One Ugly Mother
I used to be beautiful. Then I had a child. Now I’m a troll.
Photo by Teresa Castracane.
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Dear Prudence,
I used to be a very beautiful woman with a fit body and pretty features, but since I had a child 11 years ago I have become a hideous troll. My stomach was destroyed by my pregnancy. What was once a flat tummy turned into a full-blown panniculus. At age 45, I’m overweight, I inherited a giant bullfrog neck and jowls from my grandmother, and my nose is growing into a perfect replica of my mother’s giant schnoz. I absolutely can’t stand to look in the mirror. I have a great husband, beautiful child, great friends, and I love my job. I am still fairly young, in good health, and I have so much to be thankful for. I’m happy with my life, but I’m miserable with my troll-like appearance. A couple of years ago I worked very hard and lost 40 pounds through moderate exercise and religiously counting calories. But I was miserably hungry most of the time and my body shape was just a smaller version of the disgusting new apple-shaped me. Within a few months of coming off the diet I gained all of the weight back. I’ve tried new hairstyles, dressing better, scarves, makeup, etc. I know I’ll never be 120 pounds and gorgeous again, but how can I accept the unsightly creature I’ve become? I feel so bad for my husband—he married a princess, but now he’s stuck with a giant toad.
—Aging Ungracefully
Dear Aging,
I will accept you have a belly you don’t like and jowls that drive you crazy, but I don’t believe you’re the monstrosity you’re making yourself out to be. First of all, you give no indication that your husband has complained about or is even aware of your supposed transformation from princess to toad. You say he’s great, so it sounds more likely he accepts that neither of you look like you did when you first met. From your own description, you indeed have an enviable life, surrounded by loving people, engaged in satisfying work, enjoying good health. So there is an abyss between how you see yourself (and how the people in your life see you), and what appears when you look in the mirror. First, think about the effect of your self-loathing on your child. You want her or him to absorb the lesson that one should be grateful for one’s good fortune and not obsess over superficial things. But it’s undeniably true that how we feel about how we look matters. You’ve gone the hairdo, scarf, and makeup route and it just makes you feel like a spiffed-up ogre. That’s debilitating, and though by inclination I’m not a plastic surgery advocate (as the bags under my eyes will attest), I think in your case some alteration on the outside might cause a big shift in how you feel inside. A tummy tuck is major surgery, but you are majorly unhappy. I’ve had friends who felt the way you did about their belly and neck, had them fixed, and were delighted with the results. If you consider plastic surgery, make sure you do your due diligence and find an experienced and reputable surgeon; you don’t want to end up on Botched. If you go under the knife, make a serious vow that you will limit the number of improvements. I’m sad about the death of Joan Rivers, but down the road you don’t want your friends and family, when they look at you, to think they’re seeing her double.
—Prudie
Dear Prudence,
I recently bumped into an old friend and his sister who I hadn’t seen in may years. After enquiring about their parents, I was informed that their mother was in a long-term care facility with advanced dementia and that their father had committed suicide only a couple of weeks prior. They told me that he had become increasingly despondent and suicidal after the institutionalization of their mother. They persuaded him to move out of the family home and into an eighth-floor apartment with a balcony. He jumped to his death on his first day there. These two siblings hated their father, who was a terrible parent. But I have been nagged by the feeling that their installing him in an eighth-floor apartment, knowing his suicidal tendencies, constituted a perfect murder. I know this is not something I could report to authorities but I am so bothered by what I was told that I feel I have to speak to someone. Is there any course of action I could or should take?
—Perfect Murder?
Dear Perfect,
How glad this suffering pair must be that they ran into their long-ago friend, Sherlock, who now wants to pin the death of their depressed (and rotten) father on them. Thank you for not going to the police with your fantasy. Now that you’ve floated your deduction in this column, I hope that satisfies your desire to bring even more misery to these people. Let’s look at the events as they likely played out. Their mother became so disabled she could no longer be at home and had to be put into a nursing facility. Their father—aging and despondent—was no longer able to maintain the family home. Given the huge expense of caring for an elderly parent, the children—with their father’s agreement—sold the home to help pay for both parents’ needs, then installed Dad in an apartment. That plan sadly lasted only one day, and however awful a father he may have been, surely these two are reeling from what happened. There is a course of action I do suggest you take. Get out your stationery and write a note to your old friends. Say you were so happy to run into them but distressed to hear the painful news of their parents. Say your heart goes out to them and they are in your thoughts. Make no mention that these thoughts include pinning patricide on them. Then be content to get lost from the lives of these long-lost friends.
—Prudie
