Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: JayBailey on January 29, 2007, 02:22:54 PM
-
I was thinking about this today and wondered what anyone else's take was on this.
I was brought up to believe that appearance was the be-all and end-all. I mean, really. Dire warnings about the (lonely) fate that awaited me if I didn't get thin (like her - I was chunky like my dad). Assertions that I didn't have any friends not because of being cripplingly shy, but because I wasn't always fussing with my hair. And tearing rages about a pimple, or some other tiny thing nobody else would notice. I had all of that and much, much more.
The thing is, though, I wasn't brought up in the modern world. Being neat and 'presentable' was essential, but 'looking like a mannequin' - her expression for actually looking fashionable - was unforgivable. 'Sexy' clothing was completely off the menu. I was never shown how to wear makeup, never told that other people showered every day, never told about deodorant. I recall other kids laughing at the stuff she used to dress me in - whereupon, if she was in the vicinity, she would come snarling to, not exactly my defence, but HERS for having chosen whatever it was. On the other hand, if (later on, when I was old enough to choose my own clothes) I got admiration for something I was wearing, that was the cue for her to find fault with it.
My attitude today is still ambivalent. I don't enjoy clothes shopping the way some women do; it bores and frustrates me. (Maybe because I am still 'big' - a UK 16/18, not sure what the US equivalent is?) I have never been to a spa, because there is a part of me that sees 'grooming' as punishment, and it took me a very long time to feel comfortable around hairdressers, or not totally panic when having my hair washed by someone else.
Thing is, I DO take pleasure in dressing up to the nines...when I want to. But I hate being pressured into it. I recall a family wedding where my mother found me in a dressy top and snapped, almost in triumph, 'You see, you DO care about appearances!' As if she'd somehow 'won' by me being interested in clothes at all. But I want that freedom to care or not, depending on how I feel at the time.
It's been a big issue for me, and I'm interested in hearing whether the rest of you have suffered from this kind of emphasis from an Nmother - and what effect it's had on you. (Sorry to any sons of Nmothers - I don't intend to be sexist, but I'm guessing that this is a girl thing -at least, I don't think my brother ever got this to the degree I did. But if I'm wrong, please correct me!)
-
My Nmother would insist on dressing me in hand-me-downs from her senior citizen friends. These clothes were always several sizes too big for me and I was often tormented at school for the way I was dressed. One day, when I was in my attic room, (Nbrother was given the only good bedroom in the house, across from Nmother's bedroom), I was sitting at the mirror, playing with my hair. Nmother came upstairs into my attic room, (I had no door), saw me playing with my hair and came at me in a rage, slapping me and calling me a whore! (I was about 9 years old.) I STILL have NO idea what I supposedly had done that was so wrong!
Bones
-
JayBailey & Bones,
I was brought up with make-up and clothes/beauty issues. I have 5 older brothers and one sister. (of course, the boys were who she cared about) N Mom believed she was perfect JUST the way she was. Make-up was not neccessary. Not from confidence, but from vanity. Therefore, I watched her torture my older sister with the whore attitude for trying to dress nice and wear make-up. So I didn't EVEN go there. I even had a breakdown when, after I got married, I bought some makeup at the grocery store one day and came home and cried. My husband didn't get it. Neither did I--she had manipulated me so well, that I didn't even know why I was having this reaction to some stupid eyeliner and mascara.
I witnessed huge fight (of many) between sister and mom about her prom dress being too slinky cause it didn't have chunky straps. (Jezabelle!) :shock: I didn't even dare go to proms. She stole that from me. I made sure I had a boyfriend out of the country so I had an excuse not to go. So she won there, she made sure she didn't have to compete with me and was livid my older sister didn't allow her to have all the attention. I recall my sister telling me years later that she didn't even tell our mother that she was "royalty" at her high school prom because she was ashamed our N mom would judge her and probably tell her she couldn't go to the dance.
I should have figured something out about a decade or so ago when N momwas jealous of a girl my age at the time(21) that we both knew and N mom was 67!!! What?????
She always had us wear hand-sewn clothes. She could afford something new or even used for that matter. But between wanting credit for how talented she was for showing off that she could sew and not giving a crap how I felt, I grew up looking like an idiot. She didn't care. She even made my undies! My pinching elastic, ill-fitting, tortuous, riding-up undies! Jr. High Pyshical Ed was great fun! I finally got a break when my older sister began buying her own clothes and I could wear her hand-me-downs. Bras even. Mom wouldn't buy those for us. Or feminine hygiene equipment---she didn't even want to talk about it. She even kept several photo albums in the house------OF HERSELF! She had 7 kids and no albums of us---just of herself!
No empathy. No caring. Nothing but shame and criticism! It seems to go to the extreme one way or another! Especially with the make-up hygiene stuff.
And now, sexy stuff---forget it. I told her I was taking a photo of myself in a bikini a few years back, when we were still talking, so I could track progress of my weight loss plan. Her only comment was---"You mean, you OWN a bikini???" Duhhh. Hello!!!
I don't enjoy shoppnig---or makeup counters ---never felt good enough, or comfortable to be there.
Today I wear makeup, I can afford to dress like I want, basically, and yet, until I told her to stay the hell away from me. She still controlled what I put on every day---in my mind. :shock:
OK---enough---sorry for going off on this, but it is one of the major issues of growing up!-----What isn't--- on this road to recovery!
¨`·.·´¨) from
`·.¸(¨`·.·´¨) my
(¨`·.·´¨)¸.·´heart
`·.¸.·´ to
yours!
Sunny
-
Thanks, Sunny and CB!!! (((((((((((((((Sunny)))))))))))))))))))) (((((((((((((((((CB)))))))))))))))
Another memory that has surfaced was how she would often pound on me because my hair was "disobedient"! She demanded that I have "Shirley Temple Curls" and I simply did NOT have the curly genes that would give me curly hair. My dad and Nbrother had the curly hair. Still makes no sense to me!
Bones
-
Well I could never post of how my Nmother dressed me nor matters of essential hygiene requirements, for sheer utter embarrassment and shame.
Hence, I never went to beauty counters, never liked looking in a mirror, nor having my photograph taken.
My Nexh never allowed me to wear make-up anyway.
Leah
-
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh.
This issue is such a deep one.
I find it hard even to type this.
I have an unusual face. People have called me beautiful. (big whoop). A deep dimple.
I look like my dad.
Anyway, whatever my appearance was, I felt for the longest time (until the late 60s and thank gof for those years) that it didn't belong to me.
That's because my mother was obsessed with appearance. So...she made me lovely clothes. (Why wasn't I more grateful? I think it's the same thing...it appeared, and was I'm sure in many ways, to be an act of love. But I didn't enjoy them. I guess because I felt like her model.)
When I was dressed up and looking "lovely" as a teen and would come downstairs, looking toward the door, if my mother had a visitor she would go on and ON about how I looked "just like Jackie Kennedy" and didn't her friend think I looked just like Jackie Kennedy? Sounds absurd but after a while I felt violated.
Backlash! Long stretches of defiance of convention. Still do sometimes. I enjoy my appearance more than I used to. And clothes can be fun or beautiful...still, I have a very aggressive feeling about dressing up only when I WANT to, not because of "the occasion".
Now that my hair is white, it's actually quite nice. It's thick and silvery and people remark about it. It contrasts with my eyebrows which are dark. And my face is unlined, again my dad's genes. But...there's a "rule" out there that women with white hair MUST wear it short-ish. Hah. I intend to grow it down to my curvy butt!
When I escaped to college my peers did NOT compare me to JK...I was stomping around campus with hairy armpits, wearing no bra, tie-dyed Tshirts and BOOTS and lot of interesting hats. So then people started telling me I looked like Diane Keaton.
One of the blessings of being 56 is that I finally think I look like myself.
Iggh. I am incoherent about this. It's a weird painful subject.
I have intense feelings about looks because why should you thank anyone if you are "beautiful" or feel one shred of anything if you do NOT fit conventional notions of "beauty" because it's all a damn genetic accident!!!!!!!!
I am not very fond of how this culture makes people feel about themselves. I'm really PO'd about how much energy and time it wastes, robs, steals, takes from our self-esteem and our joy.
Hops
-
Did anyone here dealt with an Nmother who was OBSESSED with your bodily functions?!?!? My Nmother was! I thought it was inappropriate then and I understand now that my instincts were right!
She considered me such an extension of her that she even went so far as to DEMAND that I go to the bathroom at the same time she had to go! Often, I didn't need to do so. When I stated that I didn't need to go, again, I would get pounded on for "being disobedient!" Huh????????
Bones
-
Did anyone here dealt with an Nmother who was OBSESSED with your bodily functions?!?!? My Nmother was! I thought it was inappropriate then and I understand now that my instincts were right!
Bones,
Yes! Quizzed Questioned and Dosed with Syrup of Figs and other hideous conncoctions :shock:
Weird!!
Leah
-
Oh, my mother was jealous as h**l of me, and at least half of it was about looks.
She chainsmoked her way to an early grave. In her early 50s, she looked like she was 10 years older... My nsib smoked and drank and drugged her way to prematurely gray hair and menopause in her 40s...
I was a gawky, coltish kid, all elbows and knees, but when I hit 17, something amazing happened to me.
So of course Nmom found fault with whatever I wore, how I did my hair, and on and on and on... a flaw-picker extraordinaire. Luckily, there were swarms of young fellas around doing plenty to invalidate her criticisms. Also luckily, my dad complimented me enough, when I was little, and told me I was going to grow up to be a real beauty, and for whatever reason, I managed to hold on to belief in that throughout the gawky years.
At 52, I'm still tall, slender, 38-28-38, brown eyes, black brows, and copper blond curls down to my tailbone. A few pure white strands here and there, but that's it, and nary a crease on me, except where I smile. No makeup, never needed it, except for a touch of mascara now and then, and a little Vaseline to gloss the lips. No smoking ever, and not all that much alcohol, either.
I gotta admit, though, the looks had a tendency to draw Ns, all my adult life. I mostly got the kind of guy who decides based on my looks that I should be this, that, or the other, usually something with very little brainpower involved; then gets mad at me for being a scientist, intellectual, writer.
I'm much, much happier alone, sad though i am to say it.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a young man got out a sketchbook while I was sitting in a restaurant, reading, and started sketching my portrait. I felt ALARM! [Oh god not another Lookist...] but then remembered my age, figured out what his was likely to be, calmed down and let him sketch. [In Europe, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. Isn't that interesting? And in Europe, in my late 30s, I was constantly being asked out by very persistent 20-somethings - there were parks I simply didn't walk in, after the first six months I lived there.]
I thanked the young man as I was leaving, for a very unusual compliment, and he smiled at me so radiantly... . I wish I'd thought to ask him for a copy of his drawings, some of them were quite nice. Art student, I expect.
Weirdness: although my Nmom really hated me, and didn't have a single picture of me up in the house [my Nsib's face was all over the walls, though] - she had an obsession for cutting out pictures from magazines and catalogs of women she said looked just like me. She had the refrigerator covered in curly redheads, and not a single one of them was me. Any idea what that was about, anybody?
-
Never mind, I just figured it out.
My mother was a curly redhead too, in her youth. She had very little going for her except her beauty, which was immense, and which she lost in early middle age through not taking good care of herself...
All those curly reds on the fridge were meant to be her -- not me. They were meant to negate me, for looking the way she had looked, since she no longer looked that way [and couldn't have dealt with a pretty daughter even if she had retained her own incredible beauty].
Makes perfect sense!
-
Did anyone here dealt with an Nmother who was OBSESSED with your bodily functions?!?!? My Nmother was! I thought it was inappropriate then and I understand now that my instincts were right!
Bones,
Yes! Quizzed Questioned and Dosed with Syrup of Figs and other hideous conncoctions :shock:
Weird!!
Leah
Weird and sick!!!!
Bones
-
Bones,
My Nmother is weird and sick.
How embarrassing and shameful is that. Which is why I never ever discussed with anyone. As a professional person, the shame was too much sometimes.
Just had to tell myself over and over that you don't get to choose your parent(s).
Leah
-
Wow...so many of you! Thank you, all...sadly, it looks like all too typical N. behavior.
CB123 - 'take pride in your appearance' - oh yes, a fave that! (What it actually meant was 'do as I say so I can take pride in your appearance - woe betide if I actually did!) Another being 'You could make so much more of yourself...you could be pretty if....' And 'You can always better yourself'.
Stormchild - my Nmother had an equally puzzling one. Tucked away at the top of a spare closet at home was, I swear, a copy of every national newspaper from the day Princess Margaret got married. When I found them, there was no explanation apart from 'what a lovely wedding it was, what a lovely dress that was, so nice and simple'. Then guess what - when I married (first time round) she tried to persuade me to keep it as small and quiet as possible, and no big white dress for me if she could help it! My theory is that PM's was her fantasy wedding, but bearing in mind she actually had a very small one, she wasn't about to be upstaged by me. (Hopalong, looking at your mother's Jackie Kennedy thing...is it a common thing, do you think, having some celebrity ideal...something to focus on so it's not obvious it's actually an idealized version of themselves they're holding up for admiration?)
DivineSunshine - bras...I had boobs when I was NINE, but no bra for some months till a visiting aunt got me one. (Bless that aunt - married into my dad's side - she was my champion for years.)
I am, slowly, I think, getting to an acceptance of myself and my body and looks as they are, or as I (nobody else) choose to make them. I have to laugh sometimes. Used to get lots of comments from the N whenever I went sleeveless, on the grounds that 'your arms are a bit fat'. Guess she's pleased I haven't gone bare-armed in front of her for a few years, but she'd have a fit if she knew the reason is that both have been tattooed for some time :shock:...and I love my arms more than ever :D!
-
Well, I think all of you are probably quite beautiful. Why else would N's be attracted to or attack you? :o Hmmm.....
Peace & Namaste,
Sunny
-
Wow...so many of you! Thank you, all...sadly, it looks like all too typical N. behavior.
CB123 - 'take pride in your appearance' - oh yes, a fave that! (What it actually meant was 'do as I say so I can take pride in your appearance - woe betide if I actually did!) Another being 'You could make so much more of yourself...you could be pretty if....' And 'You can always better yourself'.
Stormchild - my Nmother had an equally puzzling one. Tucked away at the top of a spare closet at home was, I swear, a copy of every national newspaper from the day Princess Margaret got married. When I found them, there was no explanation apart from 'what a lovely wedding it was, what a lovely dress that was, so nice and simple'. Then guess what - when I married (first time round) she tried to persuade me to keep it as small and quiet as possible, and no big white dress for me if she could help it! My theory is that PM's was her fantasy wedding, but bearing in mind she actually had a very small one, she wasn't about to be upstaged by me. (Hopalong, looking at your mother's Jackie Kennedy thing...is it a common thing, do you think, having some celebrity ideal...something to focus on so it's not obvious it's actually an idealized version of themselves they're holding up for admiration?)
DivineSunshine - bras...I had boobs when I was NINE, but no bra for some months till a visiting aunt got me one. (Bless that aunt - married into my dad's side - she was my champion for years.)
I am, slowly, I think, getting to an acceptance of myself and my body and looks as they are, or as I (nobody else) choose to make them. I have to laugh sometimes. Used to get lots of comments from the N whenever I went sleeveless, on the grounds that 'your arms are a bit fat'. Guess she's pleased I haven't gone bare-armed in front of her for a few years, but she'd have a fit if she knew the reason is that both have been tattooed for some time :shock:...and I love my arms more than ever :D!
About the tattoos....mischievous me would have one of those tattoos aimed right at her with a naughty message! :twisted: (Hee-hee!!!)
Bones
-
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
-
Bravo darling....may you never but up with the same shit your mother has!
Gap--love your quote above! Amen and hallelujah!! Sing it sist-a!
Sounds like the "rag doll theory"----you know, play with people like they are dolls and then throw them in the corner when they are finished.
I can't believe she CUT THEIR HAIR!!!!! I woulda went ballistic. Someone else did that once with one of my kids--a babysitters mom. I did go ballistic. Course N H said I was overreacting. It was her first haircut and they didn't even save a bit. :twisted:
Take care of you, beautiful!
Sunny
-
Gap and Divine,
You're cracking me up.
divine:
Your "WEB PASSWORD" is visible. I don't know what a "WEB PASSWORD" is, but I have a feeling that we should not be able to see it.
Wanted to give you a heads up.
dazed
-
When I was reading the makeover postings, I remembered something from back when I was working at the job I retired from. My then-co-worker was sharing with me something her ex-MIL did that just did NOT make any sense at the time. My co-worker described that when she was a newlywed with her first husband, she and her then-husband had gone to work. (She had her first home decorated the way she liked.) When she got home from work, she discovered that her then-MIL had let herself into their apartment, re-did everything to her own tastes and threw out the things that my co-worker had carefully selected to decorate her home! Her then-husband didn't understand what the broo-ha-ha was about and defended his mother. Needless to say, the marriage did not last. I didn't blame my co-worker for going ballistic! If I knew then what I know now, I would have been able to enlighten my co-worker that she was dealing with two N's.
Bones
-
Ahhh, JB, so glad you have tattoos.
I had to really fight inside myself to accept my daughter's. Last time I was there I found I had changed. Instead of being afraid (they represented to me things that showed her great pain) I found myself looking at pictures she'd posted on the wall. I just "saw" them and some were lovely. I said, show me ones you like, tell me what you like about them. The look on her face made it all worthwhile. I realized.
(Fortunately, the skulls and death's heads are on her butt where I don't have to admire them. :mrgreen:)
Re. Jackiegueee K...I think inside my mother feels SHE is royalty. She was obsessed. Queen, Diana, anybody who ever curled a lip and said to a servant, "Fetch." She grew up poor and married well-to-do. But nothing was ever enough...
sigggh,
Hops