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 mum wasn't but I have noticed posts on MN that make me think they're people who still are

@TedIreneAndOld Same! I was 5'4" and 8.5 stone, but she used to call me 'Fatty! She was 4'10" and a natural size 6 - 8, so I was 'a moose', with the wide shoulders and big boobs from my father's side of the family (not my Dad obvs!). But they didn't kick in until I was nearly 17, when I finally started my periods (classic sign of low body fat). Teachers used to quietly ask me if I had enough to eat at home.

When I hit my teen years, she insisted on choosing my clothes, but they were to suit her, and really formal and old, I looked like a teenage mother-of-the-bride. And, like so many of the mothers on here, she was ob-sessed with me having short hair (again, she had a tiny little face and I had a square jaw). I'd get stopped going into the women's toilets.

In her 80s now she is still obsessed with being thin, with other women being 'a right chunker', and says all women should get their hair cut short - if it's long they're 'mutton dressed as lamb'. All women are seen as 'the competition' for male attention, which she is sure she's still attracting like wasps to jam...

And people were either 'too common' or 'too posh, they'll look down on us' so we weren't really supposed to have any friends...

What a way to live your life, eh?

Oh I've just remembered that my mum wouldn't shop at Tesco because it was 'common'! 'Being common' was one of her biggest insults, although I don't remember her ever levelling that one at me (she would never have 'let' me be common. I had to lose any trace of a regional accent that I picked up at school in case people thought me common).

Christ! My mum was just the same!!!!
Alot of people were 'common'.
When I was a little child and I repeated her I got told off even though she parroted it every fucking day. Fucking stupid.

Things that were common: eating in the street, Tesco and Asda, ITV, red shoes, patent shoes, sitting on the top of the bus, using the phone after 9pm (obviously no one used it before 6pm either, we weren't animals), seeing friends on Sundays, talking about money or how much things cost, putting sugar on cereal...

I think most of it was snobbery but there was also a massive amount of trying to control us as well.

Eating in the street is bad manners. I'm surprised people think it isn't.

My (good) DM was always concerned that we possessed 'markers' to show we were 'of good stock' (read: not working class). I remember on holiday crying from being sunburnt and her saying "no pain no gain". I realized in later life the "gain" was to get a tan to show people we had been abroad. Like another poster, she used to tell teachers about enriching activities she did with us and books that we read, which was totally fabricated! She was always very pass remarkable about what women wore or if they were overweight. A distant family member shared a photo on facebook recently of her wedding, and her bridesmaid (who was her best friend) is very overweight. DM immediately made a horrified face, imagine an overweight woman having the nerve to get dressed up and pose for photos! She then matter of factly said this is a tactic brides use to make sure that all eyes are on them, and the bridal party won't outshine her

Nope my mum want like this at all! In fact she was very much teaching us to be ourselves and not to care what we looked like etc maybe too far the other way…@TheLightSideOfTheMoon weirdly though my Mum also against Enid Blyton, and also Rold Dahl…apart from she didn’t lie about it there really were no books by those authors! I enjoyed plenty of other books as my parents were very into reading. Even now as an adult I don’t love Roald Dahl for my own kids and think his stories are a bit nasty. Enid Blyton though I do feel very deprived haha

Mine likes to look me up and down and tell me how tall and strong I am, in a way that makes it clear that she means I’m a gallumping heffalump. I’m 5’5” with good posture because I don’t hate myself or apologise for my existence (despite her best efforts). Her issue, not mine.

Yes I got comments like “you’ve got piano fingers- for lifting them, not playing”

being athletic and strong was bad. Slim and pretty and feminine was good.

unfortunately my older sister was tall and thin. Which obviously was a greater achievement than my county swimming medals and better academic grades.

Also if I didn't want to do things I was lazy and mean. It gave me a people pleasing way about me where I'd go to the ends of the earth for people who wouldn't give a shit about me

And if we were ill we had to go to school or work. We'd literally be dying but have to go in.

Oh god, my mother literally tried everything to make my poker straight hair curl!! She got her curly DDs after me, and 2 curly GC (not my kids needless to say!)