Mothers Be Good to Your Daughters

I made a trip to Walgreens today to grab a couple items in the beauty department. I made my way to the end of the aisle past a mother with her two teenage daughters. This mother seemed to be in a hurry and had brought her daughters there to pick up a couple makeup items.

The younger of the two girls was looking at eye shadow when her mom blurts out aggressively and loud enough for the whole store to hear, “why do you need more shadow, you already have some!” The girl quietly replied that the remainder of her shadow had broken up and was no longer usable. The mother then reprimanded her daughter for not being more careful with her makeup asking why she deserved more when she couldn’t take care of what she had. The girl tried to explain that she used most of it and it was just a small amount that had broken up.

The mother then exclaimed, rather loudly, that she didn’t enjoy the color the girl had picked out. “That color is too ugly and will wash you out.” The girl said that she just wanted to try it and see for herself how it would turn out. The mother went on and on about how ugly it was going to make her and wondered why her daughter wanted to look ugly.

The mother than grabbed the girl’s shirt which had a stain on it and lifted it up. She started yelling at her daughter, asking why her shirt was dirty. The girl said that since they left in a hurry, she grabbed the first thing she saw and promised that she’d wash it when she got home. The mother then started muttering about her daughter’s trashiness.

This mother then walked over to her other daughter who was looking at lip liners. The mother came over and asked “why do you need lip liner, you already have lip liner!” The girl, seeming embarrassed at how loud her mother was, told her mother that she only had a little bit left. The mother then berated her daughter for picking out such a dark color.

She asked why her daughters continued to make themselves look “ugly” and said that if she picked this lip liner, she’d look like a “whore.” She asked why she didn’t just choose the same one she always gets and the girl explained that she wanted to try something new. The mother then told her that if she wanted to buy that lip liner, she’d have to buy it herself. The girl agreed to these terms and tried to move on, only to be harassed by her mother again saying, “I don’t want you to spend your money on this sh*t.”

The girl then wondered if the store had more liner options and thought of asking the nearest worker if she had any more in the back. The mother seemed annoyed at this and said that if it wasn’t on the shelf, then it wouldn’t be in the back. She told her daughter not to waste the worker’s time and kept shoving other colors at her daughter telling her to choose them instead.

Finally, a worker came over and asked if she could help. The girl asked her if she had any more liners in the back, to which her mother got extremely angry, yelling at her for wasting the woman’s time. The worker tried to explain that it wasn’t a problem and that she could go check in the back. The mother then said, “She doesn’t have more in the back, she’s just trying to be nice.” Flustered, the worker then said, “some girls came in earlier and bought a bunch, I might have some.” She walked away towards the back. The mother then kept insisting that she wasn’t going to have any and she knew how inventory worked.

The worker came back with two or three liners, seeming happy to prove the mother wrong. She gave them to the girl and the mother exclaimed, “See, she only had a few, I told you she wouldn’t have a lot in the back.”

I was getting angry and trying my hardest not to say anything. I knew it would only make things worse for the girls and I didn’t want to get in the middle of this woman’s projected insecurities. I made my way toward the other end of the aisle. As I was passing them, the mother aggressively grabbed her daughter and yanked her towards the wall, yelling at her for getting in my way. I kept saying over and over, “I’m totally fine, she’s not in my way.” But she continued to yell at her daughter for having bad manners.

She kept scoffing at her daughters for various things and would occasionally look over at me, rolling her eyes, as if hoping I would agree with her or commend her for being so patient with her awful daughters.

I looked at these two girls. They obviously didn’t have a lot of money and their clothes looked second hand. However, they were very beautiful. Their makeup was minimal. I imagined some of the other girls their age whom I've seen who could use some guidance when picking out makeup, but these two girls looked like regular teenage girls and far from anything that resembled a “whore.”

These two girls were just children. They weren’t trashy or bad-mannered. I remember being that age and not knowing what I was doing when it came to makeup, and every girl knows that it’s a process of trial and error. Being a teenager was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through. I know what it’s like to be told and to feel that you’re ugly, fat, stupid, or a whore. There’s really nothing worse you could say to a girl.

I wanted to hug them and tell them that it didn’t always have to be like this, one day they can leave and choose who they want to be or whom they want to associate with. They can find friends who make them feel better about themselves. However, from personal experience, when you’re told so many times that you’re ugly, you believe that you’re ugly. If you’re continually told that you’re a whore, you believe that you’re a whore.

I am familiar with women and men like this mother. They are insecure, miserable beings who feel the need to project their misery and insecurities on to others. If they can’t be happy, no one can. She tears them down so they may always be at her level. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, she is pushing her daughters away, they will grow up to resent her and have so many needless trials because of their insecurities. They might even pass it on to their own children, because that’s all they know.

I pray and hope that they will feel God’s love in some way; that they can find their worth. I wonder of course if there was anything I could have done. If it was physical abuse, it would have been different. I would have stepped in there and protected them, but as many people don’t realize, verbal abuse is often times worse than physical, and it’s a lot harder to prevent or defend.

Children are so fragile and precious and deserve love more than anything else. They didn’t choose to be in your family or as part of your lifestyle and contrary to some belief, they are not possessions. Remember that the actions of one person can inflict pain and abuse on generations.