Eyebrows on Fleek...

 I don't keep up with the kids today and their slang and hip talk...mostly because I don't understand it. That world of shifting language just begins to pass you by at some point. You might hear some of it, but you just let it wash over you and move on. 

But during that shining moment when "Eyebrows on Fleek" was a thing people said I really got it. If my eyebrows look good I feel good. 

Which brings us to mothers and daughters and how much easier it is to manage as adults and yet at the same time it's still complicated. 

Over the past year I've nagged Katie about her eyebrows more than once. And I'm using nagged only because I've done it more than once. I've suggested, recommended, said, that she should get her brows professionally shaped and then follow that in her regular maintenance. I've told her that it will open up her face in ways she will really like. That it will emphasize her eyes and her really gorgeous eyelashes. 

Then a few weeks ago someone else mentioned doing her eyebrows. 

And then another person mentioned it. 

Then she asked in her friend group if eyebrows were just a really big deal to cis women and she got the response that yeah they were. And one of the people in the group said she'd been bullied about her eyebrows her whole life. 

Well wait.

Bully is one of those words that is used totally differently now than it was when I was growing up and I think it's overused now because of that. Generational difference alert.

For me bullying is mean. It comes with a threat. Either of violence or insults or making life miserable. I will cop to nagging but I won't agree that I've bullied. 

But because she mentioned bullying I will try not to talk about it again if I can help myself. Because it doesn't really matter if I feel like I'm bullying her about it, if she does. 

Which is where the doing this from an advanced age helps. 

I think a lot of time the challenges that happen during puberty between the same sex parent child combo is a rejection of the parent to become fully their own individual. Or at least it often feels that way when your child decides to do something completely differently than you would have. We had that during first puberty.  Second puberty I can recognize that just because I would do something differently than she wants to do it that doesn't mean she is rejecting who I am. It's just that my way doesn't work for her.

My way of dressing, my way of doing my hair, my way of doing my makeup, my way of grooming my eyebrows. Those are all my way. I can tell her how I do it. Help her as much as she wants in those areas but she's not necessarily going to have the same taste in clothes that I do. She's not necessarily going to want to do the same grooming rituals that I do. All of that is fine. It's not a rejection of me, it's an embracing of herself.

Which at 53 and 29 is a lot easier to accept and manage without hurt feelings. 

Even though I do think she should at least try the eyebrows...