, at least on Philip. Eventually Philip settled on a plain white button up and two with reddish cross patterns. After that success at his first choice store, I took Philip to a more upscale store that offered similar styles to the shirts he selected. He tried on about six more shirts at that store and picked two for purchase. One had a grey and black cross pattern. The other was mostly white with an elegant dark blue cross pattern. This last shirt proved his favorite. He picked out one more with a reddish-brown cross pattern, but its price tag was more than the other two shirts combined, so he got his father’s one veto of the day. While waiting to pay, Philip tried out the store’s colognes and particularly liked one of them. We added a bottle of the cologne to our purchases and nearly called it a day.

The last stop was at the health store. There we bought a protein drink to help him build muscle mass. And that was the end of our makeover shopping trip. I would call it a partial success. Philip is drinking his protein drink each day after lacrosse practice. He put on four sprays of the cologne for the final dance of the school year at Hermes High School. He wears the shirt with the dark blue cross pattern two days per week, one of the reddish cross patterns one day a week and the least effeminate of his hooded zip-up sweatshirts the other two days. I’m reasonably satisfied with the improvement. We’ll see how long it takes for him to wear the plain white or the grey and black shirt to school, if ever. And if he doesn’t, how different is Philip from his father, anyway?

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