Whose child is that?

My mother seemed to have rogered well into my head the matter of personal hygiene simply by saying "Are you going to go to the shops like that? People are going to look at you and wonder 'Whose child is that? Does her mother not look after her?'". Even though I'm in my 20s now. Like she had seemed to believe, no matter how old or where in the world I am, I will always be that link to her. Because really, people can't think of anything better to say when they see a scuzzy-looking woman running to the shops to get milk in the morning. It is what my mother thinks of the world and the world is a superficial place. I had a mate back in Polytechnic whose mother would moan when she stumbled in at 5 in the morning wearing a vest top, jeans and trainers. She moaned because, looking at the drunken state of her daughter, she knew the daughter had gone to a club to get properly hammered. She moaned because her daughter had dared gone into a club dressed like that. It made me feel better that I was not the only spawn of 80s mothers who had to grow up with such standards. This was the generation who would not dare leave the flat, even if just to open the mailbox, without a slick of lipstick, eyeliner, deodorant, a brush through the eternally-teased hair and a bra. It was alright for us then, being only teenagers, to go get the mail without a slick of lipstick or eyeliner because we are still babies and Don't Fuck Up Your Baby Skin, but we still have to put on bras to Protect Our Modesty and most of all to Not Look Like Prostitutes. I was not allowed to put on lipstick till I was 16 but by 14 I was quite familiar with how prostitutes dressed like. Just in case one day I should choose to go down that career path. It is no surprise I still reel back in horror when faced with a woman sans bra. I hear that child-like voice in my head asking, 'A prostitute?'. Damn you, Mother.

Maybe my mother was a Pageant Mom. Fuck knows. Being the fat child I was, and still am, I was forever being told to Hide The Fats. I get pinched when I slouched because then the rolls of fat around my belly would rush out like a broken dam with a whoosh and land on my lap. I got pinched when I sulk because sulking showcased my many chins. By the time I was 16, I was forced into a corset. She hadn't quite gotten over the fact that I was just a fat, fat goth-wannabe and I was glad to be fat because it gave me plenty of ammunition to pseudo-slash my wrists and wished to be dead or skinny. But that didn't stop her from trying to morph me into a voluptous woman. Or something. At 16, I was forced into the death-grip of the corsets and my fucking tits was so high up I could hold a blooming wok on top on them. Really, she was shoving me out into the world to be mass-raped by hormonal men. Of course, with the corset being worn, all attempts to slouch went to hell. And breathing too. Let's just say I didn't breathe properly until I was 21. No wonder I had so many trips to the A & E. It wasn't my asthma. It was my fucking corset. Don't gas me. Gas my Mother. She is off her fucking head. Somebody roll her a spliff so that I can relax.

I am still as massive a brick shit-house. But thanks to my mother and the many evil corsets, since they kept fucking snapping under the sheer enormity that was me, I have a waist. That was what she had always said to me. If you want to be fat, then at least have a waist. As though when I was 4, I had wanted to be Fat when the rest of my school mates wanted to be a Postman, Policewoman, Fireman. Stop feeding me all the food and stop scaring me about Bosnian children starving when I couldn't finish my dinner then!

Fucking hell.

So now, really, you'd understand when I have a go at Jaz going down to TESCOs looking like a blooming caveman.




People are going to wonder 'Whose man is that? Does his partner not look after him?'.