Nah, what it actually is, say, I have a totally functional microwave. It's kind of old, and the color doesn't match my kitchen, but it works fine. My mom thinks "that is so terrible that Rosa has that old microwave, I will buy her a new one!"
I don't want to donate the old one - not because I worry what others will think, but because I know from my own thrift shopping that people don't buy 10 year old appliances because they - unlike me - don't know it's fully functional.
So I donate the new one. This makes my mom (and apparently some of you) think I'm not valuing myself or whatever, and since we're having about a million relatives at the house this week, I'm having this conversation in my head right now (maybe that's the real question: why do I internalize these judgements to the point that I am thinking about them when people aren't even here to say them yet?)
Part of it is just that I would rather use up what I have than throw it away, and then when it's gone I go out and get something I actually like, not something that just matches my mom (or my partner's mom's) idea of "nice". Because they are both the queens of "almost but not quite what you wanted" gifts.
(a year after the donated microwave gift, our microwave finally died. And I went and got the exact microwave I wanted.)
