Let Your Kids Be Cringe

My 5-year-old daughter would, if she could, wear something poufy and colorful and sequined every day. She would also help herself to my (expensive) makeup and apply it with a liberal hand — crimson-red lipstick smeared well above the lip line and an array of shades across her eyes and cheeks that would do any clown proud. The end effect is like a preschool Harley Quinn on steroids, a deranged symphony of aesthetic expression.

The first time she wanted to leave the house like this, I bristled. “Hey sweet girl,” I tried, “What if makeup is just for inside the house?” Of course she laughed in my face and started to put on her shoes. Well, first she tried to put a pair of my heels on but I was at least able to get her to agree to wear something a little more comfortable and in her own size.

We were just going to our neighborhood playground but something in me felt a deep sense of discomfort and embarrassment at the idea of other people, other parents, seeing my daughter like this. What would they think of us, of me? This creeping sense of cringe butted up against my desire to keep my kids from feeling shame about who they are and how they express themselves, including how they dress. So out we went, in our matching red lipstick.

I kept looking over my shoulder to see if people were staring at her askew, anxious that someone might tsk-tsk that a small child had escaped her home in this state. She, on the other hand, was running around that playground completely unburdened by the worry that she looked anything short of fantastic. If you’ve never seen a circus princess navigate the monkey bars, well, you really should. She proved to me and everyone else in that park that sequins are, in fact, athletic clothes. Her beaming sense of pride in her lewk overrode any lingering fear I felt about how she — how I — looked.

Embarrassment, she very quickly showed me, is really just a roadblock to joy.

I see this overwhelming need to control and limit our own expression of parenthood all over social media. Cringe-averse millennial and Gen-Z parents have banished color and plastic and clothing that isn’t oatmeal, vanilla or latte hued. We curate our feeds, our pantries, and our living rooms to ensure that anyone looking will immediately understand that we’re not the wrong kind of parent; there’s nothing humiliating in our homes, strollers, or social-media accounts that could potentially embarrass us. The kids themselves are an afterthought.

But if pretending, through your dull furniture or “aesthetic” wooden toys, that your house and life are unchanged by your children won’t let you escape the inevitable chaos and messiness of being a parent — and, to be clear, it won’t — then why bother?

The fact is, kids are inherently cringe. They have zero social filter, asking whatever question crosses their minds, the exact second it occurs to them, regardless of who’s in earshot. They’ll tell you, very loudly, if your hair looks ratty or your breath stinks as they’re wiping their sticky, boogery hands all over you and themselves. Their faces and bodies are constantly in an awkward phase, and they confidently know both everything and nothing. They love you and they loathe you, they want you and need you and then suddenly they don’t, and the push and pull of all of it is a constant, ritual humiliation.

Parenting is essentially a frequent devotion to being taken down a peg that asks us to lay bare our souls in order to shepherd our spawn safely to adulthood. We’re not supposed to be smug or perfect or free from embarrassment while we do it. In fact, it feels so much better and more fun when you stop caring about getting it right and just getting it done. The same way you realize after 40 that no one thinks about you as much as you think they do, the truth is no one is obsessing about what you look like while you’re parenting or whether you have the right toys, furniture, or clothes. How liberating.

Now that I’m a mom of three, there is not a moment in my day that I am not covered in food, snot, breast milk, mud, or some heretofore unknown substance acquired at recess. I am forever awkwardly juggling three backpacks, a variety of half-eaten snacks, discarded wrappers, and sticks that are very, very important and if I lose them I will suffer dearly. I walk through any public space with someone perpetually on my ankle, my shoulder, or on my back. My breasts and stomach have been inadvertently on display at schoolyards, inside malls, and on public transit. If I let myself feel embarrassed by any or every one of these infractions, I would be a useless puddle of fear and anxiety. The only way out is through: We must embrace all that is ugly, chaotic, humiliating, and messy about parenting and make it our superpower.

Embracing cringe has also opened up my perspective on a lot of things beyond kids — it’s made me bolder at work and out in the world. I have so much less fear about saying the wrong thing or feeling awkward about asking a new friend for a coffee or pulling something wild out of the closet to wear on a regular Tuesday morning. Being free of the confines of the fear of shame or embarrassment means living a much happier, bolder, more expressive life.

My daughter has slowly been getting better at doing her makeup and her outfits are even a little less poufy lately, gone are the constant stream of Frozen and Moana dresses, but she is just as original and unafraid and utterly herself as ever. Long may it last.