THE MINI-ME SYNDROME

Michelle Thomason - 29 Oct 14

I admit it. I’m living vicariously through my kids.

This morning I caught a glimpse of my daughter and I together in the mirror as I was putting my make-up on. Some kind folk recently commented I look young for my very-nearly-forty years, but as I chanced on the image of my daughter’s perfect three-year-old beauty contrasted with my crow’s feet and rice-paper complexion, I realised I am getting old.

It didn’t make me jealous, and I’m not some kind of warped maternal manifestation from ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’ but it did galvanize me to make the most of her loveliness. I’m a signed up feminist and resist buying the standard issue pink clothes. I encourage her Iove of all things trains and cars, but that still didn’t put me off wanting to tame the cork screw curls of my little woolly mammoth with a magpie’s array of sparkly clips and hair bands. All that knowing she’s pathologically afraid of a hairbrush.

It didn’t stop there. She would have happily left the house for her brother’s school run in an oversized Thomas the Tank Engine t shirt and pajama bottoms but I felt compelled to wrestle her into a matchy matchy (non pink) stylish denim shirt and hounds tooth shorts ensemble.

To be honest, the outfit would have been something I would have loved to have worn myself had my figure not been addled by two kids, an addiction to sugar and medicinal red wine.

The days of wiling away an afternoon foraging vintage shops or minesweeping TopShop on payday have long since been replaced by the more sadistic experiences of sweaty, over-lit and under-flattering mirrored changing rooms in generic bland department stores, trying to wrestle my post baby flesh into items tailored by a conspiracy of tricky zippers. I eventually end up with something black, long and loose. My whole wardrobe is black, long and loose.

Now, instead, I prefer to pound the aisles of shopping malls and indulge my fashion OCD in browsing online for quirky leopard print Mary Janes or an Aztec patterned tunic – except, what would have once been for me, is now for my three year old daughter who only cares about leopard print on her feet because she can pretend to be, well, a leopard.

Does my daughter feel the same delight at receiving the clothes as I do selecting them? Absolutely not. Of course she doesn’t, this is all about me. She is relatively opinionless about the whole thing but, for me, it’s liberating and it helps me keep in touch with the sense of identity I had before the black, long and loose phase kicked in.

Is it unhealthy? Does it mean that I’m consigning myself to the self-worth scrap heap? No, I don’t think so. My life has changed. Two kids, a full on job and a husband who works long hours mean I just don’t have the time, occasion or money to invest in the preening and procrastinating I used to indulge in on a Saturday afternoon before an evening out. When I do get the opportunity to have an evening out, it’s usually just a marginally more glam version of black, long and loose – but with better accessories. I still adore the in–joke whisper of faux surprise “You look lovely, by the way” my husband utters before we leave the house, but it’s the little gasp of wonderment from my daughter “mummy, you look beau-ti-ful” that floats me out the door. Mind you, I so realise that drag queen make up and an Elsa dress from Asda would still produce the same reaction. In my daughter’s eyes, I’m like Eliza Doolittle arriving at the Embassy Ball every time I come down the stairs before a night out.

My mum did it with me for years. In those days, I couldn’t understand her insistence on not wearing my favourite red sandals with pink tights or our frequent trips to ‘Tracey Sue’ to buy pretty dresses, whilst my school friends were allowed to wear lurid coloured Dash or Pineapple ra ra skirts and legwarmers. I even remember her indignation at my head teacher criticizing me for looking “like a Christmas tree” on a day I went to school with bows on the end of my plaits.

Somehow, as time went on, how I perceived myself got tangled up with the sartorial approval of my mum. This led to a peculiar dichotomy of wanting to please her, yet at the same time, rebel against her expectations of how a teenage girl should dress. Her horror at the burgeoning relationship I was developing with black DM boots was tempered by me pilfering her beautiful old jackets from the 60s. I still hold that affection for DMs but since their fashion resurgence a couple of years ago, I have desisted from buying a pair. Not for the fact I’d look a bit silly in them, not for the fact they’re three times the price they were in the 90s, but purely out of respect for my mum, who died four years ago, and who would just not have approved.

I’m very aware of how I might transfer my relationship with my mum onto my own with my daughter. But it’s far from being a negative thing. My mum never tried to control, she just wanted for me what I want for my daughter – to celebrate her youth and beauty in its purest form. Of course we may have had disagreements about my fashion choices (or lack of them) but some of the strongest and most beautiful memories I have of my mum are our shopping trips together, ebbing and flowing through C&A, Miss Selfridge and Dotty P, pausing for tea and cake at Johann’s before browsing the evening gown rails in Fenwicks’ French, both briefly caught up in the giggly illusion we had the money, occasion and inclination to wear one of the creations.

My mum didn’t need to live her life through me, she had a vitality of spirit of her own. My daughter is bursting with it. I still have that spirit in me but perhaps I just need to disrobe it of the long, black and loose.

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Michelle Thomason

Michelle Thomason is a mother of two and lives in London

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