"If you're a daughter, your mother's face is your first mirror, and if you share her features - in our case hazel eyes, brown hair, a serious amount of freckles, a small frame with those 'narrow shoulders held erect' - odds are you'll unconsciously adopt her attitude of self-regard.  My mother considered herself to be plain, if not homely, and so I believed her, and so I considered myself...I carried this phantom twin wherever I went, no matter that I couldn't have been more different myself..."
-Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own by Kate Bolick