Is It Wrong to Dress Your Daughter as Chewbacca?

A Halloween tale from years gone by

The kerfuffle started innocently enough.

I was sitting at home with my infant daughter contemplating why women seem to have so much fun dressing up their children. To me, getting a child dressed is just another chore. Most of the time they subtly rotate their little feet until it’s virtually impossible to align their bodies with the entry hole of a pair of pants. Sometimes they start rotating when the pants are halfway on and the child ends up looking like a pretzel.

That’s usually when your wife walks in and gives you a “What are you doing?” look. As if they’ve never had any problems getting a child’s pants on.

Why do mothers consider dressing up their child a fun thing anyway? They put on a boring old blue dress with yellow sunflowers and coo like they’ve just discovered the most precious ensemble in the world. It’s not like they dress their kids up as anything cool like…

I stopped mid thought and looked down at my daughter.

My daughter looked back up at me. She blew a bubble and smiled.

Dress them up as something cool!

The thought sauntered through my mind and I began to grow excited. I couldn’t see anything all that interesting putting on a boring old dress, but why should kids have to wear dresses anyway? Moms tended to dress kids in office attire.

“Isn’t that precious?”

No, it’s not precious. You just reminded me of going to work. I hate work.

Little kids will have all their lives to dress up in work clothes. Dressing them that way as babies is kind of an affront to nature. Let the kid be a kid! They don’t have any responsibilities, how about dressing them up as something awesome.

Like Gandalf!

YEAH!

I jumped on Amazon and did a search for “Lord of the Rings baby clothing.” Soon I was looking at Aragorn jammies and Bilbo night shirts. The Gandalf outfit didn’t really work without the beard. I moved on to marvel super heroes.

“Yes, yes, this has possibilities!”

But the super hero stuff was too tight. There had to be something else. Something fantastic! Then the answer came to me, Star Wars! There had to be baby Star Wars clothing.

A quick internet search provided me with a plethora of options. Little Lando, baby Han, swaddled Luke. I had to admit, my wife was right! Dressing up the baby was awesome! I just knew she’d be as excited as I was when this stuff arrived. I made three quick purchases and shut off my computer.

The package arrived a few days later.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, it came! Awesome!”

“What is it?”

“Baby clothes!”

My wife betrayed a flicker of interest as I ripped into the box. A second later I held up three packages. I beamed. My wife didn’t.

“What is that?”

Star Wars outfits! See, I bought Darth Vader, Princess Leia, and Chewbacca!

Truthfully, I wasn’t too excited about the Princess Leia one, after all it was only a white dress. I thought it could serve as a kind of transition outfit to get me excited about the kind of things my wife got worked up about. Predictably, that was the first one my wife reached for.

“She’s not wearing this.”

What! Oh, the tyranny! Didn’t I have a say in what my daughter would wear? Why did my wife get to have all the fun?

“Maybe we can dress her on alternating days?”

“No!”

She scooped up the outfits, put them in a box, and dumped them in a closet. I watched it all sadly.

The matter had almost been forgotten when Halloween rolled around.

“Oh, I just got the cutest costume, I’m dressing Sienna up as a strawberry!”

“A strawberry?”

“Yes.”

“A vegetable?”

“Strawberries are fruits.”

“What’s fun about being a vegetable?”

“Well, what do you suggest?”

I was just about to defer, when I paused and remembered the Star Wars outfits. I smiled. This was perfect!

“Chewbacca!”

“No, absolutely not!”

“Oh, come on, you get to dress her 364 days of the year, give me Halloween at least! C’mon that’s a totally reasonable compromise.”

Actually, it’s not a reasonable compromise, but you know what I mean.

She finally relented and we dug out the Chewbacca outfit. It was a soft jumper with padded feet and frizzy hair on the top of the head and at the cuffs. She was adorable. At first my wife tried to resist. But my little baby’s Chewbacca charms slowly began to win her over. Then the compliments started rolling in.

Photo courtesy of Walter Rhein

“What an adorable baby Chewbacca!”

“Awwwww!”

“She’s gorgeous!”

And I proudly walked beside her. “Thanks, dressing her up as Chewbacca was my idea.”

We found a kid dressed as Darth Vader and took the opportunity for a dark side/light side photo shoot. By the end of Halloween, my wife had come around to the concept.

“Actually, you were right, she was super cute as Chewbacca.”

“Does that mean that tomorrow we can dress her up as Darth Vader?”

“No.”

Sigh, well, at least I have Halloween.