The Cost of Fitting In

“Do you buy Lululemon for yourself?” I asked my aunt, as we stood surrounded by silky soft leggings and zip-up hoodies I would learn were called Scubas. 

“No. I gave up designer shopping years ago. Now, I just get most of my clothes from Amazon,” she said with a chuckle. “But I get it.” She gestured across the meticulously kept downtown Westport boutique to my thirteen-year-old daughter, Nicole, who was wearing baggy Old Navy jeans, and a thrice-passed-down, pink, Aéropostale sweatshirt. “Labels matter to the kids. It helps them fit in.”

I watched Nicole cradle two sizes of a chocolate-brown Scuba in her arms like gold, her eyes scanning cubbies of perfectly folded yoga pants. Her fingers ran over the nylon-and-Lycra blend, and she finally selected a pair in black. She came toward us with a skip in her step. This was not a normal Saturday. It was, in every way, a special occasion to be shopping in a Lululemon store.

“I can’t decide between a hoodie or leggings.” She smiled wide, holding up both finds to show us. 

I reached out and discreetly turned over the tag on the Scuba, bringing the price into view—$138. My mouth dropped open. “I think you have to decide,” I said firmly, through my very obvious sticker shock. 

“Go try it all on.” My aunt gave her a nudge towards the fitting room with a wink. She wasn’t fazed by the prices. This was her home turf—a lifelong Westport resident. 

We followed Nicole, whose feet seemed to glide across the stark white floor. As she stepped into a dressing room, the attendant wrote her name in erasable marker on a whiteboard hanging from the bright wooden door.

My aunt and I chatted while Nicole came in and out, switching from a size small hoodie to an extra small and back again, the black yoga pants on the whole time. 

“The pants fit you great! What size hoodie do you like the best?” my aunt asked her.

“Oh no—she has to pick one,” I interjected.

“Stop! It’s for her birthday. She needs a full outfit,” she insisted.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to know how much this is going to cost. I’ll be outside.” 

I planted myself on the sidewalk, leaning against the brick of the building, and quietly observed the crowded downtown streets. Couples walked hand in hand in Ralph Lauren button-ups. Teenage girls passed in groups of three, head to toe in Vineyard Vines, gourmet iced coffees in hand. Mothers zipped across the street in their own Lululemon sets, pushing Bugaboo and Cybex travel systems.

Eventually my aunt and Nicole joined me outside. Nicole’s smile stretched ear to ear, a graphic printed Lululemon bag clutched tightly in her hand—the old hand-me-down pullover traded up for the chocolate-brown Scuba with the gold zipper that now hung proudly off her frame.  

“I can’t wait to wear this to school on Monday!” she beamed. “Isn’t the zipper pretty? And look, there’s a secret pocket, inside the pocket!” She pulled the pocket open so I could see. 

I nodded. 

That night, back home in Milford, in the house we rent, I lay in bed thinking about my aunt’s words. Labels matter to the kids. It helps them fit in.

Sad, and so unfortunately true. 

I raised both my daughters alone, as a single mom, after the three of us were discarded by their father. Divorced when Nicole was a newborn and my older daughter Megan was three, I won full custody. For the first few years I struggled, slowly building a life for us and a career for myself. When Megan needed the next size up or a new pair of shoes, we shopped at Target and Walmart, and only for what was necessary. Nicole grew into whatever Megan outgrew, and for a while that was a saving grace.

Then middle school changed everything. Megan came home one day with tears in her eyes. “Mom, I can’t wear Target shoes anymore. All the other kids wear Jordans. They’re making fun of me.”

Our days of shopping at Target and Walmart came to an end. 

Somewhere along the way, a child’s worth stopped being measured by what they achieve, or how they treat other people, or who they actually are—and started being measured by the labels on their clothes. Their “drip,” they call it. Really, it’s their parents’ ability to afford the trendiest brands—which, instead of letting a kid be an individual, teaches them to conform to a standard set by someone none of us can name. 

For the parents who genuinely can’t afford Lululemon, Nike, Vineyard Vines, Essentials, there are two options: Budget hard enough, somewhere, to splurge on the “have to have” pieces, or carry the quiet guilt of knowing your child might be the “weird kid,” the one whose clothes are somehow less than.

I shop Amazon for myself, only when I need to, a master of the maximum-price filter. But for my daughters, I’ve learned to stretch for the brands their fitting-in seems to depend on. I do it because I feel I have to. Because as a single mom, I never want them to feel they’re missing out for having only one parent to provide. Because I want them to have easy, social, ordinary school years.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to have family who take the girls’ Christmas and birthday wish lists to heart and make the hardest purchases for me—several of them pooling together for a single almost— $400 sweatsuit, or a $200 pair of custom basketball sneakers. As grateful as I am to watch the sheer joy fill my daughters’ faces as they tear off the wrapping paper, I can’t help but snag on the number: hundreds of dollars for pieces of sewn-together fabric, while I spend my weeks counting every dollar of a grocery haul, trying to land under $250.

And still, standing at the register for new Nike slides or another bottle of Sol de Janeiro body mist, I think about how much I’m handing over for a label. I look at the spray bottles lined up on Nicole’s dresser, and the hoodies hanging in Megan’s closet under shelves of Jordan sneakers, and I see the dollars that should be somewhere else—a family vacation, a college fund, the start of savings for the car Megan will ask for when she turns sixteen.

I keep coming back to the same tired thought, standing on that Westport sidewalk: what if school could just be school again? What if a dress code that kept labels out of the hallways could take the pressure off all of us, the kids and the parents, and turn the school day back from a fashion show into what it’s supposed to be?

I don’t know who decides what’s cool. I only know what it costs the rest of us to keep up. 

~Sophie