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by Jacqueline Lapa Sussman
Mother Mirror on the Wall
—How Mothers Affect their Daughter's Self Image
Mothers, have you ever wondered
how much you influence your daughter’s
body image? The answer may startle you:
you are your daughter’s most powerful
role model. Your feelings about your own
body are absorbed by her in both overt
and subtle ways and will shape her view
of herself for the rest of her life.
Fortunately, you are also the strongest
safeguard she has against our society’s
pressure to be thin and beautiful in order
to feel valued.
To see what you are transmitting to
your daughter, take a moment to do this
imagery exercise. Your feelings of selfacceptance
or rejection will reveal your
personal sense of your body image.
Standing Before A Mirror
- Relax for a moment and close your eyes and focus inwardly.
- See an image that you are standing before a mirror naked. Just look, what do you see?
- Do you like your face and body? How do you feel seeing them? Let all of your feelings, both positive and negative, emerge as you look.
- How do you wish them to be different? What do you like?
- Do you basically feel positive, negative or mixed about what you see?
In order to understand how you may be
influencing your daughter, it is first
important to recognize how you feel
about your own self; the inner self-criticisms
which you carry emanate to your
daughter in your daily interactions with
her. Such simple comments as, “I am too
fat” or “Oh, look at the lines around my
eyes,” send your daughter an implicit
message that failure to measure up to an
outer standard of beauty causes you to
suffer. Thus, you unknowingly reinforce
the validity of the constant onslaught of
social pressure she faces from the media
and her peers. It is not just what you
preach, but who you are in your entirety
(including your views, thoughts, and
innermost feelings about yourself ) that
is deeply absorbed by her and informs
her sense of self. A mother who truly
accepts herself transmits a signal of selfworth,
through her actions and attitudes,
regardless of her physical appearance.
A beautiful young woman of 19 commented
on her experiences with the
social pressure she feels and with the
impact of her own mother: “You compare
yourself with others all the time. Skinny is
the only way to be. The thinner you are,
the more attractive you are. Guys only
want you if you are pretty and skinny like
all the pop stars. When I wake up, how I
look is the first thing on my mind. I
always feel that I need to lose weight no
matter what I weigh at the moment. I feel
that I have to be as beautiful as the
models and stars on TV and in magazines.
I am never satisfied because there
is always someone prettier or skinnier.
When you see these models in magazines,
you know that they are airbrushed,
but it doesn’t matter. You have to look
like that. Girls will diet to look like the
models and yet struggling with it lowers
their self esteem. If I could tell mothers
what I truly feel, I would tell them that if
they see that their daughter is feeling fat
or insecure, she is extremely sensitive to
her mother’s comments. Those mean
the most. It is so bad or so good when it
comes from your mom. A mother’s comments
about you can be really harsh or
make you feel relief. Moms always tell
the truth and you trust your mom’s perspective.”
Dr. Akther Ahsen, the leading theoretician
of Eidetic Image psychology, has
researched the formation of children’s
personalities in the context of their complex
relationships with their parents.
Studying the psychical process called
“Parallel Projection,” he observed that a
person being in the presence of another
for a sustained period of time unites with
that person in some way and becomes
one with their experience. For example,
when a person watches another person
suffer, the pain flows from the sufferer
and enters the one who is watching.
Similarly, when a person watches someone
who is happy, the joy flows into the
person watching, enters her and makes
her happy. Thus, a child becomes depressed
around a depressed mother, withdrawn
around a withdrawn mother and joyful
with a happy mother. As a child grows up,
he or she adopts the feelings and attitudes
of the parent.
Even adult women recognize that their
sense of self is affected by friends and
acquaintances. A woman interviewed for
this article told me how her view of herself
subtly changes depending on her
companions: “I have always noticed how
being around different friends can actually
make me feel beautiful or unattractive.
For example, I have friends who are
very preoccupied with being thin and
looking young. They are always on diets,
rigorous exercise programs and have had
some plastic surgery. Although this in
itself is not bad, it is the energy and feelingsense
that surrounds them that affects me
when I am with them. It is subtle, but
somehow, when I spend time with them, I
begin to feel bad about myself. I start to
think that I too need to have my eyes done
and that I must get more toned. I begin to
focus on all that is imperfect in me. There
is a striving, straining sense that comes
over me and I start to criticize myself. However, when I get around my other
friends, those who do not focus so much
about their appearance and are more self
accepting and fulfilled, I suddenly feel
beautiful. I begin to like the wrinkles that
have formed around my eyes. They give
me character and describe my inner
essence. I feel substantial as a person. I
don’t feel that I have to compete with the
20-year-old faces and bodies that are out
there and I can accept the 10 pounds I
never seem to lose. I know that exercising
and diet are important for health,
but I have noticed that it is the consciousness
that my friends have about it
that affects me one way or another. It is
subtle, but I feel very different around a
friend who is striving for perfection and
the one who accepts who she is.”
If grown women are so affected by the
attitudes of their peers, how much worse
is the problem for our adolescent daughters
who are at an especially susceptible
stage of forming their sense of identity?
Through imitating or reacting to the right
or wrong influences of her mother, a
daughter’s feminine identity is formed.
Dr. Ahsen discovered that there are six
ways that this occurs:
1. Imitation
A daughter imitates her mother’s
behavior. A daughter watching her
mother looking in the mirror questioning,
“are my thighs too big?” or, “do I
look fat?,” begins to imitate this self
critical behavior. She will then look into
the mirror and see flaws. Fortunately,
daughters also imitate their mother’s
con.dence and self-assurance.
2. Identification
Identification is more fundamental than
imitation. It means sharing the views,
attitudes and feelings of one’s mother
so that a daughter feels identical to her.
In other words, the daughter is just
like her mother. For example, a strong,
independent mother will likely have an
independent daughter. A mother who
values her looks as her most important
possession, however, will have a
daughter who identifies with her and
believes that her looks define her.
3. Reaction
Reaction is behavior directly opposite to
parent’s behavior. For example, a teenage
girl I worked with informed me that
she had watched her mother lose weight
and become obsessed with exercising,
dieting and her appearance. She had
reacted to her mother by gaining 40
pounds and refusing to get off the couch.
This teenager was determined not to
become like her mother and in the
process, lost her own body’s natural
eating patterns and size.
4. Loss
When a young child is denied basic biological
needs such as close bonding with
her mother, basic approval for who she
is, or positive emotional nourishment,
she will suffer feelings of inner emptiness.
The emptiness propels the daughter
to try to .ll the void by becoming perfect
in order to be loved. This is fertile ground
for the development of eating disorders
and the lack of a strong sense of self.
Besides their constant efforts to look perfect
in order to gain their parents’ love
and approval, many young women will
find other compensations to overcome
their emptiness, such as drug use or
obsession with boys.
5. Projection
Projection occurs when one’s own inaccurate
subjective thoughts are attributed
to other people. If a mother refers to one
of her two daughters as beautiful and the
other as smart, the “smart” child may
believe that she is ugly, even though this
may be far from the truth. Children make
false assumptions about themselves in
response to a parent’s statements or
behavior, even though the remark may
have been casual and the parent has no
idea how the child has internalized it.
This pattern is unavoidable and can only be
discovered through open communication.
6. Attachment
Attachment is dependent behavior that is
biologically useful for a baby or a small
child. However, if a mother cannot let go
and give her maturing daughter autonomy,
she thwarts her daughter’s self reliance.
Her daughter will become insecure and
incapable of trusting her own inner
resources to handle life. A young college
woman told me that her mother calls her
every day to tell her such things as how to
dress and what color to highlight her
hair. The mother’s dependency on her
daughter made the daughter angry,
secretive, depressed and distrustful of
her own opinions about how she should
dress, look and feel. A secure mother,
however, who knows when to let go and
when to hang on, allows her daughter to
develop inner self-reliance.
The Solution
Truly attractive women have an inner
spirit which radiates from them, an aura
of confidence, self acceptance and self
love. Their inner essence is a more powerful
force than having a perfect body.
These women value and love themselves
first and convey the feeling that they are
fulfilled. Too much attention to clothes,
makeup or artificiality projects a feeling
of emptiness that is sensed by others.
What we feel inside and who we are is
emitted to the world and especially to our
daughters.
In order to foster a healthy daughter,
you as a mother, must combat society’s
pressure to be thin and beautiful as the
indicator of your own self worth. By
focusing on what is truly important—
your inner essence—you will set a strong
example of self assurance for your
daughter. When asked about fitting in at
school, a 14-year-old girl emulating her
mother’s example said it best: “It’s not
really what you’re wearing or what you
look like; it’s the person—it’s what’s
inside—that matters.”
For more information on connecting to
one’s inner essence, see my book, Images
of Desire: A Return to Natural Sensuality
(Forge Books). I extend special thanks to
my daughter, Lila, for her help with this
article.
Psychotherapist Jaqueline Lapa Sussman is
the director for projects for the National
and International Imagery Association and
one of the foremost practitioners of Eidetic
Imagery. She has delivered lectures worldwide
and has trained top-level government
officials, health care providers, corporate
CEOs, professional athletes and university
faculties. She has been featured in Health
Magazine, First For Women, New Age
Journal, Woman, The Dallas Morning News,
The New York Post and Newsday. She is the
author of Images of Desire: Finding Your
Natural Sensual Self In Today’s Image Filled
Society (Forge Books, May 2001) and
Freedom From Failure: How To Discover The
Secret Images That Can Bring Success In
Love, Parenthood, Career, and Physical Well-
Being (Forge Books, March 2003).
You can
visit her Web site: www.jaquelinesussman.com or e-mail her at:
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