Edel Coffey: Who says feminists can't wear dresses?

Picture: Bríd O'Donovan

Last weekend, I was browsing in a department store when I noticed a little girl trying on Communion dresses. My eldest daughter is making her Communion this year, but not until May.

“When do people start buying Communion dresses?” I casually asked the sales assistant.

She looked at me with a mixture of horror, panic, and utter disbelief before saying — with perfect dramatic timing: “Now!”

I rapidly made an appointment for my daughter (shopping for a Communion dress, as with a wedding dress, involves making an appointment), and within a few days, we were standing in a changing room with a short list of dresses hanging on a rail.

Mentally, I was agonising over the ethical and feminist issues at play.

What message did I want to give my daughter about princess dresses and the beauty myth? 

I have always been adamant that I will try to protect my daughters from the focus on female appearance.

They wear tracksuits to school, leggings and sweatshirts most days, and — while they enjoy the look of sequins — they are aware that the reality is discomfort, and discomfort is rightly rejected.

But when my daughter emerged from the dressing room, smiling at herself in the mirror, all of my misgivings dissolved.

I pushed down my Feminism 101 and told myself not to ruin a beautiful moment.

The shop assistant was fully on board.

“Do a twirl,” she said, as my daughter pirouetted with increasing flair as each dress went on.

When I asked about a headpiece, the word “tiara” left the sales assistant’s mouth and my daughter gasped: “A tiara!”

And so, while I had an idea that we might wear some simple ribbons or flowers in her hair, we left the shop with a tiara.

The whole experience was surprisingly emotional. I was flooded with long-forgotten memories of my own trip to buy Communion clothes with my mother.

There were stand-offs and negotiations over parasols and handbags and gloves, shoe boxes piled high and pink tissue paper all around. 

And the little stiff plastic box that encased my own Communion headdress, the very same packaging as the one my daughter’s came in.

There’s something about rituals that has the power to call up your whole life story, shuttering it through your mind like a carousel of images. 

I suppose this is what traditions are for, to connect all of the points of our past to our present, to connect the living to the dead, to remind us of who we are and where we come from.

These rites of passage also mark time’s flight. As my firstborn daughter tried on these dresses, I had to concede she is growing up fast.

I was also reminded of much more recent dress-buying expeditions. I got married five years ago and had ruled out a white wedding dress early on. It was too traditional I thought.

And besides, I was a 40-year-old woman with two babies and two step-sons and it was my husband’s second time getting married.

It seemed a bit silly to go in for all of that traditional stuff at my age. (Yes, I was being a buzzkill about my own wedding.)

I think I also didn’t want to want the white wedding dress. I wanted to be cooler than that, like one of those French brides who wears a red dress or a silk kimono to her wedding, or maybe like Bianca Jagger in her white suit.

Plus, I’m a feminist. I wasn’t supposed to buy into conformist traditions. I stuck to my politics and bought a pale pink evening gown in Debenhams one joyless morning, and thought that would be a grand dress for a wedding.

Months passed and a chance encounter with a friend led to a trip to a wedding dress shop. (She thought referring to one’s own wedding dress as “grand” was a red flag and so strong-armed me into having “just a look”.)

I can’t quite describe what I felt when I tried on the white wedding dress and veil, but I bought them both there and then and I’m forever glad that I did — because on my wedding day, I felt like a bride. When I visited my mum in the nursing home she knew I was getting married, even though she might not have known who I was.

I felt like a bride, and I looked like a bride too — which led to all sorts of warm wishes and good vibes from every stranger I met that day. That wouldn’t have happened had I been wearing the indeterminate pink dress.

There are times for politics and there are times for allowing ourselves some simple joy. It’s so scarce on the ground these days, it’s important to take it where we can find it. I reminded myself of this as I watched my daughter twirling in her little white dress.

Sometimes a dress is just a dress, and sometimes a dress is everything. Maybe not every experience has to be viewed through the political lens. Maybe some things can be just for us.