Book Giveaway: Best & Worst Advice from My Super Model Mother 

Best & Worst Advice from My Super Model Mother 

By Anna Murray

Here’s my mom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here she is again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And again.

It must have been hard with her as your mom.

I’ve heard that comment a lot over the years. 

Being a teenager is tough enough. Having one of the planet’s most beautiful women arching a perfectly plucked eyebrow at you every morning? It had to be hell, right?

Surprisingly, not really. 

My mother’s decade-plus career gracing the covers of magazines, acting in TV commercials, and getting tapped for Hollywood screen tests actually resulted in a vast collection of wise philosophies and practical advice.

Also, like most moms, mine advocated some bad prescriptions and voiced her share of superstitions and silly old wives’ tales. 

My mom was the inspiration for the former-model mother character in my novel, Greedy Heart. Here’s Mom’s best (and worst) advice.

Mom’s Best Philosophical Musings

• Keep beauty in perspective

If I burned excess bathroom time primping, my mother would scold, “It’s not as if you need to make a living from your looks.”

Talk about a dousing with cold water! 

Mom was a depression-era woman who, with her earnings as Eileen Ford’s top model, hauled herself, her own mother, and her siblings out of poverty. 

She forced me to ask myself—What is the purpose of all this fussing?

In my mother’s worldview, being well groomed and “presentable” was required. 

After that, enough was enough.

• Age is just a number

My mom never—and I mean never—commented on her looks and aging. 

“I don’t understand what you girls are going on about!”  Mom would throw up her hands in frustration at my friends and me as we passed thirty and aging became a hobby horse we rode constantly. 

To mom, age was just a number. You could like—or not like—how you looked at any age. 

You could choose to make the most of your looks—or not—whether you were 26, 66 or 86. 

Here’s Mom at 86.

• Dress for yourself 

 “That’s the way all the girls <insert style here>.”

Like many teenagers, I insisted other girls were wearing their jeans, doing their hair, applying their makeup a certain way. So I must do the same.

Mom’s comeback: “Are all the girls doing what they want? Or what the boys want?” 

This brought me up short. Was I frizzing my hair and wearing tight jeans because I liked it, or because I perceived that’s what the boys liked? 

Of course, I thought that’s what the boys wanted.

I carried Mom’s perspective to later life, which made it much easier to develop a “look” of my own for an audience of me.

Mom’s Best Practical Advice

• Lipstick is all you need

And a little concealer.

If you have time for nothing else, put your hair in a ponytail, apply a dab of concealer under your eyes and a swipe of lipstick. 

With that, “You’ll look put-together.”

(Note: Lipstick and concealer are all Mom’s wearing in the photo above.)

• Underwear is the most important garment

They called them “foundation garments” for a reason.

In Mom’s book, underwear meant a “good bra” and a girdle

Given the number of bra and Spanxx ads on Facebook, I’d say Mom was ahead of her time.

• The best fashion accessory is a good pair of shoulders

Just google “t-shirt dress” to prove this piece of wisdom to yourself.

Can you imagine a garment with more potato-sack potential? Yet all you need is need a good pair of shoulders to pull it off. 

Look at how this great-shouldered gal rocks a t-shirt dress.

For those of us with narrow shoulders, Mom had a fix. 

And don’t think “80s linebacker.”

Mom kept a drawer full of small, naturally rounded shoulder pads to pull out for any fashion emergency.

Mom’s Worst Advice

Most moms pass on as much by what they don’t say as what they do. 

My mother didn’t graduate high school (She was working as a model from age 13), and therefore was daunted by math and money. She subtly conveyed that you should just let someone else handle the finances.

Needless to say, that approach never worked out well for her—or me!

Mom’s Silliest Advice

Like most mother’s, mine had any number of ridiculous axioms.

If you shave your legs, the hair comes back thicker. Chocolate causes acne. Cracking your knuckles gives you swollen joints. If you cross your eyes, they’ll get stuck that way. You shouldn’t swim with your period. Peanuts at night are indigestible. You need to pee on a burn. A hat on the bed or bird in the house means there will be a death. 

But by far her silliest was 

• Dishwashers give you food poisoning. 

Mom asserted that no dishwasher would clean plates as well as a good hand scouring. Therefore, if you used one, you were bound to end up with food poisoning.

Several decades of dishwasher use has proven this one wrong. 

GIVEAWAY

What’s your mom’s best or worst advice? 

We’ll choose a winner from the comments. (US only) You’ll receive two copies: One for you and one for your mother or best friend to read together. 

 

—-

Anna P. Murray is the author of Greedy Heart, a debut novel about inheritance, attraction, greed, infidelity, hoarding, and morality told through a fictional tale of the financial crash.

A technology consultant by day, Murray began her career as a teacher and journalist before founding an early stage web company, which built many national brands’ first websites.

The firm, tmg-emedia, later expanded into broad-ranging technology consulting. Murray has won multiple awards for her technology leadership and as a woman tech entrepreneur.

GREEDY HEART, A.P. Murray

For Delia, math just makes sense–more sense than people, anyway.

It’s 2006, and Delia Mulcahy is living in a shabby apartment and facing crushing student debt. Suddenly, she’s plucked from obscurity to work for Wall Street’s top hedge fund. Determined to make her millions, Delia must master the cutthroat world of big-stakes trading and profit off of the cataclysm of the looming crash.

In the underbelly of finance, no one is who they say they are. Delia finds herself embroiled in devious schemes and duplicitous deals as her recklessness threatens every relationship in her life: family, friends and especially the two rival CEOs vying for her genius.

It’s a high-risk game and she is a better player than most. When her soul is on the line, how much is enough for her greedy heart?

BUY THE BOOK HERE

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips