Scott Mackintosh didn’t know what to do about his daughter. He’d raised five children to adulthood, but the behavior of the sixth, an 18-year-old daughter, had him perplexed. Her “fashion sense” was far too revealing for her father’s taste, but attempts to get her to follow house rules had failed.
Then he had an idea. “I decided to make a ‘small’ statement on how her short-shorts maybe aren’t as ‘cute’ as she thinks!” Mackintosh wrote on his wife’s blog a week after the incident that made him an internet sensation.
Monday night is family night in the Mackintosh household, and one evening in late August 2013, the Utah family — Scott and his wife Becky, and the two children that still lived at home — prepared for a night out. When Becky saw what their daughter Myley, then 18, had decided to wear, she asked her to change into longer shorts before leaving. When Myley refused, Mackintosh went into action.
“I grabbed some scissors and cut some old worn-out pants into short-shorts with the ends of the pockets hanging out the bottom,” he wrote. The result was a pair of tiny shorts, often called “Daisy Dukes” after the character on the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard,” which made such short-shorts popular in the early 1980s.
“I was certain that when my daughter saw me, that would be as far as it would have to go to make the point.” He paired the hideous shorts with a graphic t-shirt that said, “Best. Dad. Ever.” and headed to the car where his family waited. His attire wasn’t even noticed at first, but when she finally realized what her father was wearing, Myley “gave her disgusted look” but didn’t really respond as expected.
“My daughter didn’t seem to care,” Mackintosh wrote, so the family continued their evening as planned, and headed to a miniature golf course.
This was more effective. Mackintosh stayed near his daughter while she tried to avoid him. The family enjoyed their golf game amid the startled looks, pointing and not always subtle photo-taking from strangers. When Mackintosh stopped for milkshakes on the way home — going inside instead of using the drive-through — Myley had had enough. She refused to go in.
“I simply did this in hopes that my daughter would know of my great love for her and that she knows of her great worth,” Mackintosh said in a statement to Deseret News. “Now that it has gone viral, I hope that young women everywhere understand their great worth. I will look like an idiot any day if that point gets across.” His motto is “modest is hottest.”
