The news has been full of the new "hot mom" trend. Gone are the days when a mom could get by with baggy jeans and an embellished sweatshirt. Thanks (and I use the term loosely) to the flood of sexy TV moms we now have a new ideal to live up to. I'm doomed.
It doesn't help that I've never been what you would call a fashionable mom. When my children were babies, I considered it a fashion victory if I managed to make it to the office with my clothes on right-side out. I treated baby spit-up as an accessory and developed an appreciation for elastic waistbands.
Inspired by the moms in commercials and magazines, I tried wearing smart khaki pants and crisply tailored cotton shirts, but it didn't work. When I wear khakis, I look like the UPS man. Seriously. I put on a pair of khaki pants, and people start handing me boxes.
So, I traded in the khakis and cotton shirts for what I hoped were slimming black skirts and pullovers. I thought I had evolved a sophisticated working-mom style until the day my oldest daughter, with the brutal honesty only an 11-year-old can summon, rolled her eyes and groaned, "Is everything you own black? Honestly, anyone looking into your closet would think she was in a haunted house."