The idea for this book began to grow, when Jenny, a thirty year-old woman, entered my consulting room for the first time, and after a whispered hello, told me about what brought her to therapy. “I’m a poster child for insight. I’ve learned a lot from books about body-image, self-image, how to improve your social life, how to be more sensual, how to lift self-esteem, and how to find the right husband. But I can’t seem to use what I’ve learned to change the way I feel when I’m out there hoping some guy will fall in love with me despite my nose."
She went on. “The looks thing seems to be a family tradition on my mother’s side. She told me she had a similar problem around my age – different part of the body. She didn’t like her breasts because they were too small and made her feel like damaged goods. And she compared herself to her mother, who had the hourglass figure that society put on a pedestal in those days. I get the feeling my grandmother was kind of obsessed with the body thing too. Only for her, it was about feeling superior to other women. My mother said my grandmother made her feel that what she called her 'almost-there breasts' were inferior to my grandmother’s full ones. She said that as a teen she remembered my grandmother saying things like ‘Don’t you think you should wear a top with a more interesting neckline to make that the focal point?’”
“I think she passed the body shame thing on to me. Only for me, my wide nose is the problem. I can’t feel a guy’s eyes on my face without wanting to crawl into a hole, because I hear his thoughts. This woman has great eyes and a nice smile. She’d be attractive if it weren’t for her nose that takes up her whole face.”
"While listening to Jenny I had a memory of myself as a little girl at an amusement park funhouse. I caught myself in that distorted mirror that stood next to a truer one. I kept going back and forth between the two mirrors, transforming myself at whim. At that age I wasn’t always sure which image was real and which wasn’t, so I alternated between giggles and wariness. Was that creature looking back at me only make-believe?"
— From the introduction to My Mother, My Mirror: Recognizing and
Making the Most of Inherited Self-Images by Laura Arens Fuerstein, Ph.D.