Dear Sunshine,
I think you hit the nail on the head...it is our attractiveness that draws the N to us. The supply of good feelings the N receives when we are on their arm is why they hooked us in in the first place.
Like a few others here, I was a gawky kid that didn't come into my own until high school, at which time I was able to take control of my appearance and style. Unfortunately, my mother found my style embarrassing. The outside world always thought I looked great and made me feel wonderful, my mother made comments such as "your wearing that?" "do something with your hair!" "a little makeup might help!" She just never got I had style.
I loved dressing my babies in fun clothes I would find on the sale racks of European clothing stores. I once lucked out on a sale of European children's shoes for $5 a pair. We made a shoe store in one of the closets and had the coolest shoes for years to come. My mother just didn't get it! She would insist I bring the children to stay with her for the weekend. She would promtly cut their hair, redress them in clothes she bought that she thought was appropriate style clothing and buy them shoes she liked. She would take them to the mall and have their pictures taken. The pictures never looked like my kids, they were her version of what she wanted my kids to look like. She would hang the pictures of the kids that she had taken in her home. I had black and white photos taken of the kids looking like kids wearing things like a white tee shirt and their overalls and tousled hair...she had no interest in picture of the kids looking like kids, she only liked her version.
When I would go to pick up my "madeover children" I couldn't wait to get them home and put them in their normal clothes and shoes. I would be devastated that she had cut their curls. When I would complain to my N husband he would say I was being ungrateful, she had bought them clothes. Since she was being generous enough to babysit I felt like a jerk complaining about that fact that she was insulting my taste and parenting by redoing them. I can now fully understand I had every right to be outraged and should have told her they would not return if she insisted on remaking them everytime the came over.
My 21 daughter recently recalled her makeover weekends. She said it was kinda fun for her but she asked me how must I have felt when I picked them up and they didn't look like them. She got that it was incredibly insulting to me as a daughter. Bravo darling....may you never but up with the same shit your mother has!
GAP
