This summer my daughter Zoe, now 22-months started to insist on choosing her own outfits each day. While I want to encourage her independence and creativity, and I want to get out of the front door with as little toddler-drama as possible, I can’t say it pleases me to take my child out in a bright yellow and orange tank top, blue, green and pink tie dye leggings and green frog rain boots as was the case today (which happens to have been one of the few days this summer in which the skies were completely clear). So as I start to buy her clothes for the fall I am attempting to choose things that even a 2-year-old can’t horribly mismatch.

 Daily Tea is always a favorite of ours and Zoe has had at least 2 mix-and-match outfits each season. These somehow always get worn as outfits and so she’s always stylish as long as she’s in her Daily Tea. I’ve decided that this fall Zoe’s non-Daily Tea clothes will have to consist of a lot of neutral bottoms –navy blue leggings, Tea’s Yoshi denim pants, and other choices that can be mixed with most anything. I also plan to look for patterned and solid dresses that can easily mix with the solid leggings. Jackets, sweaters and shoes will definitely have to be neutral as well.

As a general rule, I try to reserve judgments on each candidate until I fully understand what they believe in as a political philosophy. I had an uncle who was a state senator, and seeing the way he was treated by the media showed me how democrats, republicans and independents alike are all stereotyped in different ways. I hate to even call myself an independent, because I think that political labels divide us as a country. It is difficult to decide who to vote for without any of the political mudslinging. This year, a new kind of mudslinging seemed to evolve. With two women running for a position at one point or another during the campaign, (Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin), America suddenly cares about style within the political arena. After years watching old, white men with comb-overs win again and again, why do we feel the need to analyze the way women present themselves? Why does this double standard still exist in 2008?

It is discouraging for young girls to see such emphasis on a woman’s appearance in the political arena. Advertisements, movies and magazines promote enough of an unhealthy image; the political arena should be a place where women are allowed to thrive as individuals just as men are. Whether the news is covering Hillary’s cleavage, or ‘desexualized pants suits,’ as Robin Givhan of the Washington Post wrote, one must ask if it is really worth the news coverage. For example, do we really need to paste images of Sarah Palin’s face over scantily clad women on the internet? Is that a healthy view of what the American woman should be? Even the Republican party seemed to treat Sarah Palin as merely an image; they spent plenty of money to make her up like a little couture doll. That must have been a dehumanizing experience in and of itself. They basically gave her the message that she was not worthy; she needed to be changed, upgraded into an Eliza Doolittle of the Republican Party. I beg both parties to stop placing women in this unfair position.

I hope that someday we live in an America where my daughter does not have to concern herself with how others perceive her outside appearance. I want her to simply be herself, whoever that may be. The standard of American beauty should be measured by what is within a person, not by what they look like. Clothing should help us to be ourselves, not inhibit us from becoming who we are meant to be.