My mother hated Motherland, storming out after five minutes, saying Julia’s frantic school drop-off was too much like real life. She’d have loathed Amanda, the self-styled ‘alpha mum’. But I loved it – and was happy with the spin-off Amandaland, where Dame Joanna Lumley plays Amanda’s mother with gleeful froideur.
When interviewed alongside her screen daughter, Lucy Punch, Lumley commented that one of the reasons for their characters’ taut relationship is how ageing women are resentful of their pretty daughters. Maternal envy, being rather destructive for all concerned, has provoked much debate in the papers (and no doubt consternation at dinner parties across Middle England). In the Daily Telegraph, Anna Pasternak reluctantly concurred, admitting to the ‘pesky twinges of covetousness that pluck and plague’ her now that her ‘beguiling’ daughter has turned 21. Meanwhile, in the Times, Daisy Goodwin also recognises this tension; her narcissistic mother hated ageing and evidently resented her youthful daughter.
I’m mystified by this. Maybe, in my mid-forties, I’m not quite old enough to lament the cruellest ravages of ageing (but, crikey, first thing in the morning I’ve a fairly good idea of what lies in store). I’m absolutely thrilled that my daughters are beautiful. I feel an undoubted swelling of pride that these specimens of aesthetic perfection could somehow be mine. (Though I am alarmed when middle-aged men fail to register my existence because they’re subtly gawping at my 17-year-old daughter.) I am, of course, a bit biased, and youth, of course, tends to confer dewy skin, clear eyes and a charming lack of wizened cynicism on all teenagers, which certainly enhances their looks. But given the genetic pool from which my daughters are drawn, Christ, they’ve certainly beaten the aesthetic odds, and it would be churlish not to appreciate that.
But my joy in my gorgeous girls has certain reservations. I’m only partly delighted about my daughters being better looking than I am – or indeed than I’ve ever been. Not because I’m envious, but because I fear that beautiful iterations of either sex seem inclined to rest on this singular laurel, and it’s ultimately a boring laurel. Someone’s appearance really ought to be the least interesting thing about them, and if it’s not, then they’re in trouble – at least in the long term.
Besides, I’ve developed a sort of macabre fascination with my own ageing features. I’ve been out on a few occasions recently with some of my female friends and, mindful that this piece was in the offing, I reflected how they all look far more interesting these days with a few crow’s feet (even those who were once complete stunners), buoyed by a greater sense of contentment now they’re relieved of the pressure of feeling they’re being judged constantly.
This isn’t to suggest that I don’t give a damn – I do; my paltry salary seems to be pretty evenly carved up between Space NK and having my roots done every fortnight. If I could afford a little light blepharoplasty to correct my slightly sagging right upper eyelid, while I hope I’d resist, this piece might be somewhat compromised in its righteous integrity. And as the hands of time smack me around a bit more, I may have the urge, if not the financial reserves, to go full Jocelyn Wildenstein. While that would be rather horrifying, it might be less sad and damaging than being envious of one’s daughters.
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