Was anyone else's mother like this ?

[TedIreneAndOld]

My mum is odd! When we were younger she was obsessed with how we came across and how we looked. She used to go on and on about not having our hair too blonde, our eyebrows too thin or straighten our hair. She was also obsessed with calling me a big girl. At 5 foot 4 and 8 stone as a younger woman I think not. Everything had to be perfect. I remember once I hadn't tied my hair back and she told me it looked a fucking mess and started kicking off in the car. I was about 14.

No. My mother was not like this at all.

I knew someone whose mum was this way, both about personal appearance and the house. It was hard to shake it off.

Sounds like that would be hard to deal with @TedIreneAndOld

Yes, but in a more 'don't stand out from the crowd, wear flattering clothes and always look respectable' way -- I think it stemmed from her own very impoverished childhood, when her mother kept the children short on food in order to be able to afford one respectable outfit and hat for church.

I remember being in my 20s and returning with her in the car from a muddy winter walk on a Sunday afternoon when she wouldn't go into a corner shop to buy a pint of milk because the bottoms of her trousers were slightly muddy -- to her, that made her 'dirty' and 'poor-looking'.

My mum used to lie to my teachers about what I read.

I used to read a lot of Enid Blyton novels. My mum once said during a parents’ evening that ‘Enid Blyton books didn’t exist in our house’.

I remember it like it was yesterday, I was so confused.

My bedroom had Enid Blyton books all lined up on shelves like a little army.

So weird.

My mum used to say that some things I wore were 'common' and she constantly corrected my accent, getting furious about dropped Hs etc.
She was quite snobby and condescending about white working class people, or people with a cockney accent.
Thankfully now she's learned the error of her ways and looks back on her old self as a terrible snob. Blamed it on her suburban Irish upbringing. Lol.

My mum was the same. She was so worried about what people thought of us. She was desperate for me to marry well. I worked in a professional office at 17 and she was urging me to go out with someone in the office. Despite the men being much older than me. I married at 20 to someone the same age. Fortunately it worked out.

My mum told me constantly how bad I looked. How at the same age she was so beautiful etc. would take me shopping and I’d be so excited and she would then criticise how everything I tried on looked and I developed body dysmorphic disorder she also forced me to have an unflattering haircut that i detested and was just absolutely hateful to me . I hated myself I look back now and I feel cheated of when I was young and pretty and look at myself now and you can see I’ve had stress and abuse in my life and I’m so sad she stole that all from me growing up. She was clearly jealous she woukd also say my sister was so much better than me

I'm so glad I have sons

My mum constantly criticised me growing up. We have been no contact for many years now, no regrets. I wouldn’t dream of treating my sons like that.

No, but we had to wear clean underwear in case we were run over.

Although I think if we had been run over our clean underwear might have suffered in any case from the trauma...

My mum grew up during the Second World War. She was slightly obsessed with the way both my brother and I looked, but she was most into me being 'ladylike' (which I wasn't). I wasn't supposed to speak too loudly or say 'no' to people; I was supposed to be demure and quiet and look pretty.
She was disappointed on all fronts. She did come to terms with this, but right up until the day she died she'd still say 'what do you look like?' when she first saw me.

I think it definitely comes from a fear of being looked down on. My mum had it a little bit (understandably from her childhood) and I can be a tiny bit like this too and have to try hard not to be.

My mum (born 1940) thought ankle bracelets were 'common' which was a byword for a young woman of loose morals I think. Likewise pierced ears (until I insisted).

She was born poor and working class and was always acutely aware of how middle class people 'ought' to be even after she and dad made roaring financial successes of their lives. She always wanted me to be well dressed and I think I often let her down!

I miss her.

My mother would every morning damp down and selotape my fringe to my head while I ate breakfast....

I am a twin I have curly hair my twin did not .....

My mother mostly didn't take much notice of me and what I looked like until I was about 10 and then suddenly everything I wore made me look "like a streetwalker". If I wore a dress (any length), or a fitted shirt, I was trying to get men to look at me. She threw a fit over anthing she deemed too adult, including my PE shorts and my red raincoat. I wore tights instead of socks once which was obviously "whoreish" and unnacceptable. She wouldnt let me out of my bedroom in my pyjamas - "tarty and slovenly" or to have my hair in a ponytail higher than my ears because "thats how pornstars wear it"

I think in her weird way she was trying to protect me from my dads sleazy friends, who called me jailbait. It didn't come across protective at the time, just insane, especially as nothing I wore was ever remotely innapropriate and I was a child who didn't understand any of it.

My mum was very supportive when we were going through the gangly, spotty teenager years. When we fretted about our appearance, she'd tell us that no one would notice - "who's going to be looking at you? ". But then when we proposed going out wearing something she didn't approve of - too much make up, too short skirt, scruffy jumper, whatever, she'd say "you're not going out of my front door like that, whatever will people think? ".
Ha ha, proper double standard Mum.
But the best advice she ever gave me, again during the teenage angst years, was that no man was ever worth my tears.

Mine would tell me that I couldn't expect to dress like other girls, and should just be content to be decently covered.

I'm a standard humanoid shape, no extra limbs or anything; there was no reason I couldn't wear the same clothes as everyone else. I wasn't overweight.

I'm morbidly obese now...

My Mum loved my dyed yellowish blonde hair, I was 15.

My Mum always said I looked lovely when dressed to go out.

My Mum said I should be a Model.

She never criticised me as a teenager.

When I look at photos of me as a teenager.
All I can say is my Mum obviously saw me through "Rose coloured " glasses 😀

@Flowerypaintings that's so very sad 💐
My mum was sensitive to how we were "judged" not so much being working class but how it made her look as a parent maybe.

People would compliment how we looked, she made sure we looked our best for gatherings and special occasions. I often found this a bit tedious and wanted to not have to sit and look pretty in a dress. If I am to think of the positives it's nice I was looked after in this way.

I do let my DCs choose their own clothes, something I wasn't allowed to do as a child. My DCs have much more freedom. Though someone once visited the house to collect a donation and said of my children "a messy kid is a happy kid my mother always said" I thought thanks. He meant well 😂

Aww OP that sounds tough. I can remember mum gently telling me I looked nice with my hair straightened and makeup on (as a teen). Knowing I would go and take her advice. She never swore or put me down. In a way I wasn't really allowed to just "be."

My mum is also odd, she’s was obsessed with things being ‘common’. She had me convinced that if I had a tattoo, piercing or wild hair colour I would never ever get a job, but she also had me convinced I would be able to get a good job simply because I could speak ‘properly’ and knew what hand to hold my knife in 🙄 and I could never give my child a ‘common’ name or I’d be ruining their life chances.

Imagine my shock when I went into the world of work and found that people called Sharon and Carly who had tattoos were perfectly capable of having good jobs and being paid more than me and that no one cared if I had a classical name.

She was however convinced that my appearance didn’t matter, she refused to pay for braces to fix my wonky teeth despite them making me self conscious, refused to buy conditioner even though I’ve got very thick frizzy hair, wouldn’t allow me to dye my hair even a natural colour even though I was being bullied for having ginger hair and just wanted to feel better about myself.

Yes. My mum is 88 and still places value on the way people look, dress and especially their weight. I was constantly criticised as a child and teen and still am to an extent. She treated my sister and I as her ‘products’. She tried to treat my kids like that as well.

She was very beautiful and a model when she was young. She is also Dutch and tends to communicate via criticism anyway. It left me with no confidence. I am more confident now I am 61 and don’t give a fuck about looks or behaviour.

My MIL is Irish and is like this. She changed her name to an Anglicised version years ago and is very snobbish and dismissive of poor people, people with strong accents, people who do blue-collar jobs etc. She is particularly judgemental about Irish people who play traditional music, are working class and don't hide their Irishness (so she got a nasty shock when she met my dad😂)

She and FIL came to England in the 60s and I think she was badly traumatised by the anti-Irish abuse and ostracism they experienced. It was quite frightening for her and she still talks about it occasionally when her guard is down.

Oh yes the list of things that were "common" 🙄That said she grew up in an abusive household and went to a school where her accent was caned out of her - life was very much about being 'better', and she wanted that for us. Had she not also been a nasty alcoholic who was a shit mother that repeated all the mistakes her parents made, I might have more sympathy.

I was going to ask whether she'd lived longterm in the UK before getting to your final paragraph, @sprigatito. I only moved there in the mid-1990s, but I still got a fair amount of anti-Irish stuff, combined with anti-WC stuff (only of course for a certain type of English person they're the same thing.)

My mother's first cousin (who had moved to the Home Counties, married an Englishman, changed her Irish-language surname to something very Anglo, and adopted an accent and voice rather like Margaret Thatcher's, and named her children Piers and Charlotte) only met me when I was at Oxford, and was visibly taken aback that this unapologetically WC Irish young woman was quite at home at her very trad college without attempting to change her accent, name or dress sense.

Yep.

Really controlling over what I ate, where I went, how much noise I could make etc. Worked my arse off at school and have done since and its never been good enoufh. Very over-involved and I could feel her disgust towards me. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone that I was in therapy and she made me promise I was joking when I came out and told me I had been lying to everyone.

Never really leaves you does it.