Entering Tweendom, or clothes money = the best thing evar.

It's official. She spent her birthday money on clothes.

I've entered into a new era. My newly 10-year-old daughter loves Justice. She even uses a lot of her computer time browsing the Justice website. In case you didn't know, Justice is a girls' clothing store owned by a company called Tween Brands, Inc. Need I say more?

The truth is, there was a hole in the market. I was at the ABC Kids show in Vegas a few years ago interrogating some of the brands about WHY their sizes ended with 8 when my 7-year-old needed a size 10-12, and I had a hell of a time finding clothes for her that did not make her look like a mini-hooker.

This whole place looks like they ground up a unicorn and sprayed it on every surface.

I think things were worse a few years ago than they are now. Plus my daughter is now 10, not 7. It makes a difference. The clothes are better too. Shirts are longer, stores are discovering that there is a market in between the 5-year-old and the 17-year-old. People vote with their wallets. My daughter doesn't want to look like a little girl, but she IS still a girl who wants to be sparkly, pretty, girly, all of that. Not all girls do, but she does.

And on the topic of girls and clothing choices, I'll go on the record to say I actively discourage one-piece swimming suits for my girls. I'm sorry, it's just too hard to pee. I've actually had people suggest I just teach them to pull the crotch to the side. SERIOUSLY? Because possibly showing some stomach is worse than having your daughter pee all over her hands and shoes?

I had the world's cutest bikini when I was five, and my chubby 3-year-old sister had a matching one (so cute!) and I was happy and carefree as can be until my grandmother told me I was bad for wearing that kind of swimming suit. I was six and I had no freaking clue what she was talking about but man, she made me feel bad.

I'm pretty sure my mother is THE most uptight person I know, and she bought me bikinis when I was 5, and shorts and halters when I was a little girl in the unbearable heat of the North Carolina summer. Later she said, "Hey, it was hot!!!"  Exactly.

Please mom, I really, really need these!

So yes, I roll my eyes at people getting all crazy about dress codes for children that reflect some weird cultural standard. That being said, I dislike sexualization of children in any form, in dress, photographs, literature, advertisements, any of it. Like.Really.Dislike.It.

I have another daughter too. She just turned five last week. She loves all the sparkly pretty clothes at Justice, but what she really wants are toys.

The long and short of it is, my daughter bought herself a tankini, a pair of pink denim jeans, a lavender tie-dyed t-shirt, a shirt that looked like a unicorn puked on it (sparkles, a giant peace sign, bright pastels, flowers, and who-knows-else-what), a peace sign bracelet and necklace and a pair of sunglasses that look just like mine.

And that's the thing. Her fashion decisions, as so many others she is making, are based on what she sees me doing, and wearing, and saying.

I'm glad to know I'm still the biggest influence in her life.

I think my job now is not to obsess over whether or not her shoulders are visible, or whether or not judgmental neighbors are going to look down on me because she doesn't have to strip naked in order to pee in the pool bathroom, but to show her that her body is hers and to teach her to be comfortable with it.

That she is not an ornament.

That she is strong.

And that she is beautiful — the real kind of beautiful that teaches her to love herself, to have her strength from within, and not from an external cultural standard.

It also helps me to know two hours of shopping exhausts her enough she needs a nap in the car. Sleep, little one. Stay young as long as you want. And stay out of my shoes.

Someone gave her the eyeshadow as a gift. I say nothing. That's what my mom did and now 70% of the time I can't be arsed to fiddle with it. See how that works?