“These aren’t your mother’s pantyhose,” I read recently on the New York magazine website, then I scrolled on, because the word “pantyhose” gives me the ick and I’m not planning to layer pink Gucci pop socks over purple tights any time soon. Still, something about it snagged in my brain and I’ve found myself brooding about that expression and how it gets used.
That “not your [family member]’s” formula entered the vernacular in a 1988 US car ad, when it was directed at dads: “Not your father’s Oldsmobile”. Now, though, it seems mostly to have defaulted to mothers. It’s a lazy marketing brag or headline, a shorthand for new, directional and disruptive, and I’ve started to hate it.
I’m not usually actively angered by reflexive sexism and ageism; I tend to let it wash over me in a dispiriting wave. And I don’t, actually, feel personally slighted by the expression. I am, indeed, a mother who is also terminally cautious and aesthetically unadventurous. Whatever you’re marketing (unless it’s “fire” or “the wheel”) is likely to be more edgy and innovative than I’m comfortable with.
But what about all the other mothers? If you’re my age, your mother probably came of age in the 60s, experiencing Sgt Pepper-inspired psychedelia, the summer of love and Mary Quant micro-minis. Any mother since could have experienced all manner of fashion and cultural revolutions: punk, glam rock, New Romantic, acid house or grunge. I inherited two garments from my mum, a woman infinitely braver than me in every way. One was a bum-skimming babydoll nightie in a cacophonously bright floral bordered with black lace, the other a completely transparent crocheted Biba dress. Unlike her, I’ve never dared wear either in public. And that’s just clothes. Your mothers have seen (and done) things you people wouldn’t believe, so leave them out of this – they shouldn’t be a cheap punchline to sell shampoo.
If we need a new shorthand for “conventional, careful, staid and reserved” in the UK, the answer is staring us awkwardly in the face. Can you imagine a more persuasive tagline than: “These aren’t Keir Starmer’s socks”?
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
