I don’t blame her, in all honesty. Imagine looking like that with a very pretty mom who’s popular with the menz. It’s a heavy burden. An intelligent woman can find a way to create the mystique of “my daughter is the real beauty in the family” but Ilhan Omar is not an intelligent woman.
“The regular-looking daughter of a beautiful mother” is not an easy role in life. It’s very much like the role of “a son of a very successful father.” The culmination of the mother-daughter relationship is when the mother hands off the crown to the daughter. But what if she isn’t ready? Or has no crown to give at all? (Mine had no crown and had only the vaguest suspicion that the crown existed). The culmination of the father-son relationship is when the father moves out of his role as the leader of the pack. But what he’s not ready to step down? Or if he never was a leader?
Clarissa's Blog 
University professor says it’s all directed from above by those like Omar. Her own university has mainly Arab students, yet had zero demonstrations so far:
Студенты наши немного разбушевались
https://matsea.livejournal.com/361455.html
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It’s not Arabs. It’s rich wokes. There was a student who tried to organize something on our campus but she failed because nobody heard of Palestine. We are simple folks around here, and thank goodness for that.
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Look at the faces:
These aren’t Arabs. These are clinical idiots.
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This is what happens when you have no entrance requirements at uni.
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This is a strange post of yours. This young student looks … very young and delightful (other photographs show her online show her smiling and doing things). People haven’t completely grown up at that stage.
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Her mother is a very beautiful woman. It’s not easy for a young girl.
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Both of them are beautiful, actually.
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Let’s be serious here. I know Americans are terrified of commenting on appearances and every time I say I’m not thin, a terrified chorus tries to convince me that yes, I am. But it’s tiresome and we should be able to discuss physiology like adults.
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This isn’t about physiology. I’m not American, and not terrified about commenting about physiology, but there isn’t actually that much difference in features between the two. It’s just that the mother wields her sex appeal to maximum effect, whereas the daughter, in a slightly but not unusually delayed bit of identity formation, presents herself as the opposite – stiff, schoolmarmish, dressing like a caricature of a nerdy 12 year old. There’s trauma here but I feel like the barely-there differences in physiology aren’t the root cause of it.
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Finally, somebody understands what I mean about the crown. A mother in full bloom often pushes the daughter into an unsexed, stiff persona precisely because she doesn’t want to be outshined. None of this is conscious but it’s definitely an existing phenomenon.
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So how does a mother hand over the crown gently?
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I could write a dissertation on this but one suggestion is start asking for advice instead of giving advice. My daughter is only 8 but I take her with me when I shop for clothes for myself and ask her to help me select items and style them. I’m not the fashion icon in the family anymore. I’ve handed that over to her.
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Hey now, you can’t threaten us with writing a dissertation on the subject and then not do it 😀 I’d love to read about it
The asking for advice thing makes so much sense, btw. Makes you not look like unapproachable perfection.
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People don’t like these discussions because they can’t tolerate the idea that “free choices” aren’t the only explanation of reality.
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“the daughter, in a slightly but not unusually delayed bit of identity formation, presents herself as the opposite”
That’s what I meant… she’s convinced she can’t match her mother’s attractiveness so she goes in the opposite direction….
you phrased it better than I did.
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I didn’t cook for a decade after I moved out of my parents’ house. My mother is the cook in the family, and I had no place in that role. When I finally ventured into cooking, I discovered that I have a natural talent for it. It’s now a favorite hobby.
Similarly, I couldn’t write my Ukrainian book until my father died. He really wanted me to but it felt like competing with him on his home field and I couldn’t do that. It’s not an unusual thing at all.
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For me, I won’t teach – my mother’s field, not mine. And also, if you remember that dressing for your shadow side blogpost of yours, and how you ended up suggesting for me pencil skirts,dressy jackets, pumps and pastel colors? That’s my mother’s style to a T (well, except the pastels, we’re both high-contrast brunettes so substitute that with black/white and jewel tones). When you suggested it, it felt like wearing a costume.
Interestingly, my younger sister doesn’t have the same unwillingness to step on mother’s turf I appear to have, both from a professional and a sartorial point of view. Probably because as the firstborn I butted heads with her more often, whereas my sister got far more… I’d say benign neglect but not sure that’s precisely it.
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Benign neglect is a reasonable assumption for younger siblings 😉
My family definitely heaped all their resources and expectations for success on my oldest sister (who was also the oldest grandchild). She went out and became a big success and made the family proud like she was supposed to. The rest of us were more free to do as we liked. Pressure was off.
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“Both of them are beautiful”
She’s certainly not as bad as she looks in the picture. I suspect that she’s intimidated by her mother’s looks and is going out of her way to de-attractivize herself, which is a not uncommon strategy of daughters of very beautiful women.
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I honestly do not see that there is anything wrong with her looks, for a teenager.
v07
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And now imagine telling a teenager (or anybody, really), “There’s nothing wrong with your looks.” What do you think the reaction would be and why?
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For fuck’s sake, some people are not appearance-obsessed even as teenagers and can acknowledge being average in looks without it being a personal tragedy.
And of course the reaction depends on the situation. “There’s nothing wrong with your looks” can be a response in a conversation with someone with low self esteem thinking they are ugly when that is not the case, or someone who has trouble getting dates/keeping partners because of personality problems claiming their looks are to blame.
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Let’s not exaggerate. She’s not hideous. Only the really hideous ones like being “average.” Precisely because average is an unattainable dream.
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What nobody seems to get is that I’m defending this young woman. She’s either reacting to a tactless mother or she’s a Jew-hating egotistical poseur. There’s no third option. I prefer to hope for the best and feel compassion instead of contempt.
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Why is there no third option?
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Observe mother and daughter on the same turf:
Even in tiny snippets from the back and the side, the body language says everything.
I have such an age difference with my kid that by the time she’s 20, I’ll be geriatric, so no danger there. But I’d wear a burqa before doing this to her in public. Especially on camera.
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She’s got a lot to work with, though, it’s mostly the glasses making her look plain. And those are a fashion statement these days.
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But I am not talking to her. I am talking about her. In the context of other people comparing her to her mother. From my perspective -too early to compare. Or to psychoanalyze. Let’s wait till she is 25. The trend with age seems upward, based on google images.
And teenagers are universally unhappy with their appearance, regardless of who their mother is and how popular she is.
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That’s so not true about all teenagers hating their looks. Massively not true. I knew I was pretty. So did my sister. So does my niece. Liking your looks is the norm.
One thing I never had a problem with is being extremely happy with my looks. Even when I was covered in PUPPPS and my skin was oozing pus in all view of strangers.
This bothers me because I keep hearing how all girls hate growing breasts. This is so weird. We all wanted breasts when I was growing up. We loved having them. I’m sure it happens that somebody feels uncomfortable but it’s very far from the norm.
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Good for you.
But then I am confused about your position – what do you base your attempt at psychoanalysis on?
I did read the article – it does not discuss Isra’s appearance. Where did the idea of comparison with her allegedly beautiful and popular mother came from in the first place?
v07
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It came from my head, like everything I write here. 🙂
And Ilhan Omar is not allegedly beautiful and successful. She’s very really both these things.
If you can’t relate to it from a female pov, think about sons of highly successful, larger-than-life men. They are very VERY often completely defeated in life. Alcoholism, drug addiction, suicidal tendencies. I’m not speaking about Hunter Biden right now but my sister spends a lot of time with self-made millionaires, and they almost invariably have these loser sons that are sad to watch. Daughters of successful men, by the way, don’t have those problems at such scale.
I’m thinking, for example, if I were male, it would be hard for me to crawl from under the image of my brilliant, charming, widely admired father. It’s an interesting issue to ponder. How does one become a man when that slot is completely filled by a hugely impressive dad? How do you become a woman when nobody sees you next to a beautiful mom?
One road is to deny the value of the criteria within which the parent is successful. Dad makes tons of money, so I’ll be homeless. Mom is a star, so I’ll be antisocial.
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OK, I paid zero attention to Ilhan Omar and even less to her daughter, so I do not know. My theory – in general, not specific to them – is that it is not parent’s success per se that is messing up the child, but parent’s narcissistic tendencies. And it seems we live in a society that rewards narcissistic tendencies with success. So to me there seems to be a correlation, not a cause and effect relation, between parent’s “success” and child’s problems.
v07
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I don’t like casual uses of the word “narcissist.” My mother is an actual clinical narcissist. There are no qualities there that remotely lead to success. It’s a terrible affliction and, yes, it’s horrible for the children but it’s not because the parent is successful. To the contrary, such a parent can’t cope with the most basic duties of adult life and the children have to carry that burden.
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I am well aware that the word “narcissistic” is overused and often employed as a universal swearword, same as ” fascism”, “racism”, “communism” in the old days, etc… I said what I wanted to say and chose my words carefully. Using “narcissistic tendencies” and not NPD, for example.
Yes, there is a subset of narcissists that are not successful. Does not negate what I said.
And I obviously did not say that all successful people are narcissists.
v07
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I don’t understand how the word “narcissist” is used conversationally. Does it mean confident and arrogant? That’s the opposite of narcissist but that doesn’t even matter. Is Obama smug and arrogant? Yes, to the extreme. Is Trump? Ditto. But their children are completely fine. Biden, on the other hand, doesn’t come off as arrogant at all. And look at his son.
None of the three men have anything resembling a narcissistic disorder but even as used conversationally the word doesn’t make sense.
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And I hear you about your mother… I will not comment on it here as I do not remember what things you mentioned on the blog and what you mentioned outside of the blog. I meant no disrespect by not addressing that part of your response.
v07
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Conversationally it is often used to shame people one does not like. Hence my analogies with racism, fascism, etc. I, however, was not using it “conversationally”. I have read quite a lot of stuff on narcissism, as in NPD and similar things that do not reach the level of full blown NPD. I do not want to have a long off-topic debate right here, but there are two main classes of narcissism. The one you are probably talking about is covert/vulnerable/eternal victim type. But there is also the grandiose one, more in line with classic Freud’s definition.
v07
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That grandiose definition – that’s Trump, right? It’s like it was created specifically for him. But look how well-adjusted his children are. Different wives, yet the children all are doing well in life. We don’t know how the prostitute’s son will turn out but the rest are impressive.
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It’s the BLM all over again. Even the time of year is similar.
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Regarding Columbia University canceling “all in-person classes for semester” because of pro-Palestinian protests, how does it affect the quality of education?
Were I a student there, I would’ve been furious that my education suffers and money is stolen, with somebody using those people from the other side of the world that I couldn’t care less about as an excuse to go wild publicly. A usual student wouldn’t truly care about either Jews or Palestinians.
And now this rubbish:
// Israel is increasingly worried by the prospect of the International Criminal Court in The Hague issuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli political and military leaders for alleged breaches of international law in Gaza, Israeli television reported Thursday.
According to Channel 12 news, three ministers and several government legal experts held an “emergency discussion” at the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday about how to fend off the potential warrants.
The meeting was convened after Jerusalem received messages indicating that such warrants could be issued in the near future, the report said, without citing any sources.
… there were also discussions about the possibility that warrants could be issued against IDF officers.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahus-office-hosts-emergency-talks-on-feared-icc-warrants-for-pm-ministers/
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It’s the end of the academic year, everybody is tired. What’s better than to cancel the last week of class and go sit outside instead?
I say it with frustration, obviously. But I do fear that my students” grades will be inflated this year because I feel a great sense of gratitude that they aren’t like the Columbia brats.
As for the international organizations, they have disgraced themselves completely in the past two years and are continuing to do so. They simp for Putin and Hamas. Globalization is discredited. Let’s all go back to the nation-state.
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And it spread to Harvard: https://twitter.com/NRO/status/1783487772835164493?t=F1gfrPXOt9oJ-hwjGQYc7A&s=19
It’s always the rich kids.
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I can understand this myself, my mother is still gorgeous at 62 and I am nowhere as good looking. She was a prom queen in high school and I was a fat girl who wore jeans, band T-shirts and sneakers with dark makeup in high school, she’s always criticized my dress sense and can’t understand why I don’t like makeup or shopping.
Even as a kid, I just hated clothes shopping and primping since I’d rather be reading and even more later on when I realized I was aromantic and asexual. I thought it was a waste of time to look pretty if I’m plain and don’t date and men aren’t attracted to me, I still think primping is a waste of time. I still wear band T-shirts and jeans but also with boho skirts, my students think I look great. Mom still thinks my style is terrible and that the skirts and T-shirts make me look like a hipster, I still get a weird sort of thrill wearing a black heavy metal T-shirt out of the house
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Thank you for sharing and the honesty. This is a real phenomenon that exists, and I don’t understand why people are so resistant to the possibility.
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Team mopey-raccoon daughters of poised, elegant mothers for the win. Although there’s some differences here, your mother holds on to her crown at 62 whereas at 42 my mother was, shall we say, very invested in us having matching ones.
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Invested or badgering you about it to drive home your deficiency on the field she claimed as her own?
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In general, honestly invested. I know myself to be a beautiful woman, and this is not something I’ve had to work for – if she hadn’t been invested in it, I don’t think this comfort in my own skin would have come so easily to me. But when I was a teenager, she was very badgering about things, and then I did feel like an ugly duckling for a few years.
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Hah, I like that metaphor of a crown. Thing is, she’d have no one else to pass it on to, I’m the only daughter and I’ve got two very masculine brothers. I guess she realized that her only daughter is a homely nerd and with two sons, she can keep the crown forever
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So what came first, the chicken or the egg?
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I guess it happened around 5th grade when I got into grunge and alternative music and dressed all grunge, I wore jeans and flannel and T-shirts. Mom probably realized I’d never be a pretty, girly daughter so she decided to keep the crown. Maybe she thought that since her one daughter is so unfeminine, it’s best to just keep the crown
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I lucked out– the crown was passed to my older sister.
Darn good thing too. I dress like a schlub because I have gnarly sensory issues with fabric and tags and shoes and things and I was never, ever gonna be a fashion plate ;)
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We had a very weird thing going where my mother wanted me to be athletic and my sister bookish. But we were the opposite. I’m bookish and my sister athletic. We had to take her to her sports events in secret from my mom and I had to hide my books.
It’s kind of very nuts.
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Yeah, that was not the thing we were up against. Whenever we had interests/activities, my mother either viewed them as an opportunity to make social connections of her own (so, if we lost interest, we couldn’t quit because now it was part of *her* scene), or an opportunity to display us like performing monkeys… which we hated above all things. We learnt to be very very secretive about our interests.
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Thank you, ma’am. I guess people don’t want to acknowledge this because an attractive mom/ homely daughter is something one sees in a lot of cheesy TV movies and pulpy novels, people see it as weird and cringy. I just wear what I want and try to look professional for work, I don’t wear my darker-themed shirts so I don’t freak out the kids. Right now, I’m wearing a floral skirt with red roses and a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt with the Californication album cover https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Californication_(album)#/media/File%3ARedHotChiliPeppersCalifornication.jpg
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I’ve suddenly experienced a profound need of a floral skirt with red roses. It sounds exactly like my kind of thing.
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“mother and daughter on the same turf”
Brutal….. she looks like she wants to run and hide….
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“narcissist. There are no qualities there that remotely lead to success”
To achieve success a person has to put themselves in vulnerable positions and risk failure and be willing to fade into the background at times and really pay attention to other people at times.
These are all things a clinical narcissist can’t do. Everything has to be about them and their success approximately 100% of the time.
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Exactly. The most successful people are the ones who failed and failed and failed, and it didn’t destroy them. To the contrary, it fueled them up to do better, to reach out for more.
My sister interacts with mega successful people in her work, and their life stories are incredible. People have known terrible hardship but they have all created s narrative where that hardship was important and necessary.
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