ters, too. Some mothers become strict and controlling, overreacting
to teenage music and dress styles, even when their daughters are
behaving appropriately for their age group. Such mothers may im-
pose their own “dress code,” which emphasizes covering up and
deemphasizes attractiveness, and may prohibit many activities. They
may screen their daughters’ friends of both sexes, or, as one woman
ruefully observed, may treat either their daughters or boys or both
as “potential sex maniacs.” Like fathers, mothers too can develop a
“jailer mentality” toward their Aphrodite daughters.
Intrusiveness may be more common in the mothers of Aphrodite
daughters than in the fathers. Besides the intrusiveness motivated
by the need to “keep on eye on” their attractive daughters, mothers
sometimes live vicariously through daughters and want to hear
every detail about their dates. To please such mothers, daughters
need to be popular with boys.
Other mothers react competitively to the emerging Aphrodite in
their daughters. Threatened by their daughters’ attractiveness, and
envious of their youth, the mothers depreciate the girls, make unfa-
vorable comparisons, flirt with their daughters’ boyfriends, and in
many large and small ways undermine their daughters’ budding
womanhood. In her fairytale, Snow White’s stepmother repeatedly
asked, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
This fairytale character represents the threatened (and therefore
hostile) competitive mother.
The most helpful parents do not overvalue or overemphasize
Aphrodite qualities and do not treat their daughters as pretty objects.
Both parents affirm their daughters’ attractiveness in the same pos-
itive way that they value other qualities such as intelligence, kind-
ness, or talent for art. For the dating situation, they also provide
guidance and limits appropriate for their daughters’ age and matur-
ity. Attractiveness to men is treated as a matter of fact that girls need
to be aware of (not blamed for).
ADOLESCENCE AND EARLY ADULTHOOD
The adolescent and young adult years are crucial times for the
Aphrodite woman, who may find herself caught between the stir-
rings of Aphrodite within her and the reaction
Aphrodite: Goddess of Love and Beauty, Creative Woman and Lover