To say "mums, get photos of yourself, and you are not just a mum"

[dandelionfluffy]

We are planning my mother's funeral as sadly she died last month after a very short and rapid decline from being a completely independent retired, divorced teacher with a wide circle of friends and interests.
We are looking through her photos and there is a huge gap between when I and my sibling graduated from university to when my oldest DN was born.
She never seems to have had photos taken of herself though she has lots of prints from that decade or so. During that time my sibling and I both lived abroad in two different countries each and she visited us. My and her photos from those trips show landscapes, or me/sibling and our friends.
I'm not that surprised in retrospect because she had a very strong identity as parent and grandparent, but she also did some fairly adventurous independent travel in those years and had a very active social and work/retired life. It's sad to me that either she didn't see that as important or she didn't see photos of her as important.
So, for your DCs sake, take photos and get people to take them of you!

I think your final sentence is pretty ironic. You say ‘You’re not just a mum’, but then urge mothers to have photos taken of themselves ‘for your FC’s sake’!

Surely there’s another way of looking at this. Your mother did lots of independent travel and work, but was more interested in actually living both than in recording evidence that she had, just as she was more interested in taking photographs of you and your siblings for her own purposes. I mean, if she was visiting you overseas, surely you took photos of her?

Most of the photos I have of my mum are ones that I took. I think it’s probably the same for my siblings.

It was also a lot harder to get photos of yourself in the days before phone cameras, when somebody else needed to take them.

Your mother probably was too busy getting on with her life to worry about taking photos. Also she probably (like many people) found pictures of interesting events and places more visually interesting than taking selfies.

I can relate.

I'm on Mumsnet. I'm talking about MY mum. And it's mums who are going to have the idea that they are just mums and grannies.

If my mum was a high flying worker with loads of photos of herself doing work things and then nothing when she retired, I could say "don't just take photos of yourself at work! You are more than that!" but that's not our situation.

We think she always tried to duck out of the photos or take them herself on our cameras, which makes sense. But we aren't exactly going to put lovely scenery in a slideshow at her funeral.

@EmpressaurusKitty she was in loads of photos when we were children or students, always with us. So somebody must have taken them! She wasn't averse to asking someone to take her picture when it was as a mum to children or students.

Maybe she didn't enjoy taking photos of herself? Not everone does.

But if she took them on your cameras, then don’t you have access to them?

As someone who has reached the "children graduated from University" stage, I so wish people would stop taking pictures of me. A combination of difficult childhood food landscape, medication side effects and menopause have made me fat. I look awful in every photograph and it spoils my enjoyment of every single trip or memorable experience.

I will have a lovely day not thinking about it then someone will take photos and show them to me, so every event I'm confronted by my own dreadful appearance when I had spent the day carefully imagining that I looked okay, my clothes suited me and I and was not the fattest person in the room. It has stolen the joy of some really lovely days.

But we have lots from when we were children or students and from when her grandchildren were born.
We would like to remember this large chunk of time when we saw her doing interesting things.

I'm not really understanding the resistance here. We would like to be able to show people her whole life. At her funeral. We think she was more than just a mum and a granny.

The photos where she is not in, she experienced. When you say she travelled and took a lot of landscape photos - I'd be happy with those too looking at what she thought was beautiful enough to photograph and you can experience a bit of what she did. Sorry you lost your mum, OP x

Agreed. I'm not a mother, but there are no photos of me because I hate having my picture taken. When I finally kick the bucket, anyone who chooses to remember me will just have to picture me in their minds eye.....indeed, as people did for centuries!

Sorry OP but from what you say your Mum led an interesting and full life. If she had spent her time taking selfies like a lot of self obsessed boring people she would have not have been the person she was.

Good for her for getting on with her life.

She will always be there in your heart. You don't really need photos to cherish her memory.

@deplorabelle I'm so sorry you feel like that. Your children would like a record of all the things you did without them, or even with them. They will not be thinking how awful you look.
My DM too was sure she was overweight, though she was a healthy weight all her life.
I don't think she had clinical body image issues but the idea that she didn't look good perpetuated her life, and avoiding the photos may have been part of that, but like anything you get worried about but is fairly harmless, avoiding them may have have made her more anxious to avoid them IYSWIM.

Anyway, enough analysing my mum, just so people know someone DOES want to see photos of women when they aren't being mums.

@PurplebudsWhitebuds you haven't read my post have you?
We have lots of photos. She just seems to have thought the only interesting things she did were as a mum or granny.

Yes, she took photos with you. Maybe she liked being on photos with you, or she decided to do it for you.

Of course she was more - she just didn't felt a need to document it, she lived it. Some people are like this and don't live their lives to fit into a slideshow.

Ok maybe I am being unreasonable to want to show a large chunk of my mum's life...
I'm also a bit confused about what would have happened if we hadn't had any DCs. Ours are much younger than my sibling's DCs and likewise there are no photos of my mum with us, only once our own DCs came along.

She did when we were children and students, none after that and none until we each had our own children.

I avoid having my photo taken. I hate how I look in photos - I don’t recognise myself in them. I do know what you mean though op. We should do it so our kids have something to remember us fully.

@dandelionfluffy I do get what you’re saying and I’m very sorry you lost your mum so recently. She sounds fab.

I can only speak personally (although my own mum was like this too) but I actively avoid getting in front of the lens these days — not because I think I’m ‘just a mum’ but because I hate what it shows me! I think there’s something here you’re not quite getting; some older women feel a lot of shame about looking (in their opinion) a bit shit or fat or droopy. Not everyone, of course — but I have a lot of female friends who put their head in their hands when the phone camera comes out, or who put a brave face on it but actually really hate it. The same might be true for older men, I dunno, but I think they don’t pay quite such a high social price for losing their youth. It’s one of the many shit things about women being valued according to how attractive they are perceived to be.

If it wasn’t for my partner being a keen snapper there’d be hardly any photos of me from the last ten years or so. As it is there are quite a few of me looking very dumpy and old in front of various minor landmarks… I guess my kids will thank him when I’m gone, but I secretly loathe all of them. I have to have some headshots taken soon and I’m really fretting about it.

OK, but it’s still all about what you want, and apparently feeling she ‘should have’ taken more photos of herself doing cool stuff so you could put it in a photo montage. She chose not to. Respect that! (And sorry for your loss.💐)

I’m so sorry x

I’m on a family weekend with DH family. The amount of photos taken is doing my head in.

I have never ever thought of myself as just a Mum some women do think of themselves in this light because I guess they really haven’t done much more than that. She may just not have liked her photo being taken, some people are like that.

Doesn’t resonate with me as I’m from a long line of women who in the past ran their own businesses or were in the military amongst other things.

She never seems to have had photos taken of herself

So, for your DCs sake, take photos and get people to take them of you!

Yes i read your post. You are wanting women to take photos of themselves as they go about their lives when they are doing their own thing and not just photos in their role as a mother

I admire your mother for doing things and not just using everything as a photo opportunity to showcase herself as so many other people do. I don't understand why you are being critical of her because she sounds as though hers was a life well lived.

The thing that makes me really sad - and absolutely nobody is acknowledging - is that she DID have photos of herself but ONLY when she had a child or a grandchild with her.
I am sad that she didn't think the rest of her life was worth documenting. Because I think it was.

I agree with you OP. bit confused why posters are being resistant to such a suggestion! However, you can think of the photos she took as seeing it from her eyes.

Yes. That was her choice and it is ok.

Maybe she liked having photos of herseld with you&your chilren as the young ones - because they were photos of you.

And she didn't feel a need to take photos of herself elsewhere. You wish she did, but it means you wish she thought more about her role as a mother and grandmother (so you'd have the photos).

People feel differently about taking photos of themselves, it isn't always about "what was worthy". You said took photos of landscapes - that what she wanted to take home from her trips.

You are grieving and would like to present her life in a powerpoint. She wasn't a powerpoint-able person. Maybe put there the landscapes , that's the world through her eyes.