You're Wearing That?

You're wearing that?


 

 

 

Your greatest critic … mothers will always believe they know best.

Every mother is a critic, but some could temper their home truths a bit more, says Clementine Bastow.
When I was 11, for reasons unknown, I began greeting people with a sunny "G'day!" Maybe it was because I'd spent my formative years watching Paul Hogan instruct the world on how best to barbecue seafood, but that was my hello of choice.

One day, my mum took me aside and suggested I stop saying "G'day" because, wait for it, "You sound like a dingo." Okay, it wasn't exactly a ferocious Joan Crawford barking, "NO WIRE HANGERS!" at her hapless daughter in Mommy Dearest, but it taught me that when it comes to letting you know you look tired/sound funny/should try something else on, mothers seemingly have a free pass to run their mouths – and it seems to get worse as we get older.

It's a common enough scenario: woman goes for a coffee catch-up with her mother and, before too long, mother adopts a concerned expression. "You look tired," she might say. Or perhaps she'll comment on her daughter's lipstick colour, choice of boyfriend, type of dog – you name it, Mum has thoughts about it.

So what gives, mothers of the world?

Nick Petrovic, head psychologist at Sydney's Mind Profile psychology clinic, thinks there's more than a hint of tradition to mothers' "helpful" suggestions. "The saying 'Mother knows best' explains a lot of the reasons why mothers feel that not only is it not rude to comment on their daughters, it's their responsibility," he says. "They feel they are helping, and encouraging what they consider positive changes."

Volumes have been written about the mother-daughter relationship and, more often than not, it's boiled down to envy. In 1945, psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch (a colleague of Sigmund Freud) suggested that mothers grow envious of their daughters because the girl's blossoming adolescence in some way signals the mother's decline, and that envy is expressed as protectiveness.

If this is the case, does that mean that when our mothers helpfully suggest we try on a different top with that skirt, they're inwardly seething with rage at not being able to wear the same outfit?

Probably not. Last year, Ayalla Ruvio, marketing professor at Philadelphia's Temple University, surveyed 343 mother-daughter pairs and found mothers were, in fact, more likely to view their daughters as style leaders. "They don't have time to monitor what's cool," Ruvio told The Atlantic, "[so] they just copy their daughters as a short cut." In turn, that led to the surveyed mothers' cognitive age (how old they "felt") dropping by an average of 10 years. So much for Deutsch's theory.

Still, our mother's "just letting you know" advice can sting 10 times more than a comparatively brazen remark from a friend. I remember countless occasions where Mum's slowness to respond when asked, "How does this look?" sent me dive-bombing into wardrobe panic. On the other hand, when a good friend recently greeted me by saying, "Jeez, you look like shit", I laughed uproariously and replied, "I know, right?"

It turns out it's a flesh-and-blood thing. "In many ways, mothers see their children as part of themselves, and therefore feel more comfortable saying things that others may feel are inappropriate," Petrovic suggests.

So why is it that we wince when Mum says it's time to bleach our upper-lip hair (you know, just for example)? "It may not be a case of [daughters] being more sensitive, but rather a feeling of irritation about the way comments are delivered," Petrovic says. "If anything, a daughter may appreciate a sounding board to discuss sensitive issues such as appearance, which she may not feel comfortable discussing with friends. However, mothers may also benefit from considering how they'd feel if their daughters made similar comments about their [own] appearance."

Perhaps we care so much because, in some way, we're hard-wired to seek our mother's approval. Yes, we spend our youth brushing off parental compliments – they are, after all, legally required to tell us we're smart, pretty and fun to be around, particularly when boys don't seem to agree – but we also know that crushing feeling in the back of the throat when we feel we've let our mum down.

My mother and I now laugh about the "dingo" comment, but I wanted to know what was going on behind the scenes. "My English mother-in-law made a comment about how sad it was that sweet little voices had become Australian-sounding in the school ground," Mum recalls. "I was a young mother and probably afraid of her bad opinion. Sometimes being a mother is a mixture of ideas, circumstances, pressures and nuttiness."

So is it external pressure and possibly projection of their own inadequacies that lead mums to worry whether or not we're (still, at 30) thinking of leaving the house dressed like that? "Sometimes it's hard to separate feeling like a girl from feeling like a mother," Mum says. "With my son, there's a bridge. It's like, 'Oh, he'll work it out in that way that he knows about and I don't know so much about.' With daughters, you grow up all over again – with them."

Petrovic encourages mothers to believe in their own parenting abilities. "If mothers feel pressure to raise the perfect daughter, the first thing to understand is that there is no such thing," he says.

So, other mothers, take a load off. "[Psychoanalyst] Donald Winnicott says that the fact you're the mother makes you what the baby wants: the 'good enough mother'," Mum says. "I like his theory because it's so understanding about how vulnerable mothers are and how that's okay. I recall feeling intensely that I didn't want you to have to go through pain and tough things, but of course, that's life - and it's your life, Clem."

She then pauses, adding, "No more tattoos!"