i need some advice to appraoch mother

[nailpolish]

mum is 59
she has lovely blondey ginger hair, its been getting lighter as she gets older (naturally)
when she was a teen/early 20s it was jackie bird style ginger (but hse loved it and suited it)

anyway

she came to visit at the weekend

she has had it DYED almost blood/pillarbox red, grown it into a bob (chinlength) and bought a whole new palette of make up

i almost died

she looks awful

she is bit overweight, has no chin and the bob looks wrong. the colour drains it all out of her face and she is wearing strong colour lipstick which is wrong too. she is v pale with v v v v pale blue eyes

imo hair should get lighter as you get older - i really liked her blondey hair and curls

she also has a bald path on her crown (slightly bigger than a 50p piece - its from stress her dr says and im not surprised tbh) and now her hair is dark the patch is very noticable

i wan to tell her but i know she will get upset

could you drop into the conversation how you read an article on how, as people get older, they lose pigmentation in their skin and hair, so people who dye their hair a darker shade than their natural color should start to go lighter as they get older? Is she trying to give herself a wee boost and trying to look younger by doing this and in the process made herself look older?

God yes. I would leave it for the moment. With any luck she'll look in the mirror in a month or so and think "WTF?!"

there was marvellous woman on how to look good naked who was persuaded to chop off long blonde extensions and go back to her natural colour (after 20 years or so) and she looked AMAZING. maybe you could watch a re-run with her...

yes say that about the lighter colour and her eyes

and take her to a really good hairdressers and treat her i would like that

tho i might try and say no i don't feel like it first

tellusmater you made me lol

i can just imagine my mu m doing that

poor mum though
i think she is feeling a bit lost. she is the youngest but feels like she has lots of responsibility

My mother used to dye her hair herself and it often had a greenish tinge .

I went on about it for years until she finally resigned herself to getting it professionally coloured (she didn't want to spend the money even though it was totally marginal to my parents' regular expenditure). She is much happier now that she looks better.

maybe take well dodgy photo (from underneath, with all chins in the way) and print it off for her - saying Ooooh you look luverly

Message withdrawn

she probably knows it loks awful and is just thinking well i always look awful and will put up with it

take her for a make over

it is only frivolous in one reswpect in the context of the big things

but feeling low and grieving we still need those little things sorting and what you look like is is not even that little a thing

Agree with what goat said.

In the scheme of things......it dont matter.

aw ziippi what you said

"is just thinking well i always look awful and will put up with"

perhaps i'm projecting too much there nailly

i definitely have been through long periods of thinking that about myself

i think actually it is quite hard in that respect having daughters who maybe look mlike you because you are constantly reminded how you were when you were younger

i think it probably does matter but it would be easy for her to feel guilty about it

i look nothing like her

i thin it matter to her a LOT how she looks - if she wasnt bothered i wuldnt be bothering to post all this

im not being shallow - i know it doesnt matter in the grand scheme of things but it matters to mum iyswim

You do know that whatever you say will be wrong, and kept as ammo

I don't think it's shallow at all..I think it's important for her

i thin k i will ask my brother to help

cos fo course whatever her little darling son says must of course be right

Deffo go with the bother thing.... son's can do or say no wrong ever ever

Brother even!!