Project Copycat
When friends dress just like you, plus banning Barbies and understanding privacy.
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A friend constantly admires your clothes, asks where you purchased them, and then buys the exact same things. While it's somewhat flattering, it gets tiresome seeing your outfits on her. Is there a polite way to avoid letting her know where your clothes were purchased? An "Oh, I'm not sure" does not deter her. She persists until she gets the name of a store. In this case, could I lie about where I bought the clothes?
A.J. in Shrewsbury
You mean your clothes, not my clothes, right? Because I buy most of mine on
If her mockingbird approach to fashion bothers you, address it head-on. Tell her that it makes you uncomfortable when she buys the exact same clothes that you do, although you do find it flattering. Then suggest that the two of you go shopping together so you can help her pick things out that work for her. ("I'm A.J. in Shrewsbury, and I approve these culottes.") Frame this positively - she's great, she's got her own kind of beauty and style, she deserves her own unique look. Clearly, she likes your taste and feels insecure in her own, so help her build confidence.
We don't want our soon-to-be 4-year-old daughter to receive any Barbies or Disney princess-related gifts for her birthday, and wish to note that on her invitations to her classmates. It seems inevitable that some people will be somewhat affronted, but we'd like to give as little offense as possible. We're not zealots, but we're not comfortable with the role modeling, emphasis on slenderness and consumerism, and fetishization of royalty. Any advice?
K.E. in Randolph
Why not have a "no gifts" party, period, if you're that concerned about the emphasis on consumerism? Or else you can request contributions to a children's charity, or donations of books or art supplies for your daughters' school, or some other alternative that you do approve of. It's always better to tell people what to do than what not to do; to be for something rather than against something else.
While I sympathize with your values, I do feel the need to take you up on the "fetishization of royalty" thing. Dreaming of Jasmine, Ariel, and Cinderella will not turn your daughter into a little monarchist. In the child mind, "princess" just equals "special and unique with pretty clothes and talking animal companions." Who wouldn't want that? They're not processing these stories on a political level, trust me. By the time your daughter is 12 or so, if she still thinks it would be really cool to be a princess, give her a copy of Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles. That will disillusion her good and proper.
We live in a densely populated area, with houses 10 to 12 feet apart. Our new neighbors have no curtains or shades, and we can see right into their house. We know what they eat, the TV shows they watch, etc. We try to pull our curtains every night, but we don't have a shade on our patio door (our 1-year-old has pulled it off many times). My sister says I should just cover our patio door, but I want to ask the neighbors to kindly pull their curtains at night. This is really bothering me, yet my gut instinct says I should ignore it. Please advise.
C.C. in Quincy
Listen to your gut and learn to ignore the neighbors. Complete privacy isn't one of the benefits of living in a packed neighborhood. (For some people, this is a bug; for others, it's a feature.) As long as you're not being forced to witness anything more disturbing than Chinese takeout and reruns of Law & Order, there's really not much to complain about. If you ask your neighbors not merely to close their curtains but to purchase them (since you say they have none), they will probably respond, "Stop looking in our windows, then," or perhaps, "Teach your kid to stop ripping down your own shades." And they'll have a point. You can't foist privacy on them if they don't want it. Your child is growing up in a densely populated environment and will therefore have to learn the skill of discreetly ignoring (or even more discreetly enjoying) the spectacle of others going about their private lives. And your child will learn social skills from you, so there's no time like the present to start modeling good etiquette.
My Word!
A terrific idea from reader Marie Spoto: If you're going on a far-away honeymoon, pack stamps and stationery. Air travel presents plenty of waiting time that can usefully employed by writing the wedding thank you notes. You can mail the notes when you reach your destination to give them the extra glamour of an exotic postmark.
Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.
