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My Mother is Ugly
Why we should all start learning to say it as it is
On a scale of 1–10 (with 10 being the goddess of beauty in whatever culture you decide on, and 1 being Mrs. Universe at the Ugly Witches pageant) where do you think your mother falls?
Pause and ponder on your score for a bit.
The Problem with Sentiment-informed Superlatives
It is commonplace to find people tag a picture of their mother, say on social media, and caption it, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World. When I see these posts, I enlarge the picture in question, assume the role of a pageant judge, and try to profile them. In certain instances, I struggle to reconcile the ugly person staring back at me, for whom beauty as an adjective would be a oxymoron. But who am I to tell another person their mother is ugly when I can’t even objectively rate mine?
For those of us who have great relationships with our mothers, our attachment to our mothers is one that cannot be easily broken. We practically survived on them coming into this world. Over the course of our lives, we’ve watched them slave away for us, or carry out acts of sacrifice that give a truer definition to unconditional love than any other nuance of this hackneyed phrase. On this premise, we adore them…
