What She Wore

The definition of misery for Woman is to become her Mother. I was taught this young, as we all were; reinforced by a series of canned, studio audience laugh tracks as the main character moans some trite joke about sounding like her mother. To become your Mother is the ultimate joke. It is regression.

I went shopping with my mother recently, pointing to a shirt, “that’s cute,” I say. Though I am immediately shut down by my mother’s reply: “all I see is Granny in that shirt.” That’s it. It’s been decided. She will not try on the shirt. We won’t think of the gingham button-down again. 

In many ways, it seems obvious that we don’t want to be like our mothers, that we wish to be more fashionable, easier-going, and cooler. We want to be the new and improved version. But it’s more than that, it is that we are grasping desperately for a semblance of control, of relevance. Women are so often valorized for their femininity as though their appeal to the male gaze is their value to society. And the widely held conception surrounding age is that it requires a loss of attractiveness, of beauty, and in turn, to lose your value to society. 

Child looks to Mother less – Dad knows how to file the taxes and how to fix the car and Dad has read the news recently. Mother is an afterthought. 

We resist becoming our mother because we resist her fate. Though in this resistance, we perpetuate this stigma of the passè, irrelevant Mother. Daughters solidify our own fate through this resistance, making Mother a looming and dreadful fate. 

What if becoming your mother was not a horrifying possibility and rather something to be celebrated and embraced? I am not thinking specifically of the motherhood aspect of becoming your own mother, but rather that we look to the traits that make our Mother human, lovable, and beautiful, even when the world has cast her out of the realm of desirability. 

. . .

Recently, my good friend’s grandmother passed away. Her Nonna wore colorful scarves of all different patterns, colors, and materials daily. At her memorial service, her family laid out many of her scarves for each guest to take and wear, in her honor. In this beautiful and colorful act, her family saw the humanity and the desirability of this woman, spreading her love through a physical representation of her. These scarves, these material objects, carry a bit of her, of how she had a unique and individual fashion until her last days. 

When my friend came back from the service, she showed me the bracelets, earrings, and necklaces she chose from her grandmother’s closet. She displayed the beautiful silver jewelry alongside the gold pieces she has collected independently on her nightstand. They have different tastes, different life experiences, and different paths, she does not know if she will ever be a mother, but she carries a bit of her matrilineal line with her. 

I have bits and pieces of my mother with me, though I style them differently. I love to raid her closet when I visit. Recently, we went out to dinner for her birthday and I wore her sweater, but with my platform doc martens that she hates. When I descended the stairs of my childhood home in my outfit, I braced myself for a poor reaction, but was surprised by the “Cute!” she greeted me with. 

These moments of sharing clothes or shoes are not unique, I think everyone with a mother figure has had them, good and bad. But clothes really connect us, they show our growth into adulthood. As children, we would beg to play dress-up. Mother’s closet was the ultimate playpen. We could not wait until we had a closet stuffed with our own physical representation of desirability and personal style. When did we come to resist fitting into Mother’s closet? Was it when we, too, realized she was not desirable, not nearly as desirable as we are? Why? Why not see her as the beautiful woman she is, independent of motherhood or sexuality or attractiveness? She is a person. She has her own taste and clothing and jewelry. She lived before you did. She likely also simultaneously resisted and admired her mother. 

Lately, I have gotten into these moods and I look in the mirror and I see my mother. I do not find the face that looks back at me to be miserable.

Strike Out,

Written by: Jane Dodge

Edited by: Hanna Bradford

Graphic by: Gus Gaston