How To Manage Your Mother by Alyce Faye Cleese

Author:Alyce Faye Cleese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyscraper Publications
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

When Our Mother Respects Us as Adults

Most of us expect our mother to be conservative in matters surrounding the body and sexuality. Certainly Marilyn Cole did; her mother was quite old-fashioned. Marilyn lived with her parents and two sisters in a small house, but, she said, “Amazingly enough we did not see each other naked. We were all very modest about our bodies.”

Marilyn thought this might be a problem when she got a modelling assignment. “I left home, and I’d only been in London two weeks when I was invited to model for Playboy in Chicago. I thought I’d better tell my parents. I said to my mother, ‘I’m going to pose for this magazine called Playboy, Mom.’ She said, ‘It’s one of those magazines, isn’t it?’ expressing concern and disapproval. I replied, ‘Yes, it is. But don’t worry, they drape you in things.’ So she said, ‘Er, okay.’ But then the magazine decided to make me the centrefold, totally naked. They gave me a little Polaroid picture from the shoot to take back with me, and when I went home I thought, ‘I’ll have to show them the photo.’ When I showed it to them, Mom totally ignored the fact that I was stark naked, and said, ‘Ooh, doesn’t your hair look nice!’ We never discussed it any further. That’s how we got over it.”

Her parents came not only to accept it, but even to be proud. “Playboy stuff, at that time, was big news. And they were photographed in the Daily Telegraph supplement. There they were, my mom and dad on their little sofa, looking at my centrefold, holding it up. The press wanted a story of a disapproving mum, but they didn’t get it!”

This story is of a mother who has accepted her daughter as an adult in her own right. Clearly she did not really approve of Marilyn being photographed for Playboy, but she did not try to impose her views – and she went further than turning a blind eye in that she publicly acknowledged what her daughter was doing. Perhaps when a mother can allow her adult child the freedom to make her own decisions, it also enables her to suspend her previous inhibitions. Marilyn was successful on her own terms, her mother felt able to go with it, and wholeheartedly enjoy her daughter’s success.

Such acceptance would probably not have extended as far as Marilyn’s grandmother, though. “Mom’s mom, at the time, was in her eighties, and she used to go to church twice on a Sunday. Between services she would come and have Sunday lunch at Mom’s house. I happened to be at home one weekend, and when she saw me she said, ‘Mrs. So-and-so at church told me you’re doin’ trapeze work in London.’ We stared at Gran and we thought, ‘What’s she talking about?’ Then we realized: someone had said ‘striptease’! I said, ‘Gran, I swear to you, I am not doing trapeze work in London.’ And we left it at that.

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