A new kind of reality show has appeared on the TV milkyway. This time, the basic concept seems to be: kids feeling either awkward or downright embarrassed when they have to walk around in public with their parents. Because the parents dress totally outside the box, or because mostly mommy dearest likes prancing around like a sex kitten.
Now there is something to say about that last category. Having your mom attending a school event dressed in spandex lace-up leggings and high heels, bosom popping out of a glitter top and loaded with more glimmers that a Christmas tree at the Kardashians is certainly not an ideal situation. And yes, don't we all know those ladies who in Dutch are aptly called 'van achter lyceum, van voren museum', which would roughly translate as "high school from behind,retirement home from up front" - wrinkled faces donning skimpy dresses and trying just too hard to botox themselves into this perpetual state of youthful luster, inevitably failing miserably because no matter how good your plastic surgeon did his job on your nose, your boobs, your eyelids - he can never erase the aging of your hands, and in some hilarious cases your neck. Every woman experiences it sooner or later: the old turkey flap that appears out of nowhere and makes it sure for everyone to see you're not a twenty-something anymore. And there's the arms. The chicken filet on the upper arm, bobbing merrily when you lift the arm to wave the kids byebye on their school trip, and the elbows... Quite recently, I discovered a turkey flap on my elbows. So from now on I'll have to stick to 3/4 sleeve shirts to hold up the myth of celebrating my 27th birthday - again...
But back to the TV show. One of them, called 'hotter than my daughter', displays women at various stages of denial of the 'no longer a twenty-something'-thing, but also weird enough women who don't look that bad at all, but get chided by their appalingly conformist, conservative daughters that they shouldn't wear baggy combat pants when they're in their fourties. I vehemently oppose that view. It's the Low Countries on their most narrow when it comes to appearance. Somehow someone appears to have set the rules from 'things not to wear when you're no longer a teen or twen' to 'anything that displays having a taste of your own'. Thus, even the stylish Goth mother gets chided and is transformed into one of a dozen generic 'hip housewives'-styled type, by a guy who looks like he sleeps in a spray-tan cabine. His skin is completely orange. The comments of the public are the obvious 'looks like a witch', 'where did she park her broom?', 'that outfit is soooo outdated'. Yes, but she feels happy wearing it! And worse of it all, one of the women commenting on her style was a blandly dressed, ugly, greasy haired troll that looked like she never bothered to think twice about what she was wearing exept for wheather it would be tumble dry proof. In all the episodes of that show, the mother caved in to her demanding daughter, switching her authentic style for something out of an orange hued stylist's box. And apart from the mum dressed up as sex kitten in skimpy rags, it wasn't necessary an improvement.
Then the other show. Since it was to be presented by a guy called HenkJan Smits who was described by a columnist as 'a babbling guinee pig' and who also served as a judge on talent shows and I consider not a beakon of openmindedness, I held my breath. To my big surprise, he actually handled the case with Omnia's Steven and Jenny with suprising integrity.
Apparently, Steven, singer of pagan folk band Omnia http://www.femuz.nl/omnia-musick-and-poetree/, has two nearly grown up children, the daughter much in line with her daddy's style, the son dressed in a rather casual fashion, but as it turned out, dad and stepmom showing up at school events made the son feel very uncomfortable. Not because the son didn't like their looks, but because he got tired of explaining that his dad was really a great person despite his 'strange' looks, and he got tired of hearing nasty comments being made every time his dad was spotted anywhere. Now let me get one thing straight, I think Steven and Jenny look absolutely fabulous http://www.pbase.com/antony_swiderski/image/116258655/original but as it turned out, the kids at his son's school were full of prejudices.
So the presenter arranged for those kids to attend an Omnia show and have a meet and greet with the band, especially with Steven and Jenny, after the show. So the kids could come to the conclusions that: Steven did not make heavy metal music, he was not a satanist, and he was actually a very kind person who was concerned about mother earth in a very down to earth way, being very aware of the everyday choices he made. Once they had seen them perform and had a chat with them, the same kids who first said they would be so ashamed if Steven and Jenny were their parents now realised they had it all wrong and they actually respected them for their choices.
I guess it won't surprise you that I could appreciate that approach far more than the other one, just doing some mommy-demolition because the daughter is afraid to stand out in a crowd where the mother isn't... Imagine the world without birds of paradise, how dull and bleak it would be!
Good thing I have daughters that only bark and don't give a hoot about what I'm wearing, as long as it can hold dog treats and they can wipe a slobbery mouth on it. I stopped caring about what Joe Public thought of my appearance when I was about 16 and got my first acquaintances with punk, new wave, hippy style. By the time I was in my early twenties I ditched the all in black thing (sooo depressing!) and basically have stuck to a mix and match of whatever appeals to me ever since, and when it happens to be in fashion and I like it, I buy it or wait till sale. I can't even count the times when people were jeering at me or saying things like 'hey, the carnival isn't here yet / is already over don't ya know' (especially here in the South!). My standard reply was that I didn't need some frock with a cross on his chess giving me permission when to dress up how I feel like for just 3 days in a year, which of course worked as a red flag, me on my bike laughing my ass of. Heck, I had a party all year, not just for three days!
Nowadays when at work I only have 3 criteria: it shouldn't show too much cleavage (student boys, puberty, hormones, need I even explain this one?), it should be in one piece(unless the tears are part of the design, and if not I just say they are) and it should be clean (no funny stains). The latter is sometimes a problem since my dear mastin daughter Nancy has by now managed to make funny slobbery stains on virtually every piece in my wardrobe, for which I am seriously considering to resort to some very uncharacteristic measures like wearing 'dog clothes' when going on a walk with the pack.
Oh.My.Dog. I am going to be one of those women in trainers and jackets full of dog slobber, pockets lined with crumbled dog treats, clad in a carpet of dog hair - now let's just hope that no one will catch me in one of those and report me to the fashion police!
No comments:
Post a Comment