Different ideas on dressing differently
Stand aside, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, with your smudgy-eyed, waifish looks, transformed from your cutesy wutesy bow-tied hair and overalls of Full House days.
The Edmonton area has its own identical and fraternal twins, forging their identities with stylish choices.
They’re rare: in 2008, just over 12,000 out of 380,660 total births in Canada — so three per cent — were multiple births, including twins, triplets and other multiples.
Identicals — where one fertilized egg divides in half — often but don’t always look alike, while fraternal twins — where two eggs are fertilized by different sperm — can be remarkably different, including in sex.
Debate is fierce on whether or not parents should dress their young twins the same.
“Most parents have seen media accounts of adult twins who still live together and dress alike, who seem never to have become separate people with separate lives,” reads a posting at Twin Services Consulting, a resource for families with twins, triplets or other multiples.
The U.K.’s Daily Mail profiled such twins in 2014: 60-year-old identical twins who started dressing the same in 2000 after both were divorced in the same year.
While they say they are often mistaken for a cabaret act, they like the attention and celebrity that comes with it.
Tracie Davies, a mother of identical twins, said she found the “novelty dressing of children” creepy.
“They are different beings, with different minds and different personalities,” she wrote on Parent Dish, an online parenting resource in the U.K.
“If I dress them the same now, where does it end? Oh, look at them with their matching identical boyfriends, their matching blue Nissan Micras and their matching wedding dresses. Oh my god, NO!”
Here’s the take from some local twins.
Alison Mould is right-handed. Heather Teghtmeyer uses her left.
One flips her hair to one side. The other parts her hair on the other.
Nose-piercing? Mould’s is in the right nostril, Teghtmeyer’s in the left.
The two are identical twins, minus the 12 minutes between their births.
“We are freaks,” Teghtmeyer says with a laugh.
They’re fashionable 35-year-olds, grown up from cute-as-a-button babies when their mom sewed them matching outfits from large swaths of cloth.
They may have been dressed the same as infants, but “Our mother always treated us as individuals and really allowed us to be in charge of what we wanted,” Teghtmeyer says.
Teghtmeyer and Mould embraced the idea of dressing alike until about Grade 4. Then, different clothes in a collective wardrobe doubled the style potential.
Today, living five minutes apart in Sherwood Park, they still borrow each other’s clothes and have replica outfits, although Mould steers away from Teghtmeyer’s love of frills.
Neither ever worried their individuality is cloaked by sameness.
“We were still Alison and Heather,” Mould says, adding, “I still want to look as pretty as my sister.”
Shawna Smith had a full, finished family with a husband and four daughters, when surprise! surprise! She got pregnant with one fraternal twin, then the other — seriously — three days later.
Yes, that can happen, since older women can drop more than one egg each month.
“It was very scary because six kids, can I handle it?” says Smith, who gave birth to Tristan at eight pounds, then River, three minutes later, at seven pounds, seven ounces, a breech baby yanked out by his ankles.
The two boys, 3, have upped the cuteness in the household, as well as the work.
Dressing Tristan and River the same actually helps, Smith says. If the two go out hunting frogs in the rain, Smith can easily see their matching rain coats. Ditto with matching sun hats in Mexico.
“It’s peace of mind,” says Smith, 36. “It bothered me if they weren’t dressed the same. It was like something was wrong in the world.”
Smith initially dressed the boys as Calvin and Hobbes one Halloween, but then worried Tristan might be sad that he didn’t get to be a furry striped tiger like his brother. Off came the outfits, on went matching dragon costumes.
“It’s a comfort thing for me, too,” Smith says. “I don’t want one of their feelings hurt.”
Smith isn’t worried one will be overshadowed by the other.
She describes River as “haywire” and Tristan as her big helper. “They’re seriously different, but they get along so well.”
Laura and Sarah Harder share a birthday, a bedroom and a closet, but Sarah’s skirts with cupcakes and kittens are on one side, and Laura’s skirts with popcorn and doughnuts are on the other. No sharing, thank you very much. The 11-year-olds like their own style.
“We think it’s cool to be twins,” says Laura, the younger of the two by 15 minutes.
“Sometimes, we dress the same,” says Sarah, but: “We like being different.”
Her hair is straight and her fingernails are blue with polka dots.
Laura’s hair is naturally curly and her fingernails sport food designs including pizza, carrots and watermelon.
Sarah likes her purple corduroy vest and matching skirt.
Laura leans toward leopard prints.
Mother Colleen Harder used to dress the girls the same or in complementary colours: Laura in pink and Sarah in purple. The girls took over at age two.
“They should dress the way they want to express their individuality,” Colleen says. “It’s not just jeans and T-shirts.”
Aimee Guilbault often jokes she has two sets of identical twins, but neither are the same age.
In fact, she has two sets of fraternal twins: Nesta and Djagger, 5, and Redding and Levon, 2, even though Nesta looks most like Redding and Djagger looks most like Levon.
Whatever the case, Guilbault likes to dress each set the same so people recognize the specialness of the twin world.
“I think it’s really cool,” says Guilbault, although she always reassures her daughter, 11-year-old Strummer, she’s the special one in a family of boys and double twins.
Matching the twins isn’t always possible, what with the grunge that comes with kids.
So Guilbault, 38 and a tap-dancer, and her musician husband, Isho Bailey, love shrugging their kids into band T-shirts often given to them as gifts. The Ramones! Nirvana! The Who! Kiss! The Rolling Stones! The Beatles!
In the end, the entire family is a septuplet of music fans. Strummer is named after punker Joe Strummer from The Clash. Nesta shares a name with reggae icon Bob Nesta Marley. Djagger’s name is a mashup of jazz musician Django Reinhardt and the Stones’ Mick Jagger. Redding is named after Otis Redding, who wrote and sang The Dock of the Bay. And Levon is named after American rocker Levon Helm.
Guilbault loves the attention that comes when people ask about the twins. But in the end, the packaging doesn’t matter.
“You should do whatever you want,” she says. “Be natural with it. Twins are special.”
jsinnema@edmontonjournal.com twitter.com/jodiesinnema