 I’ve had a lifelong love-hate relationship with a certain, seemingly innocuous word.
"Cute" is today’s universal term for aesthetic admiration, and I think it’s gotten totally out of hand. My shoes are cute. My haircut is cute. My bungalow in the Highlands is cute. I just bought a cute set of dinnerware. But me, ME — a grown-ass woman — I am NOT “a cutie pie,” “cute as a button” or “cute as a bug.” It’s the damndest thing … I say that word in daily conversation to describe everything from clothes to décor to my dogs. I make it a point to tell my girlfriends how cute they look whenever I see them. But when certain people use it against me, I mentally throw elbows and scratch eyeballs.
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 As I peered into my extra-strength magnifying makeup mirror this morning, I saw … my mother 25 years ago. Not just in the creases around my eyes, but the clothes, the attitude — all of it. I was beguiled and horrified at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, my female parental unit is a classy, smart, sweet and loving woman. I would be lucky to inherit her grace, wisdom and patience. But every girl experiences a certain amount of shock and dismay when she realizes she has turned out exactly like her mother. It dawned on me during my sunrise epiphany that the reason my little momma (she’s 4’10”) frequently drives me bonkers is precisely because we are way too much alike. At 43, I hear myself doing and saying the very things she did and said at my age. Back then, I rolled my eyes or openly chastised her eccentricities. Today, they are my jam, man. |
About Amy HiggsA former newspaper columnist, Amy takes her random, slice-of-life stories to the web. After 12 years, she's still just saying. Archives
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