Please be the self I have chosen for you
by Kate Zimmerman for the North Shore News
PETUNIA has won a celebrity lookalike contest. And while it’s always good when one’s child achieves her or his goal, it would be much preferable if the goal were among those one had set oneself. I think we parents can agree that the “perfect” child sticks to the path that we have chosen and has no desire to deviate.
Unquestioning obedience -- that’s what we’re after. That’s the ticket right until they’re 21, at which time they are supposed to turn into rugged individualists, except concerning anything their parents think, say or do. We didn’t get into parenthood to be challenged or rebelled against, God knows. Let them be rugged individualists at work, or with their mates, or while walking the dog. The rest of the time we parents are here to boss and be obeyed.
Thus, Petunia got a less than joyful response from us when she learned she’d won the doppelganger competition. Our response was muted. Perhaps this was unkind. In my own defense, I’d be more pleased to find out that she had been selected the kid most likely to grow up to be Madame Curie. It would delight me to learn that her spiritual resemblance to Joan of Arc had won her a year’s supply of burlap tunics. Alternatively, I’d applaud if her keen imagination pegged her as the “cyberspace Anne of Green Gables.”
I wouldn’t even mind – too much -- if the Young Liberals of Canada pronounced her the next Sheila Copps. Copps has the courage of her convictions if, at the moment, not much else.
I’m aware that we are supposed to commend our children on almost everything they do. I’m sure that somewhere, there’s a set of parents who will boast in their Christmas card this year that their son is the world champion at Rock, Paper, Scissors. I certainly have boasts to make about Petunia, who is smart, funny, generous and athletic. But my holiday bragging won’t include the fact that she was singled out for her resemblance to a singer whose very image strikes terror into the hearts of parents everywhere. (No, it’s not Michael Jackson. A female. A real female. Yes, that’s the one.)
I’m happy that Petunia is happy, but I’m not happy that she wants to look like a young woman who has based her entire musical career on the image of the precocious cheerleader and songs like I’m a Slave for You and Outrageous. (A strumpet, in the parlance of my own day -- or maybe it was Shakespeare’s day. I always get those two confused.)
Petunia doesn’t care what I think, however. Like teenagers since time immemorial, she admires who she admires, rather than those examples I hold up in a hopeful way. “Ah, that Johnny Appleseed. What a guy,” I muse over the entry about him in an open encyclopedia, munching on a Golden Delicious and furtively glancing at Petunia in hopes that she is listening.
Or, poring over the newspaper I might exclaim, “Look at this art prodigy! She’s four years old and already her paintings are selling for $45,000 apiece!” Then I add, in that subtle way I have, “That sure would buy a lot of T.N.A. hoodies.”
I have also tried mentioning the daughter of a friend who is studying at a French school in Calgary. “I don’t know what she thought of The Outsiders,” I say, not having been asked. “I think she prefers the works of Voltaire, Moliere and the Charlotte Bronte novels she reads during her two hours of homework every day.”
Oh, dear. It’s so difficult to find common ground with a teenager. The things for which you praise them (“Nice job on the vacuuming!”) are not the things they value about themselves, and the things for which you criticize them are not things they care about in the least. Likewise, the things for which teenagers value their parents (money, rides to malls) are not the things for which parents wish to be treasured. We’d like to be assessed on the basis of our pancake-making abilities, funky taste in shoes, and, occasionally, our impeccable moral code. They’d like to be assessed on the basis of … well, actually, they’d rather not be assessed. They’d rather just be.
Is it possible to get it right? If so, please don’t write in. I’m way too far gone. You will only wind up annoying me with your tales of your goody two-shoes kid and his or her devotion to warbling wholesome show tunes to appreciative shut-ins and whipping up free tofu shakes for wayward vegans.
Rather than running contests for teenagers encouraging them to look like latter-day Lolitas, it might be helpful for stores to run lookalike contests for parents. Of course, the obvious person we would try to imitate would be the figure in Edward Munch’s painting The Scream, for which I would recommend that the contest be held as close to the wondrous calm of Christmas as possible.
Other characters I would expect to resemble closely are: 1) the screeching mother on TV’s Malcolm in the Middle; 2) Whistler’s Mother, grimly rocking and watching TV until her kid finally gets home, at which time she will unleash a deluge of criticism; 3) the ultimate cynic, Olympia Dukakis playing Cher’s mother in the movie Moonstruck; 4) Lady Macbeth, made only slightly less cuddly by being the parent of quintuplets; 5) Barbara Bush in dreadlocks.
I don’t think it would be a stretch for me to take home first place in any of these contests. However, I also don’t think either of my children would boast about it if I did. I am not supposed to resemble anyone except “Mom.” Stanley, too, can drop his effort to be the spitting image of Homer Simpson any time.
I remember a friend whose young children would object strenuously whenever she dared to wear a skirt. That was not the mother they knew, who usually wore chinos and fleeces; therefore, her free will would not be tolerated. What kids don’t understand is that we feel just that way about them. We like them to be themselves -- at least, the selves we tell them to be.
Writing > Humour
