Embarrassing mum to end them all! As Madonna, 56, tries to outshine Lourdes in hotpants, pity the girl who grew up in the shadow of a giant ego

Any starstruck 18-year-old might daydream about rocking up to the Met Gala party in New York, with cameras flashing admiringly at her tiny leather shorts and weird, chest-constricting yet reassuringly expensive Moschino bondage top.

Would that not be the pinnacle of celebrity cool?

But hang on, girls! Now suppose that in this daydream you look round and your 56-year-old mum is mincing along next to you in identical or even tighter leather hotpants, her hair tumbling seductively, a raunchy snarl plastered across her artfully painted face.

Moreover, suppose that you have very good reason to fear that during any such outing your mum might spring on some poor, young chap like an elderly vampire, grasp him with gym-hardened arms and snog him against his will?

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In tiny leather hotpants at the Met Gala afterparty in New York recently, commentators were left wondering whether Madonna had stepped out in her teenage daughter’s clothes

Foiled again! Mum, you’re 56, so leave the New York Met Ball partying to me — and give me back my black leather hotpants

Or that she might even move on to one of your mates in a burst of faux-lesbian ardour, and suddenly fasten herself on the poor girl's lips? That's what she did when you were six, snogging Britney Spears.

Seriously, how relaxing is it being out on the town with a mother like Madonna?

This may be entirely misplaced sympathy — in which case I apologise to young Lourdes Leon — but having served time both as a girl of 18 and a mother, I do feel rather concerned for her, the firstborn daughter of the ineffable, inexplicable phenomenon that is Madonna.

Instead of having a nice boring mum who you can patronise about her dress-sense and kindly advise on the latest mascara, there's this crazedly exhibitionist, image-changing old chick.

My all-American mum: This is me, aged four, going out in New York with Mummy in matching sandals
Looking like English ladies: We’re in floral tea dresses at the UK launch  of Mum’s children’s book in 2003

My all-American mum: This is me, aged four, (left) going out in New York with Mummy in matching sandals. Looking like English ladies: We’re in floral tea dresses at the UK launch of Mum’s children’s book in 2003 (right)

Blink and you miss it, as she transforms herself from a down-and-dirty sex-bomb to a sinewy athlete, a holy Kabbalah devotee or, improbably, a Country Lady: an English Rose.

She has a brief flirtation with horsey respec-tability, but then you glance up, and there's Mum back in porn mode, putting it right out there with her ripped, muscular body tricked out in equally ripped sex-shop slutwear, all to make some ferociously aggressive point about feminist sexuality. Just when you were hoping — eeewww! — never to think about that aspect. Not in the context of your mum . . .

Nor do Madonna's periodic re-inventions depend entirely on clothes: whole lifestyles, homes, husbands and lovers change.

My, what muscles you have, Mummy: Visiting Gwyneth Paltrow in New York, 2004
Does a cap really go with a golf jumper? On a walk in Hyde Park in 2004

My, what muscles you have, Mummy: Visiting Gwyneth Paltrow in New York, 2004 (left). Does a cap really go with a golf jumper? On a walk in Hyde Park in 2004 (right)

Marvellous magenta: Mummy casts a spell in patent purple boots at the Harry Potter premiere in 2005

Marvellous magenta: Mummy casts a spell in patent purple boots at the Harry Potter premiere in 2005

Even if at home — in private — she has a hidden talent for being just Good Old Mum, it must be unnerving. Especially for her darker mini-me Lourdes, a daughter mysteriously named after a French village where peasant girl Bernadette prayed to a vision of the real Madonna. Not for nothing is 'Lourd' also the French for 'heavy': it all feels like a heavy load to put on any girl as she grows up.

For, frankly, years of observation suggest that one of the most useful things a parent of teenagers can be is — well, a bit boring.

During those hormonally turbulent years, it helps if your parents at least manage to seem pretty static, samey, predictable, peaceful. A bland backdrop to your own hormonal dramas. Someone to come home to and be loved by, so you can safely slam out shouting: 'You're so tragic! You're ruining my life!' and know that 20 minutes later mum will tiptoe upstairs with some nice cheese on toast and a Diet Coke.

Too cool for school: Why does Mummy insist on wearing those dark glasses whenever we leave the house?

I’m her little mini-me: A chic beret for Mum, a baggy beanie hat for me (left). Too cool for school: Why does Mummy insist on wearing those dark glasses whenever we leave the house?

During these tricky years, harsh though it may seem to our groovy post-Sixties generation, it befits a mother to be a bit Crimplene. A bit M&S. Not to slink around in tight leather trousers and flirt with a son's mates or a daughter's potential boyfriends. The words 'We're like sisters!' are rarely very welcome to developing girls. Especially when there's a 38-year age gap.

Deep biological instincts tell the fertile young thing it's rightly her turn to do the mating-dance now. Not her mother's.

So when the maternal clothes and behaviour suggest that she's not going to bow out gracefully, not ever, it can be a bit disheartening for a new-fledged girl. It leaves her no space, no role to play.

It's even more disheartening than it is for teenage boys when they see their dads hurtling onto the dance floor to strains of 'I'm too sexy' and doing regrettable moves in Jeremy Clarkson jeans.

More seriously, it is not much fun for teenagers to be confronted with the idea of their parents having turbulent love lives at all.

What a mid-life adult considers a free-living, daring, exciting new affair 'because I'm worth it', and the trigger for a 'reasonable' divorce, can be an emotionally crippling experience for the adolescent child.

Growing family: It’s 2007 and Mum wears an African wrap as she carries my adopted brother David in Malawi
Kaballah nights: I thought Mummy was a Material Girl, so what’s with the tatty red string and baseball cap?

Growing family: It’s 2007 and Mum wears an African wrap (left) as she carries my adopted brother David in Malawi. Kaballah nights: I thought Mummy was a Material Girl, so what’s with the tatty red string and baseball cap?

Especially if the dumped parent is being made miserable. Which he or she often is. Lourdes, at least, seems to have a decent relationship with Carlos Leon, the former fitness trainer and father Madonna binned.

But she is not alone in having to put up with this rejuvenation of middle-aged women. Many mothers have taken to extreme outbreaks of self-reinvention, party-girl behaviour and kidult trendiness.

They blithely cry: 'Just because I'm 53 that's no reason why I shouldn't dance naked in the rain at Glastonbury!'

Which is fair enough, I suppose. It's true that Fifties mothers, having had a bit too much excitement in the war, were probably rather too ready to dive into Crimplene two-pieces and call their husbands 'Daddy'.

But the wild swing towards spray-on leather trousers and defiant marital liberation can be hard on the daughters.

Macho maidens: I’m 13 and surely my ripped tights and funky leg-warmers will steal Mum’s thunder this time
Basqueing in notoriety: Couldn’t Mum have covered up her cleavage, it’s a film premiere!

Macho maidens: I’m 13 and surely my ripped tights (left) and funky leg-warmers will steal Mum’s thunder this time... Basqueing in notoriety: Couldn’t Mum have covered up her cleavage, it’s a film premiere!

So, some of them grumpily swing in the opposite direction. Painfully sensible Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous is not just a sitcom character but a reflection of many.

I had a schoolfriend like her, even back in the Seventies. Her mother wrote a fashionable book, got courted by the media and promptly dyed her hair and took to 4in heels, plunging necklines, late nights and flings with artistic young men.

The daughter started dressing with flat sobriety, studying economics and having gloomy suppers with her dad. Of course, some showbiz mothers — and most outside that world — manage to tone it down with dignity, settle the reading-glasses on their nose in a marked manner, and let their daughters take centre stage.

At least until the girl leaves home and settles down, when mum can safely break out again and make a fool of herself all she likes. But some will never let up at all, ramping up the glamour and carrying on flashing the flesh with dogged determination.

And their daughters, sorry Lourdes, just have to lump it.

 

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