Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
I find that a less attractive option the older I get.
There’s that.
Maybe I just shouldn’t have looked.
But who could miss it? My eyes popped out first.
Two teenage girls behind me waiting to check out in the grocery store wearing shorts.
Shorts.
What an understatement that was.
Shorts.
Too long a word to describe the length of the garments on these girls.
Hoochie mama shorts.
Yeah. I’ll go with that.
You know what I saw — do you see the same on teen girls around town sporting their fleshy thighs, no matter what their weight.
These grocery store girls topped their “hoochie mama” shorts with holey T-shirts. And trust me, there was nothing holy about these holes.
Dressed like you have to wonder who their parents are, only we have the same challenges in our own home. Dear Reader, perhaps you’ve found this with your girls, too?
Teenagers so sucked into the slutty fashion images they see online, in magazines, and on TV.
“Everyone dresses like this,” they protest with a line that gets tried on, but holds no weight in our home.
It’s like their young brains are physically incapable of stretching to the idea that what you put on your body sends a message out to the world.
Back to the snail-paced line in the grocery store where the girls’ conversation made my ears burn.
“Did you hear how those boys whistled at us from the other team?” one asked the other.
“Yeah, how about how they yelled at us to get our attention,” the other added.
“Yeah, that was like a real confidence booster!”
This girl was so proud.
“Confidence booster?” I churned these words over and over again as the line inched forward and I had time to churn, as I do have that talent of picking the slowest line to check out, no matter the store.
It gave me time to go “there.” There, as in Crazy Lady land.
I waited for these girls until they were outside the grocery store and like the crazy stalker lady my own daughter is convinced that I am, I pounced.
“I don’t know you young ladies, but I couldn’t help hear your conversation in back of me in line. I’m going to tell you what maybe no one will.”
And so yeah, I went off.
“Let me tell you — that wolf whistle and those comments. Those were no confidence booster. Those boys only wanted one thing — to have sex with you. They saw you as a piece of meat.”
Confession — I didn’t say it that cleanly. Maybe that’s why their eyes were popping out of their heads at me, Crazy Stalker Lady.
Oh, but I wasn’t done.
Oh, no.
“A confidence booster is getting something higher than a C-minus on that geometry chapter that has been the bane of your existence for the last week,” I added.
Confidence booster is being a good listener to a friend who is going through a hard time so maybe she doesn’t have to hurt herself or run away.
Confidence booster is getting into a good college so you can have a career and the ability to support yourself so that you don’t have to depend on a piggy kind of man who would wolf whistle at teenage girls.
Confidence booster is working out seven days a week to make a varsity team so that you get to wear your own letterman jacket, not simply want to be on the arm of a boy who is wearing one.
Confidence booster is a boy who respects you enough to come to the door to pick you up for a date and survive the squirm-worthy experience of meeting your parents.
Confidence booster is seeing past what “everyone else is wearing” and having the guts to put respectable, yet still cute clothing on your precious body.
And finally, Little Girls, confidence booster is having the guts to walk up to two strangers like I just did and tell you like it is.
Yep. Thank you for that, girls.
You’ve just boosted my confidence.
Now, you might want to go home and change your clothes.
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