Fashion Sense

There’s a new show on Disney Channel called Shake It Up.  It’s focused on two tween best friends, CeCe and Rocky who get gigs as back up dancers on their favorite TV show, Shake It Up Chicago.

That’s CeCe on the left, Rocky on the right.  CeCe clearly has a style all her own, often wearing layers of clothing including tights or leggings, sporting rips and tears in jeans, and jacketing shirts that one wouldn’t normally consider jackets.

The Girl wants to be CeCe. Seriously. She wants to dance like her, talk like her, … dress like her.  Now, I’m no fashionista and never have been particularly in tune with what’s hot or trending. So maybe this is cute.  The problem is that I’m not so sure that the Girl’s imitation of the style shows the same amount of style.  She often layers t-shirts and wears her farm boots with skirts and capris.  It’s been a daily struggle for me not to make her change before school, thinking that maybe I need to let her express herself and what’s this really hurting anyway. She’s allowed to have her own style, right?

Then she came home earlier this week and said that maybe she’ll stop trying to copy CeCe so much.  For a minute I wondered if someone said something about the way she was dressed – you know, kids can be so mean sometimes.  Well she explained that the counselor came to talk to the class about the importance of being yourself and not giving into peer pressure.  She translated that to her copying CeCe.  Well, I can’t argue with that.  It just never occurred to me to twist my desire to make her change into a lesson against peer pressure.  Maybe that’s why I’m not a school counselor … yeah, that’s the reason.