Dollars and Sense

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t’s almost a cliché — the bill at the register serving as a breaking point after an already stressful shopping trip. But is the cliché overrated? Most of the store representatives say they haven’t encountered much conflict in this realm.

For Malky, watching a mother who can’t afford what her daughter wants is distressing. “I see the mothers who really want to buy something for their daughters, maybe all the girls in the class have it, and it’s hard, it’s a struggle for them,” she says. “But the daughters are always very respectful and refined about it.”

Occasionally though, girls push their mother’s financial limits. “The girl will say, ‘Come on, Ma, what’s the big deal?’ but the mother is unwilling to spend that much on that particular item,” Chaya F. says.

Although Mindy does see girls who want to spend more than their mothers can afford, she’s also observed another facet of financial conflict. “The mother wants to buy more than her daughter feels comfortable purchasing, and she’ll say, ‘Buy it!’ but the daughter says, ‘Ma, I’m not buying all of this. We’re not spending this much.’ ”

Mindy’s pet peeve is when people will try on piles of clothing without checking prices. “Then they come to the register and balk, because they didn’t realize that item was so pricey. If they’d  checked first, they could have avoided that.”

Suri circumvents sticker shock at the register by noticing when girls choose a pricier item, and saying, “Oh, by the way, this one’s pricey.” This allows girls the choice whether or not to try it on in the first place.

Martha finds that mothers will spend much more on their daughter’s clothing than in the past. “In the past,” she says, “there used to be a price threshold that was age-appropriate. But now a mother will buy very expensive dresses for her nineteen-year-old daughter, dresses whose price should have clearly designated them as pieces for women in their thirties or forties.”

Appearances can be very deceiving. Mindy learned the hard way that you never know what a mother is prepared to spend. “As a salesperson, you can never judge anybody,” Mindy says with emphasis. “A customer walks in and her snood is askew, her clothing is frumpy, and she’s a hot mess. And she could easily spend five thousand dollars on clothing for her girls.

“We’ve had so many stories! You need to treat someone who you think is going to spend twenty dollars the same as someone who you imagine will spend ten thousand dollars,” she says with conviction.

“I have another customer who attended the fanciest Pesach program, she’s dripping with diamonds, yet she’s incredibly frugal when she shops for clothing. When I asked her about it, she said, ‘I grew up without a penny, my parents had no money. I cannot fathom spending a lot of money on clothing.’ ”

Weight for It

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ll of the saleswomen agreed that weight is a fraught issue for mothers and daughters to navigate together. Too often, to the utter chagrin of the saleswomen, a mother will publicly shame her daughter for what she perceives as an imperfect body size.

“One mother came in with her daughter and loudly asked the saleswomen, ‘Do you have anything for short fat girls?’ ” Chaya B. recalls, wincing. “Then, to add insult to injury, she turned to her daughter and said, ‘I told you to lose weight!’ ”

When she sees a scene like this unfold, Chaya B. is quick to separate the mother and daughter, and guides the girl to a saleswoman who will find her beautiful, flattering pieces.

“I wish mothers wouldn’t ever comment about weight,” Mindy says. “Like when a mother will tell her daughter, ‘I don’t know about that outfit, I think it makes you look fat,’ I’ll say, ‘Please don’t say that to her, it doesn’t make her feel good.’ ”

“I try to build up a girl who’s getting these types of messages from her mom,” says Chaya F. “How could she speak that way? Everything on her looks gorgeous!”

Suri finds that some mothers become hyper focused on weight when a daughter is in shidduchim, or when she returns from Eretz Yisrael having gained a few pounds. “Most mothers will make comments about seminary weight gain in front of their girls,” she says. “They’ll bring their daughter in after seminary and say things like, ‘We have to find her clothing, she gained weight in sem, but she’s going to lose it, we’re going to a nutritionist.’ All the mothers do it, even the best mothers. I see it all the time.”

“Sometimes if I feel the need to say something  I’ll say, ‘No, she looks so good!’ But a mother once responded, ‘No, you don’t understand, before seminary she looked so good, she was emaciated!’ ” Suri says ruefully.

Unfortunately, this negativity can come from other family members as well. Mindy recalls a grandmother who took her granddaughter shopping. “When the granddaughter came out of the dressing room,” she remembers, “her grandmother said to her, ‘This actually doesn’t make you look fat!’ ”

Mindy couldn’t hold herself back. “I told the grandmother, ‘Don’t you ever say that to your granddaughter, ever again. You have no right to talk to her that way, she’s gorgeous. Just because she’s not a size zero, you don’t think she’s pretty?’

“I was very respectful, but very clear. The grandmother walked away, but the girl turned to me in shock and said, ‘I can’t believe you just said that, my mother would have kept her mouth shut and let my grandmother talk to me that way. No one has ever stuck up for me before.’ I told her, ‘You’re stunning, you’re gorgeous, who cares what size you are? You look amazing!’ ”

“The grandmother later came back and said to me, ‘You’re right, I apologized to my granddaughter for saying that, I shouldn’t say things like that to her in public.’ I said, ‘Actually, you shouldn’t ever say things like that to her.’ ”

Often, a woman’s own unhealthy body image affects her daughter’s self-perception.

“I know for a fact that she has her own body image issues,” Chaya B. says of the woman who called her daughter short and fat. “But don’t pass your stuff on to your daughter!”

“It’s disturbing to see how stuck we’ve become on fat versus skinny, pretty versus ugly,” Chaya F. says. “There’s so much beauty to each person, and when a mother doesn’t think she’s pretty because she’s not skinny, it warps her daughter’s perception of who she is. It teaches her to distill her self-worth down to a size. In frum society, we don’t believe in conflating size with value. When a mother says, ‘I’m fat’ in front of her daughter, I say, ‘Don’t say that about yourself, you’re giving your daughter a false sense of reality. Baruch Hashem, you’ve had children, you’ve done so much, your body has served you so well, and to insult it is wrong. You’re speaking lashon hara about yourself, and that’s assur. You’re beautiful.’ ”

Mindy notes that it’s not just girls who are overweight who struggle with their body image. “The girls who are too thin also have a hard time,” she says. “They try things on, but nothing fits because they’re a double zero. They also end up crying in the dressing room, they don’t want to look like that.”

Suri recommends that mothers never comment at all about size. “If you think a piece isn’t flattering, say, ‘That doesn’t fit so well,’ or ‘This is such a good cut, but that one isn’t, it doesn’t look as good on people.’ ”

Martha finds mothers today more aware of the need to be positive about body image and she rarely sees the uncomfortable scenes described by the others. “I think mothers today have learned to be extra sensitive around weight issues,” she says. “They’re worried about hurting their daughters.”

Suri has also seen exquisitely sensitive mothers who go to great lengths to maintain their daughter’s dignity. “I’ve seen mothers who have very nice figures, and their daughters are fuller,” she says. “A few times mothers have told me they’ll never try things on when shopping with their daughter to avoid making her feel bad. I recently had a very petite mother with a fuller daughter who were trying on clothing together. The daughter asked for things in a large or extra-large, but when the mother wanted to try something on, she refrained from specifying her size, and just said, ‘Can you give me that in my size?’”

The saleswomen all agree that helping a hard-to-fit shopper find clothing that makes her feel good is incredibly rewarding — for everyone. Mindy feels helping girls who are harder to fit is part of her calling. “I really put my kishkes into these girls,” Mindy says, summing up everyone’s feelings. “I daven so hard that I can be the shaliach to make them feel good.”

“When mothers find something for their harder-to-fit daughter, their faces light up because they found something that looks good,” Malky shares. “It’s amazing. You see it.”

A Modest Proposal

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hen it comes to anything related to clothing, tzniyus is a predictable mother-daughter flashpoint. Sometimes it’s as innocuous as conservative tastes in clothing versus more trendy, edgy preferences. Suri sees mothers who want to stretch their more conservative daughters, particularly when they’re in shidduchim.  “A mother whose daughter is in shidduchim will ask me to help her daughter look ‘less boring.’ She’ll say, ‘You need to look cute. You need a little color.’ ”

Suri also sees conflict manifest over explicit tzniyus issues. “A mother whose daughter didn’t fully cover her knees told me, ‘If you say it’s too short, she’ll listen.’

“A lot of times mothers will communicate a tzniyus request cryptically, and motion to me, ‘You tell her.’ This works a lot better than if she says it to her daughter herself. I’ll say, ‘Oh, just go up a size, it’s a drop short,’ and they’ll listen to me.”

When a mother comes in, takes us aside quietly and says, ‘Help us,’ we know she needs us to help her daughter find tzniyus things, that this is a challenge for them,” Chaya B. says. “Then we’ll separate the daughter and mother and find her beautiful tzanuah clothing.”

“I don’t carry anything that’s objectively problematic,” Chaya F. says, “but sometimes a girl wants something that’s not a tzniyus fit for her body type, or she wants it in an extra small and she really should be wearing a small. And I see the struggle both ways, where the daughter wants to wear something tighter, and I’ll also see situations where the mother wants the daughter to wear something tighter.  The mother will turn to me and say, ‘I think that outfit is tzniyus, tell her it’s fine.’ ”

Sometimes it’s the daughter whose tzniyus standards are higher than her mother’s — and Mindy has found that 80 percent of the time, that’s the cause of the tzniyus conflicts she’s encountered. “I’ve always seen respect in both directions, regardless of whose standards are higher,” she says. “Mothers whose daughters are more tzanuah might roll their eyes, but they go with it.

“When it comes to daughters, the ones whose tzniyus standards are higher than their mothers, they’ll usually be fine,” Mindy adds, “but the girl whose mode of dress is not up to par with her mother, I know she’s had a rougher time of it. I’ll give her more love and care. I’ll also bring her cooler things to try on so she knows I’m ‘normal’ and I get her.”

What happens when the mother-daughter duo sends their dilemma the saleswoman’s way?

Malky will never answer tzniyus-related inquiries. “It’s personal,” she explains, “I can’t decide their standards for them.”

“I ask the person to look in the mirror and check if they’re comfortable with what they see,” Chaya B. says. In some circumstances, though, she’ll intervene directly. “When a girl is shopping without her mother, if I see that what she’s tried on is really inappropriate, I’ll tell her, ‘I think when you go home, your mother may have an issue with that.’ I’ll help her wake up and realize that it’s not going to go over well at home, and it’s a shame to instigate a fight. When they hear it from me, an objective person, it’s easier.”

“I’ll never offer an unsolicited opinion,” Mindy says. “But if I’m asked an objective question, I’ll give an honest answer, saying something like, ‘I’m not telling you right or wrong, but here’s what I see.’ ”

It can be painful watching a mother make an issue of tzniyus when her daughter is struggling with deeper, more fundamental issues in Yiddishkeit. “I’ll see a mother making a big deal about something her daughter tries on and I’ll think to myself, this girl is barely keeping Shabbos,” Chaya F. says. “She’s slowly coming back to Yiddishkeit. You’re yelling at her for not holding where you are? She’s covered!”

But Chaya has also seen the reverse: Women who are prominent community figures showing up with a daughter who is clearly struggling, and who are able to meet them where they are holding. “I see how the daughter still wants her mother’s opinion, and asks her about something she’s wearing, an outfit her mother would never put on her own body,” she says. “But because the relationship is so important, the mother is willing to adjust her expectations and not love her daughter any less for wearing something below her standards. I watch these mothers approach this nisayon and navigate it so beautifully.”

Chaya B. sums it up with a pithy play on words. “You know the saying that you know someone best b’kiso, b’kaaso, u’vekoso? Add on b’clothing-o.”

—Chaya B.

“There are people who I’ve known forever, and they’re the nicest people, but when I walk into their fitting room after they’re done, there is clothing all over the floor. I have a big mouth, so I’ll say to them, very nicely, ‘Excuse me, but can you please pick up all the clothing that’s on the floor?’ How can you respect your own clothing and be so disrespectful when it’s not your own?”

—Mindy

“People are generally well-behaved, but one memory stands out. The store owner was helping a girl whose behavior was disgraceful. She was obnoxious, spoke unacceptably to the stock girls, didn’t crack a smile, and was outrageously demanding. The owner came over to me and quietly said, ‘My son was just redt to her, and I’m going to say no.’ ”

—Mindy

“I look them in the eye and say directly, ‘Make sure you put everything back on hangers,’ and they say, ‘Yeah, sure,’ yet their dressing room is a tornado when they leave.”

—Malky

“Customers will snap at salespeople and treat a sixty-five-year-old saleswomen like she’s chattel, but she’s over forty years older than the customer. They forget that there’s a person behind here! They see you as a service provider, not a human being.”

—Chaya B.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 915)