My Mother, My Self-Image : How a Woman Feels About the Way She Looks Can Be Linked to Maternal Influence

IF A WOMAN HAS a positive attitude about her looks, chances are that her mother did, too. By the same token, psychologists say, if a woman is never satisfied with her appearance, her mother probably never was either. Consider Judi Baker, whose fashion-model mother taught her to feel confident about her looks.

“I knew I could make money looking my best, but I also knew that looks weren’t enough,” says Baker, who followed in her mother ‘s into the field and then spent her earnings from modeling and acting to attend college. “My mother always had a very practical, conservative attitude. There was nothing unhealthy about it; I just learned that it was important to look your best.”

Baker, now 40 and owner of a Los Angeles public relations and marketing firm, recalls that because her mother always used cosmetics, she grew up fascinated with makeup and learned to apply it while in the third grade. Baker’s daughter, Lauran, a child actress who has just completed her first television commercial, already knows how to use makeup, but Baker doesn’t allow the 10-year-old to wear cosmetics when she isn’t working. “My mother stressed good, consistent skin care,” Baker says, “and I’m teaching Lauran the same thing.”

Although helping young girls take pride in their appearance is desirable, placing too much emphasis on physical beauty can have negative effects on a woman’s self-image, says Dawne Schoenholz, a Santa Monica-based psychologist who studies family relationships. “The mother who is narcissistic and spends a disproportionate amount of time grooming gives her daughter a distorted sense of value,” Schoenholz says. “The young girl begins to believe that the image in the mirror is all-important.”

Schoenholz cites the case of a mother who wouldn’t allow her young daughter to sleep on her stomach for fear that the girl would develop wrinkles, a fallacy the woman had learned from her own mother. “This kind of pressure teaches a child that she can be valuable only if she’s beautiful--the Marilyn Monroe syndrome,” Schoenholz says.

Cri Cri Solak-Eastin of Pasadena remembers her mother as “the only woman on the beach who would wear a French bikini, and she was always paranoid about gaining weight.” The result, Solak-Eastin says, was that “I felt like a fat, ugly duckling. I was resigned to the fact that my mother was always going to be the more glamorous one in the family.”

Such competitive situations often can lead to a daughter’s not caring about the way she looks or becoming even more narcissistic than her mother. In Solak-Eastin’s case, she says, she became “determined to find my own paths to excel in.” Now 37, a spokeswoman for a diamond-industry trade organization and the mother of two young daughters, Solak-Eastin says that her mother “passed along the idea that looks make the person. I’m trying to be sure to never send that message to my little girls.”

Equating self-worth with appearance is a common problem between mothers and daughters, explains Allana Cummings Elovson a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles. “Even among many of the most educated women, the belief is still that beauty is power,” says Elovson, who studies the link between appearance and women’s mental health. “Many girls are pressured to believe that being a ‘perfect’ woman means being beautiful.”

At the other extreme, a mother who attaches almost no importance to appearance also communicates a silent but powerful message. “She is typically a woman with low self-esteem,” Schoenholz says. “Her daughter not only inherits the poor self-esteem but also may place no value on taking care of herself. So she often looks as bad as she feels.”

A Pacific Palisades woman, for example, says that her mother never wore cosmetics or went to the hairdresser. “I thought that was absolutely normal until I got to high school and saw girls with styled hair and makeup,” the 44-year-old says. “I rebelled and started wearing cosmetics and dyeing my hair all through my teens and 20s. But look at me today--I’m ‘the natural look’ all the way. My mother influenced me more than I ever thought she could.”

So what’s a mother to do? Emphasize looks? De-emphasize looks? Schoenholz suggests finding a balance: “The most important thing a mother can teach her daughter is that she is valuable no matter what she looks like, while always encouraging her to look the way she feels best.”

Styled by Louise Turner; clothes courtesy of Club Monaco, Beverly Center.