JULY 26 — I passed on the Barbenheimer phenomenon and decided, instead, to watch Barbie twice.
Seeing Margot Robbie’s Barbie being near-catatonic as she had an existential crisis was both funny and far too relatable.
What I wasn’t prepared for was her crying and declaring she just wasn’t pretty anymore.
I thought of all the careless comments by former partners, remarking on things as innocuous as my plucking my eyebrows or how my skirts made my hips look too wide, or that I should do exercises to make my saggy bust perkier.
Being in my 40s now makes me understand that the correct reaction to those unasked for critiques was “F-k off”.
Sometimes I look at old pictures and wish I could hug and reassure my younger self who was so convinced that she was unattractive and overweight, spending too much on diets and beauty products, when she should have spent her time and money on better things and even better people.
Understanding all this now also makes it easier for me to understand my mother, who probably also had to deal with her own physical hangups and societal pressures.
I never imagined going to the movies would make me miss my mother.
That happened not once but a few times as I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once and most recently, Barbie.
Both films depicted mother-daughter relationships, their challenges and most importantly how they can evolve.
My mother is well and just a plane ride away in case you’re wondering but the kind of ache I had watching the films is perhaps the kind only eldest daughters can relate to.
She taught me compassion and curiosity but she also imparted self-consciousness.
I remember looking in the mirror to fix my constantly messy hair and my mother passed by, remarking I could get “them” fixed when I got older.
It took me a little while to understand she meant my ears — slightly large, with elongated lobes but I had never bothered much about how they looked until my mother told me they were “fixable”.
Now that I am much older I realise that my mother was just projecting her own complex about her ears onto me, and I wondered if it was her own mother, or if it was someone else who made her feel inadequate for something she was born with.
Self-help books, life coaches, life hacks — I used to also be an acolyte at the altar of self-improvement until I realised how harmful was this notion of trying to always be the best you can be.
To be enough, to feel good enough is such a human desire and at the heart of so much of our motivations.
To be good enough to get into the best school, to be attractive enough to get a partner, to be enough, to do enough — and yet it seems that it is never enough to the point it becomes this constant lifelong obsession.
I no longer believe in the neverending push to what I see as the abstract notion of excellence.
There are too many people I know who live lives tormented by anxiety and various insecurities when what they really needed was to be able to accept that they were enough.
I realise as I get older that most people just need to hear that they deserve decency, basic respect and kindness just for being who they are.
Like I wouldn’t have wished for a better mother, or that she was a different person — it is enough for me that she is my mother. I only wish that life had been kinder to her as a child, as I wish I had been kinder to my younger self as a woman.
In a world as fractured as it is now, I think the best gift we can give ourselves and each other is being able to accept that we really are just that — enough.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
