This is how my daughter likes to wear her baseball cap.
I never suggested she wear it this way, and her father sure never showed her. She obviously saw someone – around town, on TV, who knows – wearing it this way, and she decided it looks cool. Even at 4 years old, she’s fashion savvy enough to know that accessories are the most direct way to personalize one’s look. Something about the backwards cap spoke to her, and I think it’s adorable. I think she looks adorable wearing a hat this way, but I think it’s even more adorable that she plucked this look from somewhere (do they get InStyle at her preschool, do you suppose?) and made it her own.
My mother does not like this look. She’d rather Tink not wear a baseball cap at all, but the hat is truly necessary sometimes. Like when she swims, for example. When the sun beats down on her black hair, her head becomes so hot I fear her brains could scramble like an egg.
I understand that there is definite cultural baggage surrounding the backwards baseball cap. Since she’s a non-Negro middle-class girl (and a little girl, to boot), it’s simply cute, but if she were a black teenage boy wearing his hat like this, she might arouse suspicion. Cashiers would play close attention when she entered a store. She and her friends might be told they could only enter one at a time. They might be accused of loitering in an effort to get them the heck out of there.
So I know my mother’s discomfort about the way Tink wears her hat didn’t come from nowhere. And coming on the heels of the purchase of her skate board, she’s probably afraid we’ll encourage her to wear her jeans hanging off her butt and buy her large diamond-encrusted pendants. I do realize that, if given her preference, Tink will always chose an androgynous outfit, and I take pains to balance out her superhero-loving tendencies with skorts (Ha, ha, kid! You think you’re wearing shorts, but what the world sees is a skirt!) and dresses presented with bold-faced lies: Sorry. Your jeans are all in the wash. You’re wearing this today.
Still, despite my maternal pride in my daughter’s jaunty independence as expressed by the irreverent way she dons her chapeau, something was bothering me, too. It wasn’t what anyone else thought. And I didn’t worry that I was letting her imitate an urban style that was inappropriate for a little girl.
It struck me as I was catching up on some online celebrity gossip – it’s that, with her hat on like that, she reminded me of someone:
It’s quite a shock to realize your daughter reminds you of America’s biggest douchebag.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
foradifferentkindofgirl (fadkog) 07.20.09 at 4:51 pm
If she starts switching out her cute shirts for hideous Ed Hardy t-shirts, intervene as quickly as possible!
foradifferentkindofgirl (fadkog)´s last blog ..‘i mock you with my monkey pants’
Kerry 07.21.09 at 8:33 am
I gotta say, she’s pretty freakin’ cute with that hat.
I am jealous of her all-pants wardrobe. Mine is going through an I-only-want-dresses phase, and it’s a pain in the ass when we are, say, at the park. She’s going down the slide on basically just Elmo underpants, which drives me nuts. She refuses to wear shorts under the dresses either.
Fortunately, this being Wisconsin, it’ll be snowing before you know it…so no more dresses then.
Kerry´s last blog ..8 Ways to Tell Whether That Ad on Craigslist is Bogus