Mom’s culturally Mexican and grew up very poor. I think she internalized the idea that doing everything picture-perfect and looking “normal” is necessary in order to be safe.

I don’t mean to diminish her. She was pretty brave about supporting feminist causes, and she’s been a good mother in a lot of ways. I was just pissed off.

(Me and fiction again: there’s this movie called Fido that’s about zombies attacking a 1950s community. The way the characters were more afraid of social shame than of zombies kept reminding me of Mom.)