When did who goes in and what comes out of famous
fannies become a ‘C’ list celebrity fashion frenzy?
There’s only one thing worse than Baby News and
that’s Celebrity Baby News. Surely the fact that reproduction is done by lots
of people all the time means it’s not NEWS.
Baby NEWS worth reading is rare and would be - for example - the 4 month old baby pulled alive and well from the Nepal earthquake after 22 hours under rubble.
You notice it’s never ‘News of my idyllic teenager’.
‘My 14 year old (who either doesn’t wash or spends 4 hours at a time in the
bathroom) is sooooo adorable’.
And any mother of a teen hoping to bask in the glow
of wow comments about her ‘bikini body’ will be pretty sharply brought down to
earth. If the hormonal offspring catches sight of bulges through a bathroom
door not properly shut - god help you. Rebuild your self esteem after she’s
sneered with contempt at your latest outfit which, judging from her expression,
you may as well have cobbled together out of old bits of rope, cat sick and fag
ends.
I know the royal bump is making folk crazier than
ever BUT -as I was atrophying in a supermarket queue recently – there seemed to
be nothing on the cover of the glossies other than gurning, over-made-up women
claiming they desperately want babies – are worried about their figures /
relationships (not sure what was most important) or have just delivered and are
in heaven and full make-up. Or they had babies last week and have a fitness
regime to tell you about. No haemorrhoids, no stitches – no cracked nipples?
But none of them say they want CHILDREN and
especially not teenagers. Don’t they realise these critters are going to GROW?
It’s become another albatross round women’s necks –
you have to be magazine gorgeous even during and immediately after pregnancy.Babies have long been fashion accessories but now it
seems that women’s fertility and reproduction are overtly part of the whole
ghastly circus.
Lying awake on a bottom bunk having cracked my head
again getting into the unfamiliar bed, I’ve time to think about this. Above me
is my 14 yr old (we are temporary roommates while the last in a litany of DIY
horrors is completed on my flat).
Apart from feeling she is entitled to pass any
opinion on my person at any time - physical appearance, dress sense, inability
to appreciate the right kind of music – she also ricochets from high moods to
low. This means that glowering murderously under her fringe (a la Manga chic)
can suddenly be replaced by hurling herself at me for hugs and kisses and
climbing on top of me on the sofa. She forgets she is taller than me and full
of bones... The result is that as well as being verbally mangled I am often
bruised and mauled.
She is absolutely wonderful, (I think this a lot
when she is at school) but I couldn’t imagine how this would play out on the
cover of a magazine. I would most likely be captured bleary, dishevelled and
possibly weary and wary. She would be sneering or smirking or making a gesture
to camera that would be far from OK.
Never having been a teenager, I was pretty floored
by my first daughter’s teen escapades but managed the second without too much
collateral damage. Third time round I can appreciate that - if I was not the
mother – the roller coaster that is TEEN is kinda crazy and scary but cool and
amazing as you watch the human metamorphosis happen right before your eyes. And
teens are certainly more interesting
than the poor unfortunates in designer dungarees absorbing the neediness and frenetic,
desperate desire for attention of the latest celebrity breeders.
Couldn’t these folk go back to buying ridiculous handbags and
silly cars?