After all, what was standing in my way? I had a beautiful mother and I would naturally take after her.
Of course, every little girl believes her mother is lovely. But I knew I was right.
Beauty contest: Tanith as a child with her mother Lynne and father Kim, she always felt inferior to her mother's looks
While my mother Lynne was not a supermodel, she could have been. Everywhere she went, glamour and admiration seemed to follow her like a haze.
Hers was not the obvious, chocolate-box kind of prettiness, but something much rarer — a subtle arrangement and refinement of features that make a truly unforgettable face.
Of course, as I have got older I have learned that looks aren’t everything, that their worth is superficial and temporary.
But that’s not the message I grew up with. And after seeing pictures of Tallulah Belle Willis sitting, twin-like, next to her immaculate mother Demi Moore in the front row of a Brazilian fashion show, I doubt it’s the message she is growing up with either.
As a child, Tallulah will have seen the major female role model in her life being tweaked and tucked, and spending huge sums to be rejuvenated — and know that this has been her mother’s passport to fame and wealth.
But, I wonder, as she follows Demi into the limelight has she picked up the idea that beauty is the main measure of a woman’s worth? At the particularly sensitive age of 17, does she fear, as I did, that I would never be beautiful because my mother was always seen as more so?
My own wish to be like my mother was exaggerated by the fact that my father, Kim, defined all women by their appearance. In the same way as bloggers and commentators rate Demi’s appearance, he rated women with a cold, dispassionate judgment like a vet inspecting heifers at a country show.
Growing up: Tanith eventually became more secure about her appearance and was able to talk to her mother about it
A talented photographer, he constantly tried to capture my mother’s beauty on camera. Even a trip to the local park would end up looking less like a set of family snaps than a fashion shoot. She wasn’t a model, but she was his muse. He ran an ad agency, so he constantly put her in his commercials.
To my childish eyes, all the adulation my mother got meant I wanted to grow up to be a trophy like her.
But as I reached adolescence and my parents divorced, I realised the beauty I thought was mine by right was not going to be bestowed upon me. To my highly critical 12-year-old eye, my nose had become too broad, my jaw too full and my eyes a few subtle millimetres too close together.
I’d lock myself in the bathroom, rummage through the trays of make-up and even drew her face to try to find the secret of how her features fitted together. But my fevered efforts were always misdirected. However much shading powder I applied, I couldn’t sculpt her delicate features out of my chubby face.
No doubt my inner panic made me appear surly and defensive. Secretly, I wished my mother would give me the magic ingredient to looking as lovely as she did — but I was too proud to ask. She reassured me I looked ‘fine’; I took it to mean ‘average’.
By contrast, her own appearance seemed effortless. She was regularly asked if she was a professional model. Indeed, it would have been easier for me if she had been: the fact she was a mere mortal made her beauty even harder to explain.
The paradox was that at the same time as feeling I could not live up to my mother’s looks, I was also so proud of her.
Like mother, like daughter: Has Tallulah Belle Willis picked up the idea that beauty is the main measure of a woman's worth from her mother Demi Moore, left?
At my school prize-givings, this pride was not about her professional achievements as a high-flying advertising creative director and award-winning copywriter, but came from knowing she was the most striking woman in the room. Half of me almost envied the other girls with their ordinary mumsy mums and nothing to live up to.
I felt I was expected to be beautiful and had failed. It was as though a sparkling possibility had danced in front of my eyes and then been snatched away. I started to realise that having the perfect face was a fluke, not a foregone conclusion.
At university, I would pin on my wall the loveliest picture of my mother I could find, knowing full well it would impress potential boyfriends. I would feel gratified as visitors said: ‘Wow, is that your mum?’ — and then wait for the pause as they registered the contrast between her mannequin perfection and my ordinariness.
In my 20s I did well in my career, becoming a news reporter and then an executive on a national newspaper. But while other women dressed to get ahead in the sexist world of the newsroom, I wore a blue-stocking uniform of long skirts, loafers and buttoned-up Jigsaw jackets.
I defined myself by being different. I dyed my hair a horrible shade of bright red, then jet-black — anything but blonde like my mother.
Then, as I approached my 30s, my features started to fit together. I was diagnosed with a form of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and, on the advice of a dermatologist, I changed my diet. My skin was transformed and the pounds fell away as the effects of the PCOS disappeared.
I started to be complimented on the way I looked. People began to say my mother and I resembled each other.
Life lessons: Tanith does not want her daughter, Lily, growing up thinking beauty is all that matters
It was only when I felt secure in my looks that I was able to raise the subject of how her beauty had overshadowed my growing up. I had my own daughters and didn’t want them to go through the tortures I had.
On a trip to the park with the girls, I asked my mother if she realised how hard I had tried to be pretty as a teenager. I was a sensitive child — she hadn’t wanted to upset me, she replied — but what she said next made me see her with new eyes.
Although her beauty had undoubtedly been a passport to a more glamorous life, she told me she had never felt beautiful. Other people told her she was attractive, but she never felt comfortable enough to enjoy her good fortune. Her natural shyness was often mistaken for haughtiness, and insecure men hated her for it.
She told me that even my father had never once told her she was beautiful; only that she should put on more make-up or that she was losing her looks, even while she was still in her mid-20s. In her ambivalence about beauty, she hadn’t wanted to encourage me to chase it at all costs.
I hope I’ve learned something from trying to measure up. After seeing how my father viewed women, I made sure I married a man who loves and respects his mother, and who has priorities in life other than appearance.
Most important of all, I want my two young daughters not to think, like so many girls, that how they look is the be-all and end-all of who they are. They deserve much more than to be judged on appearance — but on who they are and how they behave. ( dailymail.co.uk )
No comments:
Post a Comment