This American Life, Animated

[Ira] This parenting error happened not long ago.

Halloween, when Hanna's 13-year-old, Noah,

decided she was gonna dress up as Hillary Clinton.

[Hanna] She watches a lot of Saturday Night Live,

and old Saturday Night Live videos

so a campy political costume makes sense to her

even at 13, she puts on her red jacket

and she starts putting on makeup

so she puts on mascara and a little eyeliner

and she normally doesn't wear makeup and a little lip gloss

and I'm not really paying attention to her

and then I look at her and then these words

come out of my mouth: Wow, you look so much better.

[Ira] Wow.

(laughs)

[Hanna] Which is, I felt bad and I instantly knew

the implications of what I had said

and then I transported myself forward to the therapy,

20 years later, oh and then there was that moment

and that's when I realized that my mom thought

I was the ugly duckling of the family.

[Ira] And so what does she say?

[Hanna] She's like silent.

She pauses for a moment and she says, very wisely,

I don't think that's something you're supposed to say

to your 13-year-old daughter.

(laughs)

And I actually think that she was a little ironic

in her response and she was trying to give me a pass.

She knew that I would feel really bad and she,

with great empathy and kindness, made kind of a wink

about it, kind of placed it in the box of half-ironic

and thus not tragic so that was nice of her.

I mean, basically anything that you do to increase

the self-consciousness of a teenage girl

makes you a bad mother, I think.

[Ira] But do you think it hurt her?

[Hanna] I don't think it hurt her,

but I think she'll remember it.

The real reason I regretted it right away

is that even though she and I agreed that we were joking

and it was okay and she knows I really don't judge her,

a small part of her might be walking

down the street and thinking,

Oh, well maybe I could do some self-improvement.

Maybe I could look a little better

if I wore mascara or foundation.

[Ira] If I asked your daughter,

What do you really think about this,

what would she say, this moment?

[Hanna] I think she would absolutely insist

that she doesn't care and it is possibly true

that she doesn't care and she forgot about it immediately.

(phone rings)

[Ira] So we called, and I asked.

[Noah] I think that it got very inflated after the fact

and I wasn't thinking about it very much at the time

but I did not care that much.

[Ira] So you don't feel like this wrecked you.

[Noah] I don't think it wrecked me,

but it might come up in the future, you never know.

(laughs)

[Hanna] Oh boy.

[Ira] Are you just saying that

just to screw with your mom right now.

(giggles)