This article originally featured in The Guardian. You can read the original article here.
Were Elizabeth Lauten’s comments about Sasha and Malia Obama just those of a foolish adult or a toxic revelation? Our panel considers the evidence.
Hugh Muir: Does Elizabeth Lauten have children?
Does Elizabeth Lauten – the Congressional PR spinner who lost her job for questioning the dress sense of President Obama’s daughters – have children? Those of us who have a normal relationship with teenage offspring long ago gave up commenting on what they choose to wear. Once you reach a certain age, your appreciation of what is appropriate for a teenage girl dwindles to almost nothing. Your ability to impose your will goes with it. This also applies to presidents. Complain if you will about the Ugg boots, the tights revealing all contours, the low tops, the short shorts, the improbable heels. All a waste of breath. I once joined a shopping trip in pursuit of some of this stuff. In Hollister, we wandered around in the dark for a few minutes. I thought there had been a power cut. They said it was a fashionable half-light. Presumably to obscure the prices.
This is no doubt one of those things parents worry about too much. Without letting you know they know, they do in fact know when the eyelash extensions should stay in the box and a sensible skirt is called for. They might not appear to be absorbing instructions. That’s because they are watching you instead.
Frankly, my concern is less will they embarrass me than might I, by dressing like a hobo embarrass them. Once, arriving after a gym session to collect my daughter from a supermarket, I saw her friend dig her in the ribs. What did she say, I asked her later. “She wanted to know why that tramp was waving at us.”
Jinan Younis: The policing of black women’s bodies starts early
In our society women’s bodies are a battleground. The clothes that women wear shape our identity, yet these same clothes can be deeply restrictive. We’re taught first to hate our bodies, to cover them or reveal them according to what is considered acceptable.
Then we’re told that we’re not there quite yet, and that the clothes we wear are crucial to making us the “perfect” women the world wants us to be. This policing of women’s bodies starts early, and when young women are told repeatedly that their attire is linked to their worth, they fall prey to the unrelenting standards of capitalist patriarchy in which they are made to feel as though their appearance is the most important aspect of them as women.
For women of colour in particular, it is important not to look at this in isolation. Black women’s bodies have been and continue to be policed more than others, even within feminist spaces. The link that society makes between what black women choose to wear and their sexuality is a manifestation of the deep-rooted racism that is still prevalent today. We’re taught to fear black women who take ownership of their bodies, and the clothes that they wear are under much greater scrutiny as a result.
The clothes that women wear should never be criticised, because such scrutiny is not restricted to our clothes: it’s of our identities, our sense of self-worth, and our place in this society.
We, as young women, are reclaiming our bodies for ourselves, and with it, the clothes that we put on them. It’s difficult to do so when we’re bombarded with images telling us we’ll never be perfect, but the length of our skirts or our decision to wear a one-piece bright gold spandex jumpsuit are powerful statements about our right to take up space in this world and to use our clothes to show our identity, not yours.
Flic Everett: Teenagers don’t do ‘appropriate’, nor should they
Ever since the Greek poet Hesiod complained that “youth are reckless beyond words” in the eighth century BC, teenagers have continued to dress in a way that alarms and infuriates older generations, whether it’s the frivolous use of curling irons for a church service or a ripped My Chemical Romance T-shirt for a wedding (“show some bloody respect!”), the adolescent take on a suitable occasion outfit is still more likely to resemble Courtney Love on a five-day bender.
When the brilliantly normal Sasha and Malia Obama rocked up at the White House “turkey pardoning“, they looked exactly as they are: fed-up teenagers dragged to a family event, channelling a bit of safe rebellion via a rolled up waistband.
Teenagers need to experiment with stupid trends, join their peers in sporting tattered neon wristbands or dropped crotch monkey jeans, and traumatise parents with slapped-on clown makeup. If they don’t, how will they ever learn what suits them, or have hilariously embarrassing photos to look back on?
As a result, I never tried to control what my teenage stepchildren wore outside school, believing it to be entirely their right to express themselves as they wished – except for once.
When my stepdaughter was 13, she was “phonejacked” (as they quaintly called it back in 2002), and was required to appear in court. On the day, she came downstairs wearing more black eyeliner than Alice Cooper, a crop top and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. Sent back to change, she furiously shouted: “I’ll be the least fashionable person in court!”
Teenagers don’t do “appropriate” and nor should they. That’s for later in life – when the rebellious rage has dimmed, and Whistles exerts a greater pull than Claire’s Accessories.
Anouchka Grose: Luckily they have cool parents
As if being a teenage girl isn’t bad enough – constantly feeling awkward, out of your depth, under scrutiny, living in fear of the unnerving gaze of your parents, middle-aged men, middle-aged women and, worst of all, your friends – it’s hard to imagine how bad it would be if you factored in the added horror of your father being the president of the United States. No matter how assiduously you obey the Gap’s injunction to “dress normal”, you may still find yourself accused of disrespecting the nation and looking like a bar-frequenting floozie. Poor Sasha and Malia!
Luckily they have cool parents. (At least most of the time – no one’s cool while they’re pardoning a turkey.) Michelle and Barack don’t force them to dress like little political zombie children, but let them appear in public in clumpy shoes and sloppy cardigans, looking bored and embarrassed. This is without doubt the correct way to look while taking part in a pathetic “tradition” instigated by Republicans in the 1980s. Michelle and Barack are perhaps human enough to understand this – and may even secretly enjoy the fact that their children feel able to sneer.
Telling teenagers how to dress is at least a proper tradition with a long history. (At minimum, 60 years long, although the dress and habits of “the young” come in for enough comment in 19th-century novels.) The problem is that it generally gets you absolutely nowhere. Teenagers, by and large, don’t want to be clones of their parents. This is better for parents in the long run because, while you might not like their shredded tights, it stops them borrowing your clothes.
In criticising Sasha and Malia Obama, Elizabeth Lauten gives plenty away about her own attitudes towards sexuality, identity and authority. In short, she’s saying: “Cover up and conform!” This must be a confusing message for the president’s daughters, who are hardly going out on a limb in terms of either flesh-flashing or general weirdness: “What? You want us to look even blander?” Attacking young girls for visible signs of sexuality and self-expression is cruel and destructive, and notoriously born of envy. Grimms fairytales are full of characters who do this. Teenagers often seem to pick up on this instinctively (or because they grew up reading Snow White) furthering a mistrust between young people and “grown-ups”. Rather than saying that teenagers need to change the way they present themselves, you could say that certain adults need to change the way they handle envy. Teachers who obsessively police school uniforms might also do well to bear this in mind.
Franklyn Addo: What kind of ‘class’ was Lauten referring to?
Young people disproportionately receive the kind of criticism Elizabeth Lauten offered of Sasha and Malia Obama. What we do, how we speak and how we dress are always the objects of scrutiny. Lauten’s comments are part of a tradition of youth being caricatured as deviant. But they also contain problematic implications about race, gender and class. When Lauten urged the girls to “try showing a little class”, precisely which sort of “class” does she refer to?
Unfortunately society is based overwhelmingly on white, male, middle-class values which have conferred supremacy and formed a consensus. Every departure from what has been asserted as “proper” and “fitting” from that very specific standpoint is dismissed as aberrant, and is ridiculed and subordinated.
Peggy McIntosh described one of the facets of white privilege as being able to dress and behave however she wanted without her individual conduct being seen as reflective of her entire race. Indeed, Lauten’s commentary brought forth the narrative that black and ethnic minority people aren’t able to dress and behave “properly” when finally given prestigious opportunities like presidency.
Ultimately, teenagers should not be criticised for the way they dress. Universal impositions about what is “respectable” attire or “appropriate” conduct compromise individual autonomy. It places people in difficult positions: they must forfeit their personal convictions and desires in order to appease society or choose to defy the status quo and unrepentantly be themselves at the risk of being misjudged and even mistreated. I firmly choose the latter.
The policing of the attire of young people also leads to problematic situations. What young women wear becomes more important than teaching men that they are not entitled to women’s bodies, for instance. Another example is the disproportionate suspicion given to and police targeting of black men in tracksuits, whereas their white counterparts are more likely to be seen as joggers.
Making hasty judgments about people is learned in society together with imposed “universal” values. We must strive to decondition ourselves from this damaging habit.