The looniness of the long-distance praise junkie

[dreadedcandiru2]

Of course, it's not just the fact that Elly has a really fragile self-image that makes her reluctant to change her look too radically. The bleating about how her omnishambles perm makes her see the same sort of stranger in the mirror figure-flattering (instead of figure-flattening) clothing would stems from her reluctance to admit that her outward appearance isn't who she is. For someone as superficial as she is, admitting that hair can be cut, dyed and otherwise styled and clothing is simply packaging for the person underneath is not one she's willing to make....especially given her near-bottomless hunger for praise.

This latter factor that makes her think that nooooobody loves her and nooooobody wants her to be happy and pretty and smart and right because they can't feed her addiction to approval without her trying to move the goalposts makes for a rather horrible self-induced calamity: she's been reduced to trying to fish compliments out of her idiot son about her appearance when anyone can tell you that the idea of his mom being attractive gives him a severe case of the galloping fantods. Since someone contractually obliged to be horrified and scandalized by having a hot mom says so, she thinks that she's hideous when she's just genre-blind.