Taking in the carnage on the bathroom sink, it’s hard not to wonder if a teen girl sees the sight in front of her differently. If, in fact, she sees anything resembling a “mess” at all. As a mother, I try to have empathy. Try to remember “far back” (as my daughter would gladly remind me) to when I was just a teenager. Reckless and self-obsessed. Except that I was never either of those things. I never had the luxury of being them. My own mother would never have allowed me to indulge in such a luxury. For a start, makeup was for whores. And also, if I had time to be “painting my face like a harlot” after staring at and examining it in the mirror for almost an hour, then I could surely be doing something else more meaningful and worthwhile. 

My mother did not believe in idleness. Beauty practices, to her, were an especially gross form of that. She believed in nothing more than an extremely spartan “skin care” regimen (i.e., splashing your face with ice cold water and scrubbing it with a soap bar). And even that was pushing it toward the verge of “vanity.” While some might assume that my mother was a “homely” woman based on this, it was quite the opposite. She was very attractive, even without putting in any effort. Some part of me believed that her beauty had been used against her in the past—whether she had been criticized by her mother for it or perhaps taken advantage of sexually, prone to that old expression, “Beating them away with a stick.” Except that, in my mother’s youth, it wasn’t considered “ladylike” to fight off the advances of men. One was expected to simply grin and bear it. Which I imagine she did on more than one occasion. And I suspect that this is the real reason she despised any preoccupation, on my part, with “being beautiful.” She imparted within me the belief that there was more to life for women than being ornamental, and that hard work and dedication were instrumental to ensuring that. 

I used to resent her for keeping me so “plain” in the prime of my youth, but, as I watched my friends and acquaintances become increasingly obsessed with their appearance and how it would afford them the “perfect husband” after college, I grew to appreciate my mother’s venom for vanity. Suddenly understood what a waste of time it was, especially since cultivating it would result in the same end regardless: being considered day-old bread by the time you were in your twenties. Only as a woman, of course. Men could get as old as they wanted, and it would make no difference to their “cachet.” It was the same now, as my daughter grew into her teenhood with a narcissistic vengeance. Indeed, all I could think about whenever I walked past the bathroom and caught her staring at herself in the mirror was that famous painting of Narcissus by Caravaggio, where he stares into an almost blackened pool of water at his reflection. In fact, the entire color palette is dark, enveloping both Narcissus and his reflection in blackness. Because that’s what it is to be self-obsessed: one enters a black hole, and then becomes one themselves. 

It upset me to watch my daughter transform into this raging teen girl Narcissus. Not just because it meant I spent most of my free moments tidying up the ruins of her various beauty products sprawled out haphazardly on the sink, some of the contents smeared across the surface in creamy or serum-y blobs, but because, unlike my mother, I couldn’t seem to get through to her about how frivolous she was being. She either wrote me off entirely or nodded along in one instant and then proceeded to do exactly what she wanted in the next. Her effrontery was heart-wrenching, and made me have a whole new appreciation for every time I might have barked something mean back at my mother for her mere expression of care. 

Those days of being concerned about “hurting Mother’s feelings” were long gone. My daughter’s generation had practically “updated” entirely to being humanoids instead of humans. They had been all but lost to the mutations caused by technology, and it was hopeless to try to ground them in any values they deemed “boomer.” I found it comical that, when I was her age, somehow my birth cohort was labeled as the “Me generation.” Just because we got caught up in the very thing our government ultimately wanted us to: consumer “culture.” What else was there to preoccupy one’s time with when there was no world war going on? Then there was the accusation that we had become more concerned with our own self-fulfillment than a sense of social responsibility. Even though Kennedy had only told us just recently, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

I guess boomers forgot about that message real quick as the 60s wore on and there was Beatlemania (proof that the U.S. had nothing to offer at home) and the Vietnam War and free love. I didn’t forget though. I never forgot. My mother wouldn’t have let me. “Virginia,” she would say, “I won’t have you going around to some hippie love-in when you could be studying, or volunteering. Life isn’t about doing whatever you want just because you feel like it.” That was an indoctrination that stuck with me. I obviously never forgot it—I ended up becoming a social justice lawyer. All that studying she forced me to do paid off. 

But now, I can’t seem to do the same for my daughter, who, just yesterday, told me she’s changing her name to Periwinkle, and that’s how she wants to be referred to from now on. She’s planning to start an OnlyFans account soon, too. Of course, she didn’t tell me this directly, I saw the message exchange when she thought I wasn’t looking. She thinks I can’t “side eye” and drive at the same time, and it’s allowed me to find out more about her than I ever would have otherwise. Unfortunately, what I know for sure is that my daughter is a vacuity monster. With little inside her head other than thoughts of herself.

My mother would be so disappointed in what I’ve raised. And I’m glad she’s not alive to see what “Periwinkle” has become. She died when my daughter was just six years old, able to forever have the vision of her as someone innocent. Because when you’re a child, self-involvement gets a pass. When you’re a teen girl, it becomes quite ugly…despite how aware the teen girl is of her beauty and its power. 

And so, until she turns eighteen, I’m condemned to clean up after the wreckage of this bathroom counter on a daily basis. It’s the only thing I have control over in my daughter’s self-obsessed life.