My Daughter's First Homecoming Dress Experience Healed My Inner Teen

The biggest event of my freshman daughter’s first fall is right around the corner — yes, it’s HOCO time! For those who don’t celebrate homecoming, it’s a weeklong celebration of school spirit and all the sports, all culminating in the big dance at the end.

At first, she wasn’t sure she was going to go, and while I told her it was totally up to her, I encouraged her to give it a try. A week or so later, she was all on board. The group of gal pals, check; tickets, check; dinner reservation, check; the dress… well, we were gonna make an afternoon of that last one.

I was sure it was going to be a fun time, or at least, I was hopeful. Frankly, I was also a bit terrified because I couldn’t remember a dress shopping trip from high school that I actually enjoyed.

Anyone who was a teen girl in the early 2000s has their own traumatizing memories, especially us curvy girls. Back then, the dresses weren’t designed with body inclusivity in mind; as someone landing between a 10 and 14 (depending on how much I was hating myself at the moment), the options were few and far between.

A core memory that has stuck with me all these years was going shopping for my very first homecoming dress. At the mall, my mom dragged me from store to store in vain. All the dresses in the juniors department didn’t fit right. Too short, too fitted, and when Mom suggested the misses department, it added a whole other layer of devastation to an already humiliating situation.

We ended up picking up a long, yellow dress from David's Bridal (that my mom swore made me look just like the character Andie Anderson from How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), which was absolutely not true. But looking back, I understand why she was so hell-bent on making me believe it. It’s impossible to imagine what it was like for her, listening to me sob and despair and absolutely rage about how much I hated my body and be powerless to make me feel any better.

That memory (which clearly traumatized me so much that it still inspires essays decades later) gave me so much anxiety when it came time to shop for dresses with my daughter. I try not to project my experiences onto my girls because I’d hate to make them self-conscious when they wouldn’t have been before. Nevertheless, I’d been holding my breath since the first time she asked to go.

I’m glad to say this experience was much more fun than traumatizing for either of us. She tried on a million and two dresses (many of which I loved, and most of which she liked, but didn’t like enough to take home), but eventually we found the one. It’s a short, faux-corseted black number, with stretchy material, but most importantly, it's one that she feels great in.

Of course, she isn’t bulletproof; there are things she wishes would lay a little differently here and there, but she’s happy. I have zero doubt that the dress will be part of her homecoming memory, but not the main feature, and I wouldn’t want it any other way for her. She’s so tired of me non-stop affirming how great I think she looks, but I don’t care how cringe it sounds. I repeat it to her like a mantra, hoping that later in life when I might not always be there, she remembers this experience. And that she’ll carry this confidence through moments where it’s really hard not to feel like literally everything is wrong with her body (because we’ve all lived through those times).

It’s been difficult to walk the line between assuring her that she is beautiful and strong and capable, no matter what size the tag is or what social media tries to tell her. The other half of that is leveling with her by sharing my experiences, which I hope reassures her that if she isn’t feeling fab and fierce 24/7, that’s okay and very normal too.

It’s no exaggeration to say that this experience completely healed my inner 14-year-old. And maybe it will even be the thing that silences the little voice in the back of my mind that still tells me everything is wrong with my body and the way I look. Pretty soon, I’ll start dress shopping for one of my brother's weddings and am determined to go into it with an attitude similar to my daughters'. Be fabulous, unbothered, have fun, and focus on what really matters: creating incredible, happy memories with people who won’t give a damn, or really even remember, how I looked in that dress.

Holly Garcia writes about parenting, mental health, and all the lifestyle things. She hails from the Midwest, where she’s raising her daughters and drinking copious amounts of coffee.