- Thu Mar 10, 2016 2:54 pm
#449204
For me, there's all that plus something else. The sense that she would prefer the image of an ideal, successful, happy family to an actual one.
She puts her kid through public school in order for her to have an experience her parents would have died for. But as we read on and between the lines, we realise the kid hated it, couldn't relate to the rich kids (this is no local academically successful independent place, but somewhere princess Anne went), and the parents practically bankrupted themselves for it. In the end the kid was happier at the local comp, where her siblings had gone. But that wouldn't have done. There's no money in "My family all get along really well, live comfortably but within our means, and communicate happily with each other". There is though in "I want everything to look perfect so our neighbours are green with envy, but it's so goddamn hard and nobody appreciates this but me".
It's like looking at two families. One of them's scruffy, the kids have hand me down clothes and scabby knees. The other are all rictus grins, carefully ironed clothes and "Don't do that Timothy, it's not nice". Which family is happier? Which one is the less dysfunctional? Which one is odds-on the more loving and supportive?
Sibary and the Mail would probably go with the opposite of what you and I think. But they insist on peddling the message that the idealised, unattainable mannequin family is better than the warts and all organic variety.
She puts her kid through public school in order for her to have an experience her parents would have died for. But as we read on and between the lines, we realise the kid hated it, couldn't relate to the rich kids (this is no local academically successful independent place, but somewhere princess Anne went), and the parents practically bankrupted themselves for it. In the end the kid was happier at the local comp, where her siblings had gone. But that wouldn't have done. There's no money in "My family all get along really well, live comfortably but within our means, and communicate happily with each other". There is though in "I want everything to look perfect so our neighbours are green with envy, but it's so goddamn hard and nobody appreciates this but me".
It's like looking at two families. One of them's scruffy, the kids have hand me down clothes and scabby knees. The other are all rictus grins, carefully ironed clothes and "Don't do that Timothy, it's not nice". Which family is happier? Which one is the less dysfunctional? Which one is odds-on the more loving and supportive?
Sibary and the Mail would probably go with the opposite of what you and I think. But they insist on peddling the message that the idealised, unattainable mannequin family is better than the warts and all organic variety.
"There ain't nothing you fear more than a bad headline, is there? You'd rather live in shit than let the world see you work a shovel."