It's not often that I write a two-part post, but after I blogged about mothers who compete with their daughters over at Psychology Today last Friday, reader Delia sent me this link to a recent segment that ran on Good Morning America.
Go ahead and watch it...I'll wait.
Well, what do you think? I know, right.
Let me just say that I totally get the whole "feeling like you've let yourself go" thing and I fully support anybody's efforts to make healthy changes to their lifestyle that help them look and, more importantly, feel better about themselves. But to consciously make an effort, through surgery, to look just like your daughter is really disturbing to me.
Let's start with this, when daughter Jane says: "I think it's good that she wants to look younger and be younger because who'd want to get old?" Then, there's the doctor at the end who uses words like "desperation" and "panic" to describe what might be behind a decision like this. Most telling? When the doctor says that deep down, it's got to hurt the daughter to know that her mom is that uncomfortable with herself and has these issues.
As moms, the way we treat and talk about our aging bodies has a huge impact on our daughters -- no matter what their ages. If we can't -- or refuse to -- accept healthy aging, we're setting our girls up for a lifetime of trying to move the clock backward -- and feeling bad about themselves when they can't.
What do you think? At what point does the effort to maintain a youthful appearance cross the line into obsession?
The really ironic thing (and forgive me for being shallow here) is that the mom was beautiful before all her surgeries. Now she looks...wrong.
I HATE this competitiveness between women, but especially between mothers and daughters. Is this what feminism is about? Hardly! I think the suffragettes are spinning in their graves.
Posted by: Alyssa | 05/18/2009 at 08:25 AM
That's pretty horrifying. And yes, WRONG.
Don't you think it's very Snow White? (who is the fairest of them all... etc)
UGH.
Posted by: Foodie McBody | 05/18/2009 at 09:58 AM
OMG, Foodie! You are so right!!!!!!
That is FREAKY.
Posted by: Alyssa | 05/18/2009 at 08:50 PM
Foodie, interesting observation...very Snow White, indeed!
And Alyssa, you're right. She looked like a lovely, normal mom in her "before" photos.
Posted by: Dara Chadwick | 05/20/2009 at 05:55 AM