Do you remember ankle high white boots and black eyeliner?

So my mom took Molly on her annual birthday shopping trip to the mall the other day. Back they came giddy as school girls about their fab day together with bags of what I am told is the latest in preteen fashion.

Oh, have the tables turned since I was a preteen!

The old lady standing there all smiles as my nine year old prances into the living room to model her new bra strap tank and shorts with some word plastered across the buttocks is not the woman who raised me. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" springs to mind.

ME: "Do you really think that is appropriate for a nine year old?"

Molly: "Everyone wears this."

(I didn't say, "Would you jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it?" But heaven help me it did go through my mind. I know that the old lady would have loved to hear her old phrase being bandied about.)

ME: "I think it looks a little ... too ... ummm ... hookerish."

Gram to the rescue: "I think she looks cute. She is right, this is the style."

ME: "Do you remember the ankle high white boots and black eyeliner I wanted to wear to middle school? That was the 'style' in the 1980's."

Gram: "That was just trashy, dear. This is so cute and all the fashion."

She's paying me back. She must be or she has lost her mind. I'm sure I deserve it for countless boundary testing things I did in my teen years. I vaguely recollect Mom saying, "Just you wait. One day you'll have a daughter of your own."

I never imagined that she was planning to team up with her against me in this future world. Yet here we are in a fashion versus good taste stand-off. THEM vs ME. The line has been drawn.

BTW the shorts are going back and the bra strap tank will only be worn as a bottom layer to another top. Take that you alien rendition of my Mom.