Mother, Mirror on the Wall:
How mothers affect their daughter's self image
By Jaqueline Lapa Sussman
Total Health Magazine - October 2004

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 shapes 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 self-acceptance or rejection will reveal your personal sense of your body image.

Standing Before A Mirror

1. Relax for a moment and close your eyes and focus inwardly.

2. See an image that you are standing before a mirror naked. Just look, what do you see?

3. 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.

4. How do you wish them to be different? What do you like?

5. 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 of 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 God, 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 self-worth, 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. I always feel that I need to loose weight no matter what I weigh at the moment. I feel that I have to be as beautiful as the stars and models in magazines. I am never satisfied because there is always someone prettier or skinnier. Struggling with all this lowers my 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 form your mom. A mother’s comments about you can be really harsh or make you feel relief.”

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 that 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 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. 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 on their appearance and are more self accepting, I suddenly feel beautiful. I begin to like the crinkles that have formed around my eyes. I don’t feel that I have to compete with the 20 year olds that are out there. Diet and exercise 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, daughter’s also imitate their mother’s confidence 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. For example, a strong, independent mother will likely have an independent daughter. A mother who who values her looks as her most most important possession 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 forty 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 hunger signals and size.

4. Loss:
When a young child is denied basic biological needs such as close bonding with her mother, deep approval of who she is, or positive emotional nourishment, she will suffer feelings of inner emptiness. This is fertile ground for the development of eating disorders, drug use, obsession with boys or striving for perfection in order to gain love and approval.

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. This tendency is unavoidable and can only be discovered through open communication.

6. Attachment:
Attachment is dependent behavior that is biologically necessary 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 college woman told me that her mother called daily to tell her how to dress and what color to highlight her hair. The mother’s dependency made the daughter distrustful of her own opinions and feelings. 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 of attraction 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, make- up 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 fourteen 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.