I can rationalize my arrested financial status, my rental, my inability to drive. But staring at that row of expensive, alpha-hydroxy-boosting bottles, I knew I was in denial. Anti-aging products are scary and overwhelming, their labels full of vaguely-threatening pseudoscience. According to the most extreme dermatologists, we should all start using them at 18. And while generations of women seem to have gotten by perfectly well without a battery of pricey snake-oils, the fear campaign has done its work well: I feel anxious, guilty, terrified - and paralyzed with choice. Even as I know my collagen production is slowing down, my skin losing its youthful elasticity, the lines and wrinkles multiplying, I'm as frozen as I was when a 10th-grade chemistry test was set before me.

New findings suggest that, at the end of the day, we all become our mothers anyway: as in most things biological, you can't fight the DNA, and one's mother's face is, apparently, a preview of coming attractions. Says Reuters, "these findings may act as a further guideline for cosmetic rejuvenation of the eye region." Great. My own mom looks just fine. She's never used an antiaging product in her life, and for someone who was apparently never told that not sporting at least double-digit SPF every day is the worst sin in the entire world, well, she's certainly not the Dorothea Lange portrait ladymags are always insinuating. That said, she looks like what she is: an attractive woman of 60. And that isn't what we're supposed to want. We should be defying our age, not giving into it!

I gave my mom a call and asked her what she thought about all the age-defying tech out there. "Well," she said, "it's really much more defiant not to give into that, isn't it?" And she was right. Although I bought her some lotion with SPF and I think she's using it. "Health," she says, "I'll do. Vanity is very unattractive." I could have a worse blueprint.

It's Like Mother, Like Daughter When It Comes To Aging [Reuters]

Double X's new column, "Modern Love Revenge," is potentially pretty genius - provided, that is, the subjects are as prone to soul-baring as the original authors. Although Audrey Bethel, whose lack of communication causes mom Maynard to break into her email and discover a scary situation, you may recall - seems perfectly ready to go public, albeit in more diplomatic terms. Bethel's response is more measured and less personal than her mother's - but there are plenty of small digs in there.

It's pretty clear from Audrey's - and her mom's - pieces that living material is no novelty in the Bethel-Maynard house. As Audrey says, "My mother, Joyce Maynard, writes for a living, so I have spent my life learning that an event recounted by one person might not sound like the same event when recounted by another person, even if she was there, and witnessed it, and was at the center of it. It can be frustrating for me to let my mother own her stories-and by proxy, the stories of the people close to her." (As the daughter of two writers, I should point out here that this isn't typical. It probably is, though, of writers who write regularly about their own first-person.) "Over the years, my mother has often written works of nonfiction detailing my family's life and times-but never had anything so intimate or inherently mine to tell been the topic of her writing."

Here, Audrey reproduces the oddly loaded email her mom sent her before running the piece.

Dear Aud, I have written an essay that I need to show you. An editor at the New York Times would like to publish it, but I will not do this unless you can feel alright about this. I am guessing that if you could have chosen, you would prefer to have a mother who did not, as I do, write about her life. Though of course, if that were the case, you would have a totally different mother. And be a different person yourself.

And if that, in context, seems passive-aggressive - kind of defiant and impotent (how did "The New York Times" see this essay before Audrey granted her permission? Magic?) - check out this line: "I knew her primary purpose was not to write an academic piece to raise social consciousness, but I still felt strongly that the original draft of my mother's piece perpetuated certain stereotypes and assumptions. I knew how much she wanted me to tell her to go ahead with the piece, especially since it would be good publicity to coincide with her new book coming out."

Holy underlying tensions, Batman! In the end, Audrey, obviously a good sport, works with her mother to edit the piece into a compromise that acknowledges the social issues close to her heart. But her ambivalence, in the article, is palpable. And if this retort isn't an act of veiled aggression, I've never seen one. Sure, we know these people only by what they've shown us - maybe it's no relation to who they are in real life. But as characters in a public drama, they're choosing to paint quite a fraught picture. It would be interesting to see the exchange in which Audrey informed her mother of this piece - if in fact she did. Having made her, by her own admission, who she is by dint of her oversharing, Maynard could hardly object.

[Image via JoyceMaynard.com]

Modern Love Revenge: Joyce Maynard's Daughter Gets Her Turn To Speak[XX]

Related: Joyce Maynard Looks Back On Life?

Todd and her mother have always bonded over food: her mom's a comfort eater, and this becomes something they share. However, as the author grows up, she begins a cycle of comfort eating and yo-yo dieting that, oddly enough, strains their relationship.

Whenever I managed to lose weight, my mother said she was happy for me. But I detected a certain tightness in her voice, or maybe it was simply that I felt guilty about abandoning her: Now that I was a thin person, we no longer shared the extra large buckets of popcorn together. It was as if I'd gotten up from the kitchen table where we'd snacked and talked intimately and left her sitting across from an empty chair. I suspect she believed that my efforts to be thin were a rejection of her, and in a way, she was right. As much as I relished the smaller sizes and all the compliments from friends, every time I refused dessert or went for a run or lifted weights, I was warding off the specter of my mother's body, fighting the fear that I'd wake up one day and discover that somehow I'd become her.

Of course, this isn't really about food. It's about love, projection, acceptance, and female relationships in microcosm. Each relationship is obviously different, but we get so much of our sense of self from our mothers that it's inevitable that it should effect our perceptions - even if it's just the example of someone completely comfortable with herself, or blessedly disinclined to mention such things. These relationships can be famously damaging, or a source of bonding and mutual support - Beyoncé and her mom recently embarked on a joint diet. And the projection goes both ways; I know I've been quick to perceived criticism in comments of my mother's that I think, in retrospect, were just reflections of my own insecurities. A mother may not influence the way you present yourself to the world sexually, but she sure does effect the pattern of your interactions with other women. And, as women, we often couch things in terms of appearance that really have nothing to do with it. "I love your dress," we may use as a mode of introduction in a social situation - something men would never do. We feel we need to comment on the physical, for whatever reason, and a lot of times, this is probablt mirrored in the family. Hortense made a really smart point:

I think mothers and daughters use weight as a means to address, perhaps, the underlying issues behind a gain or a loss. It's easier to make a comment, I guess, about your child's physical appearance ("Are you eating enough? Are you dieting again?") than to ask, "Is something bothering you?" "Are you sad?" "Are you stressed out?"

In Todd's case, the balance of emotional power shifts with their weights. When she puts on some weight and her mother loses some - leaving them the same size - her initial reaction is resentment:

Let's start with the fact that my mother now had what I did not: time to exercise and make healthy meals. I'd be able to lose weight, too, I told myself, if I were a semiretired librarian with a free nutritionist. But it was more than that. For years, I'd blamed my mother for my yo-yoing weight, or, more specifically, for teaching me to associate food with comfort.

But the fact that her mother's thrilled with the new weight, and the author is distraught, ultimately provides a "teachable moment": for the first time, Todd realizes that it's not the food that's really at issue. "After all, thinness isn't the same thing as happiness and solace isn't the same as food." Of course, she only sort of believes that - as does Self, one can't help think nowadays. The piece is still predicated on the assumption that heavy = bad, and that bad habits and depression are the same thing as "weight" when in many ways it seems like two separate issues. The two end up bonding over healthy weight loss, and in a way food - unhealthy food - is still a demon and a villain, albeit one they're vanquishing together. (After all, bonding over food is not in itself bad: it can be wonderful and natural.) But the overall point is well taken: mothers and daughters and weight are a fraught issue. It makes sense: our relationship begins with feeding; we literally derive our nourishment from our mothers. Later, they form our habits, and later still a large part of our sense of self. The operative word is just that - self. (And that's with a small "S," by the way.)

Bonding With Mom Over Comfort Foods [MSNBC via Self]
Beyoncé's Mother/Daughter Diet [Extra]

It was a strange coincidence that the much-anticipated TV movie of Grey Gardens and former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl's fourth memoir, Not Becoming My Mother, should come out in the same week. While the differences are obvious - one's the story of fallen aristocracy, the other of mid-century malaise - both deal with thwarted female ambition, make one wonder whether fragile psyches can ever triumph over adversity, and, most of all, explore how these questions impact on mother-daughter relationships.

Most everyone - at least, readers of this site - knows the Beales' story: the New York socialites, mother and daughter, whose grandiose showbiz ambitions gave way to a life of delusion and squalor, made all the more dramatic by their family connection to Jackie O. The HBO film, while it broadens the focus, doesn't tell us much we didn't already know about their decline. To anyone who's read one of food writer and editor Reichl's memoirs, this one will not contain shocks, either: her neurotic, frustrated mother is a constant, infuriating presence in her books, her mental instability and scorn for her daughter's career a constant cross for Reichl to bear.

This memoir, title aside, is more sympathetic; Reichl explores the broken dreams that made Miriam Reichl the woman and the mother she was: her wasted education, her thwarted desire to become a doctor, her suffering through what Reichl terms "the worst possible time to have been a middle-class American woman." Reichl's writing is always curiously indifferent to whether the reader likes her, and this is no exception; despite her newfound understanding of her mother's struggles, the ambivalence is the memoir's third character. Miriam's disdain for Ruth's career choice may come from a desire to see Reichl do something more - and from a wish to protect her from crushing disappointment - but it's still cruel, and there were many mothers of the same generation who were able to muster far more support.

Then too, the main question we're left with at the end of the book is, how much was her? It's the same question that dogs Grey Gardens. Could Edith Beale have sung professionally, if not mired in the world of upper-class marriage? Or was it this very life which allowed her to cherish her illusions? Could her daughter have become a musical star without her mother holding her back, or were these women too damaged from the outset? Of Miriam, Reichl writes, "Was she crazy, or was she crazy because she had nothing to do?" As one reviewer puts it, "At times, Mim's mental health seems so fragile that the focus on her thwarted career seems misplaced: You wonder if she could have found satisfaction in any field or had condition, perhaps biological in origin, that would have caught up with her in any job."

Whatever the truth, the one certainty is that the daughters get sucked into the mythology; a daughter has to live her mother's reality, however damaged or damaging that may be. Reichl breaks free, Little Edie (of Miriam's generation) doesn't - but their mothers continue to haunt them, both with the realities and the realities they made. So, how do you break away? If you believe Reichl, the only way is to physically separate yourself from a personality that can dominate you; certainly the Beales show the danger of the alternative. Distance - not just physical, but emotional - is critical. You need to see a parent objectively. In Reichl's case, this meant a lot of anger, a lot of distancing, reducing her mother to a caricature. And then, ultimately, having the maturity to see her as more. In a sense, breaking this hold, as she tells it, is almost like the stages of grieving. And when one considers how domineering these personalities are, that makes a kind of sense. Together, this is an odd Mother's Day roundup, for sure - but certainly a potent one.

Ruth Reichl's Memoir ‘Not Becoming My Mother' – An Apple Falls Far From the Tree [One Minute Book Reviews]
"Not Becoming My Mother [New York Post]
Not Becoming My Mother [Amazon]

When it comes to their mother's appearance, all daughters have views, ranging in ferocity from mildly scathing to fathomless reservoirs of scorn. That surely is the point of them. When they're not mewling, wingeing or bitching (depending what point of the evolutionary trajectory they're on), isn't their main function to set their mothers straight sartorially?

So, in the pursuit of cuteness, a few fashionistas lets their daughters dress them for an arbitrary amount of time. What follows is a run-down of "kids say the darndest things" slams of mom's trendy clothes or tired looks. Five year olds deck them out in gowns and clashing hues; one tells her mother to grow her hair and wear more pink. The author ultimately decides that, for all their lack of sophistication, "children can be remarkably perceptive about appearances and fearless, if not entirely precise, when it comes to expressing their reservations."

Then we see the flip side of the dynamic, when Armstrong "bonds" with her teenage daughters over clothes.

I often ask - and sometimes take - their counsel and try not to proffer my advice unless asked for, except when they insist on flashing dazzling amounts of cleavage, which they all seem to, or going out into a snowdrift without coats. Terrified of shunting them into an eating disorder, I initially banned myself from saying "Have you seen the size of your bottom in that?" but I have become more forthright recently, particularly with the trend for metallic neon leggings and the not entirely felicitous effect they have on the family's legs unless worn with long tops.

Um, ugh. Just reading that gave me sympathy chills, reminding me of an age when a mother's criticism was capable of filling me with a rage and hurt and confusion far disproportionate to its intent. Of wanting to please but resenting any suggestion; of knowing my own mother was not someone a teenage girl should be taking style tips from, but unable to not care what she thought. This piece, for all its surface levity, is a good illustration of the complicated evolution of the mother-daughter dynamic. What's cute and straightforward with an artless little girl becomes fraught and nasty when ten years are added to the mix. Suddenly it's "the family's legs" - oddly, as the daughters move away from her sphere of influence, she identifies with them more explicitly. Because, as we all know, it's not just clothes: when she criticizes her teenagers she's implicitly commenting on their generation, their tastes, their judgment, just as a daughter's asserting autonomy and guard-changing in all the approved ways. And let's face it: this isn't just any mom, but rather one whose business is at least partially fashion and who defines herself by what she wears. The subtexts are uncomfy, to say the least.
Should mums take style tips from their daughters? [London Times]

A piece on CNN talks about the phenomenon of women who are drawn to husbands like their fathers. By way of illustration, we're given a number of marriages, both successful and unsuccessful, in which similarities between a woman's husband and her father range from those as commonplace as a shared love of politics, to unsettling things like uncanny physical resemblances or abusive temperaments. There are, of course, a lot of obvious reasons people do this: the piece cites the "comfort of familiarity" as well as the natural desire to replicate those qualities you loved and admired in a parent. Other times, the motivation is more complicated, namely in those cases where someone subconsciously wishes to "make amends" for a troubled childhood. Says one expert whom the article quotes,

This is most common if you felt rejected or abandoned by a parent and still haven't worked through it...Your psyche wants to go back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, and resolve that parental relationship in a marriage.

Needless to say, it rarely works out.

It's funny this article should appear just now, because the other day a friend and I were talking about the fact that, while we both have close and loving relationships with fathers we admire, neither of us has ever dated a man anything like him. We came up with a theory of our own: maybe, when you're super-close to a dad, in some sense you don't feel a need to replicate him, because you choose to believe he'll always be there. Like, that niche is filled: no one else need apply. Childish and unrealistic, maybe, but it seems plausible. I talk to my dad several times per week; why would I need another version of that dynamic? - might be how the thinking goes. It should probably be noted that neither of us is remotely qualified to be advancing any behavioral theories whatsoever.

What's inarguable is that for people of any sex, relationships with parents are huge, and probably enough analysis can unearth a huge number of complex theories about anyone. It's a difficult balance to recognize enough about these relationships and motivations to correct persistently self-destructive behaviors and be mindful of repeated tendencies, yet be able to take your relationships at face value and move on. After all, being overly aware of the extent to which your parents influence your romantic life is pretty creepy, too - unless both the men in your life have Keith Hernandez moustaches, love of curling, aversion to crawfish, obsession with 18th Century French poetry, Moby Grape and similar verbal ticks, you're probably okay.

Why You're Likely To Marry Your Parent [CNN]

Carol, the youngest of four children, says it was helping type mother Mary's novels that inspired her own career. "That's really what got me into [writing], because I'd talk to her about the characters and the plot...It was great for me to learn about how to write." As to the inherent tension of writing in the same genre, Carol says, "Oh, we wouldn't steal from each other. We actually fax each other pages as we're working on our separate books, just to get feedback." Adds Mary, "You need fresh eyes you can count on to say, 'That's fine. What are you worried about?'" [NPR]

Of course, difficult mother/son relationships exist in art and in life, but the mother/daughter dynamic seems the more fraught one. Sarler says social conventions put extra pressure on mother/daughter relationships: "sons are on loan and will eventually leave for another woman; a daughter, by contrast, is for ever – we ask so very much of two women and criticise so very harshly when they appear to fall short." And women's behavior may have a greater effect on their daughters than on their sons — a new study shows that motherly manipulation and "mind games" increase depression risk in African-American girls, but not in boys.

Sarler thinks it's a problem of expectations. She quotes advice columnist Virginia Ironside:

The mother is all-powerful to start with; she is your survival. You fall over: Mummy, Mummy, make it better. She does. You put her on a pedestal. But she cannot live up to this for ever; you see that she has feet of clay after all; you are disappointed.

But why should this disappointment be any worse for girls than for boys? Perhaps because girls are supposed to model themselves after their mothers; when Mom falls short, there's the danger that we will too. On the other side, mothers may see themselves in their daughters, and be harder on them as a result. Sarler says the solution is for both mother and daughter to accept imperfection:

Contrary to the romantically high expectations as nurtured by wider society, there is no such thing as a perfect mother, nor a perfect daughter, nor yet a perfect relationship between them. Some – most? – women eventually realise this, allowances are made and gratitude for what there is takes precedence over fury for what there is not.

Sure, moms and daughters should make allowances for each other. But those "romantically high expectations" need a reality check too. It's not just that women are expected to be perfect nurturers and are punished disproportionately if they fall short. Western culture still thinks of women as the primary custodians of relationships — or at least the ones responsible for feeling bad about them. Women's magazines assume we're constantly worrying about our partners, parents, and kids. Sarler contributes to this problem with her "note to male readers: "guilt" is the name of the fluid that runs through the umbilical cord." Note to everyone: men feel guilt too — it just gets less press. When we stop assuming that women care about others more than men do, and that women should be the ones questioning themselves when things go wrong, maybe moms and daughters will get along a little better.

Judge's mother denies calling her a 'dirty little whore' [Telegraph]
Judge tells court she paid for plastic surgery because of mother's 'ugly' taunts [Telegraph]
Mother accused of scarring 'wimp' daughter [UPI.com]
Mothers and daughters, locked in bitter battles that none can ever win [Independent]
Mothers' mental games increase depressive symptoms in daughters [Eurekalert]

Earlier: Is Being A Bad Mother The Most Heinous Crime Of All?

Of course there are a lot of unknowns in this study. What about fathers? What about women who had mothers who told them they could be anything they wanted — and dropped out of school anyway? What about women who had mothers who said stuff like, "You'll never amount to anything," and became successful out of spite?

It's interesting that these children were raised in the '70s, when, more than ever, girls were getting the message that a woman could do anything a man could do. I consider myself fairly confident, and had my mother been in this study, she probably would have told the researchers that she saw nothing but success in my future. (And you know, these things go both ways: When someone is so proud of you, you can fear disappointing them.) But for me personally, I think my dad had an impact on my self-esteem as well. (Dr. Flouri's team didn't study fathers.) Do you think your confidence is linked to your mother's belief in you?

Mothers' Pride 'Aids Daughters' [BBC]
Why Mum's The Word For High Flying Girls [Daily Express]
Daughters Thrive On Mother's Pride [New Scientist]

I'm home visiting for the weekend and, in an unhappy coincidence, my family ended up mid-family crisis this morning. By the time I'd finished writing Crappy Hour, my mother was scrubbing the shit out of the bathroom tile. She then cleaned the toilet, did a load of unnecessary laundry, changed two beds, tore apart the basement looking for dishwasher fluid, made lunch, abandoned her lunch in search of a pillow case, gave my father 20 minutes of instructions on how to make a salad for dinner tonight and threw away all the crackers in the house. Yeah, I don't understand that last one either.

On one level, I wanted to make her stop and sit down and deal and, on the other, I knew exactly why she was doing what she was doing because I do it too. Last Christmas was my first post-break up Christmas after having been in a relationship for 5 years. I started to make some cookies for some closer friends and ended up baking 500 in less than a week — I didn't even have enough friends to give all of them to at Christmastime, and ended up bring three dozen frozen ones to Moe in February. When I had an inkling that said relationship was on the rocks, I reorganized and color-coded my closet rather than crying. When it did end, I itemized my list of items to take to Goodwill and loaded up my car, then reorganized my drawers, did some much-needed work on my car and and obsessively dusted the newly empty slots in my wine rack. When I needed to work through a job crisis once, I spent 4 hours oiling my leather sofa, scrubbed every surface in my bathroom and kitchen and dusted everything else, including my blinds. Only when I sat in the midst of a place so clean that my mother would've been proud did I call my best friend to cry that I'd completely fucked up my life.

I know why I do it and why she does it: We're both intensely pragmatic creatures who have built a measure of self-esteem around being the Reliable One. We take comfort in the routine of the mundane, in the Zen of the minor physicality of cleaning and organizing. We find some measure of unfounded faith in the idea that bringing order to clutter can bring psychic order to cluttered thoughts — even as we know that it never really works like that. And, to a great degree, we do it because we're both terrible at openly expressing our actual emotions. It might seem easier to cry in grief or tell someone you love them or are proud of them, but she and I both know it's far easier to yell when someone of whom your proud disappoints you than to admit to being proud in the first place, or to scrub burnt bits off the stove than to cry on someone's shoulder.

So while I'm sure I'm less jealous than she is and don't spend hours vacuuming before having guests over and try to be as flexible as humanly possible to the foibles of my friends and family, I am still my mother's daughter. So I have to go now and shuck enough corn for 10 people and then make a salad 'cause you know my dad ain't gonna do that right.