The Eleven-Year-Old Working Girl

All children go through phases.

As a four-year-old, I spent a month wanting to learn anything and everything I could about ostriches. In the first grade, I would only take a jar of Vienna sausages for lunch each day. In third grade, I became obsessed with Divorce Court and thought playing an attorney on the show meant I would not have to choose between my goals of being a lawyer and an actress when I grew up. (Even my nine-year-old peers thought that last one was stupid.)

And, when I was in the fifth grade, I only wanted to wear little suits.

Sure, most kids have to be begged to dress up, but not me. I never had a naked phase where I ran around the neighborhood refusing to put on clothes, I never screamed in protest about taking baths and I didn't even run barefoot like my Montgomery cousins. I suppose my anti-norms-of-society feelings ran more towards inappropriate formal wear than getting back to nature or the wild. (If you're wondering where one even finds suits for pre-teens, trust me that in the early '90s, the Limited Too was full of them.)

I can still vividly remember the summer after fourth grade when I found a circular for Kids 'R' Us in the daily paper and saw my first miniature suit. It was black with a white pattern, and the child model looked downright jaunty in it.

I had to have it. And, unfortunately for everyone involved, it was only the first of many suits in my back-to-school wardrobe that year.

I wore my more casual suits with t-shirts underneath for a laid-back approach (pictured) and my more refined suits (including a navy one with a pleated skirt and flared back on the jacket) with bodysuits. (Again, you have to remember that this was circa 1990-1991. Units had just gone out of style, and I was desperately trying to fill the hole created by the lack of tubes and tunics in my life. And bodysuits were abundant. At least I didn't insist on purchasing dickeys.)

When you combine these clothing choices with the fact that I was still growing out a just-as-unfortunate perm from a year before, I looked much too much like a pre-makeover Melanie Griffith in Working Girl most days. 

And I certainly cut an odd silhouette when it was time for P.E. class and dodge ball.

Like most childhood phases, I eventually grew out of my desire to dress business casual at elementary school (long before I started working from home, thank you very much), and I moved on to a love of the cloth head band in sixth grade. But, I often wonder, in the karmic sense of things, what my own kids will put me through in the wardrobe phase department. (Let's not forget my tiara years.)

If I'm lucky enough to have kids of my own, I'm hoping for superheroes and costumes instead of those aforementioned naked children. If nothing else, it seems cleaner.