Savvy Women

Though the subject of the interview is primarily Tannen’s bestselling book, You’re Wearing THAT?, it also ranges far afield and includes lots of very interesting disclosure about Tannen’s personal life, including her relationship with her own parents (especially her mother), and her other creative interests and accomplishments. So, if you’re a fan of Tannen and her work, this is a must-see.

I also discovered something about Tannen that I hadn’t known before: that she once taught writing classes to undergraduates, just as I do now.

Now, about the interview, there’s a lot there, and you may need to watch it more than once to get all the ideas and thus the full impact. Just in summary, You’re Wearing THAT? is a book that unravels the complex relationship between mothers and daughters, how that relationship grows through time as both mature, and the role that language plays in shaping the dynamic between the two.

Though there were many interesting moments in the interview, two things jumped out at me. Firstly, Tannen’s argument that mothers act as “lightning rods” in the family (you’ll have to watch the interview to see what she means by that!) is very true in my own experience. Secondly, she feels that we “all expect more of mothers than fathers and more of daughters than sons” and that this expectation shapes behavior and guilt patterns in families. I’ll need to spend a bit more time thinking about this contention and what it implies about daughters and sons, mothers and fathers.