Victoria Should Keep Some Things A Secret

     I think I'm ready.

     I've made sure to eat carbs and fully hydrate. My muscles are stretched. Everything I think that I might need is packed and I'm wearing running shoes.

     No, I'm not entering a marathon or going hiking. I'm not sky-diving or bungie-jumping. Those pursuits are nice if you're easily rattled. I'm preparing for an activity that's so intense it can't be shown on The X Games.

     I'm taking my teenage daughter shopping for a prom dress.

     You might laugh, but this is serious business. Every teenage girl in that store has built her expectations of prom so high that she is near hysteria over the thought of not finding her dream dress and every mother is ready with jabbing elbows or an "accidental" trip to make sure her baby gets what she wants. There are no refs here to blow the whistle over obvious personal fouls. No one is going to save you from a vicious cross-check or put anyone in the penalty box for hooking you with a hanger as you both reach for the same size-4 red sequined halter dress.

     There are woman who will have scars for the rest of their lives just because they made the mistake of reaching for a dress on the "Marked Down" rack.

     If you are in the unfortunate position of needing to shop for a prom dress, you have to have a strategy. Do not go in there with the attitude of spending a nice afternoon bonding with your daughter or they will eat you alive. Then you'll have to spend the dress money on some mother/daughter therapy sessions.


     No one can really prepare you for what you're about to experience, but I can share a few tips that might help you plan ahead:

     1. Never go alone. Prom dress shopping is definitely a team sport. You need the teenage girl to try on the dresses and someone in the fitting room with her to help with all the zippers, hooks, buttons, and laced-up backs they put on those things. The minute you walk in the store, you need a person who can get in line for a fitting room because there will always be fifteen to twenty people waiting for one of the four tiny rooms the store provides. The mother can't be any of those people. She has her own job. The mother has to fight for the last dress in her daughter's size in every available style. Her daughter will only be allowed to take five dresses into the fitting room at a time, so the mother has to grab five different dresses, push past everyone in the line and tell the attendant that her daughter asked for a smaller size in the dresses she already took in with her. That way, the daughter can try on ten dresses while everyone else stands waiting for their turn.

     2. Never, ever head straight for a dress you have your eye on. If you see a dress you like and it's twenty feet away, stroll casually toward it in a roundabout fashion, touching other dresses as you pass them, making faces as though nothing in this store is worth trying on. Even when you take the dress off the rack, act as though it's barely worth considering. Other shoppers will be watching your face, just waiting to see which dresses are the most sought after and if they get a hint that you want a particular dress, they'll strip every available size of it off the rack like hyenas cleaning a carcass before you take more than three steps in that direction.  They'll even take the dresses on either side of it, just in case you were actually admiring those.

     3. Tell your daughter to never leave her fitting room to use the three-way mirror down the hall or to show family and friends how she looks in the dress. She can take a picture on her cell phone and text it to them. I've heard stories about girls who left their rooms and when they got back, all the other dresses they'd brought in to try on were gone. All that was left was their sad little jeans and tee shirt balled up on the floor. Your daughter wouldn't leave a child or a Rembrandt unattended--tell her not to leave her possible dream dress hanging defenseless, especially since getting that dress off the rack and into the fitting room means her mother either took an elbow or threw one.

     4.  If she does have someone with her in the fitting room to guard her dresses and she does step out into the hall to show you or her friends, make sure she sticks her fingers in her ears and sings, "La, la, la," until she is safely at your side. She'll have to walk through a gauntlet of desperate mothers who will say anything to get her to put that dress back on the rack so their precious darling can try it on. She'll hear that it's not really the right color for her skin-tone, it would be pretty if it wasn't so tight around her hips, it's amazing that a dress can make her bust disappear like that, the dress would be great for an older woman, and they didn't know that this store sold maternity prom dresses. Remember--"La, la, la." Loudly.

     5.  And lastly, make sure your daughter takes undergarments with her that pull in what needs to be pulled in and push out the things that need to be pushed out so you can see what the dress looks like with the right foundation.  In the store when she's wearing a sports bra and boy shorts, it's a fairy princess dress; coming down the stairs on prom night, covering undergarments performing miracles with water and foam, that same dress goes from fairy princess to desperate housewife. And will make her father put down the camera and pick up a shotgun.

     That's all the help I can give you; the rest you'll have to figure out on your own. But if you do decide to risk it and you make it out alive, stop back by here--we still have hair, jewelry, shoes, nails, and makeup to talk about.

     Remember, it's not just prom night, it's prom season. We have weeks and weeks of this ahead of us. Oh, joy.