Parents gird for midriff wars with preteen set

Flipping through red pleather jackets with faux fur collars at an Old Navy, Susan is on a similar quest, trying to satisfy her eight-year-old daughter's craving for chic while keeping her modestly clad. "I don't want her to look like she's 16," she says. Susan has been more indulgent lately, bringing home the rainbow-striped jeans her daughter coveted. "But not high heels," she says. "They're dangerous, and she can't run around." Fashion debates are considerably more intense in the summer, when hot weather conspires with her daughter's demands for tank tops and tiny skirts.

So far, Maria Oneil hasn't had to field many raiment requests from her three-year-old, but she anticipates escalating demands in coming years. She says she'll let Carolina wear what she wants if that helps her express herself. "If all the world is wearing tank tops, she's going to look funny in a turtleneck," she says.

It's a leniency that has grown more common in recent generations. Jenna Weissman-Joselit, author of "A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America," suggests that as the parental dynamic has become more buddylike, parents often indulge their youngsters' early notions of chic.

And, in fact, some fashionistas point out, these same parents are the ones who first battled for the right to wear denim. "It comes up every single generation - with miniskirts, with cutoff jeans. Each generation pushes the envelope," says Cylin Busby, senior editor at Teen magazine in Los Angeles. However, she agrees that fashion consciousness is hitting American girls at earlier ages, and media saturation may well be driving younger children's quest for sexy clothes.

If the focus on curve-hugging clothes for girls too young to have curves is depressingly stereotypical to some, it's a sign of independence to others. Current teen style glorifies femininity, they say. "There were years when girls were trying to look like boys and wear baggy pants," says Jacqueline Azria-Palombo, fashion director at CosmoGIRL, a junior version of Cosmopolitan Magazine. "Now they're much more comfortable with themselves."

It's a perspective that defies the age-old inclination to link morality and style. Only recently, say some observers, has the length of your skirt not been used as a measure of your character. "In 1918, people believed that clothing revealed a whole set of moral assumptions about you," says Dr. Weissman-Joselit. She describes advice for teens that would never fly on MTV: "Free yourselves from the yolk of fashion," one contemporary booklet intoned. "Make modesty your bosom friend."

But as the 20th century progressed, adolescence increasingly became "a world unto itself," she says, "with a special set of needs - and those needs included clothing."

Whether it's an urge for the cloth of rebellion or a wish to thread one's way to social success, the search for chic can seem pernicious to those who have watched it spread from high school to middle and even elementary grades.

"The truth is that they're little girls," says Ms. Rodriguez-Poulton. The preteen crew may talk big and beg for edgy styles, she says. But in the end, "a lot of them are just not comfortable wearing those clothes."

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