I'm Glad My Mom Died

Jennette’s mother is darkening Jennette’s eyelashes, a part of the routine “maintenance” that she insists Jennette needs in order to enhance her “natural beauty” (95). Jennette lists the features of hers that her mother lists as proof of this natural beauty but points out that each positive seems to have a negative that requires “maintenance.” Jennette wonders if this supposed “natural beauty” is just another way to say that she is “ugly.” Jennette gets dye in her eye. As her mom tries to wash it out, she thinks about how the acting career has made her mother’s obsession with her looks worse. When Jennette was rejected for the lead role in the movie Because of Winn Dixie, her mother fought with Jennette’s agency over the phone. Eventually, the agent admitted that Jennette lost because she “reads more homely.” Jennette’s mom “hung up the phone and started wailing like somebody died.” For Jennette, “It was the first time I wished that I was prettier” (99).

Since the Winn-Dixie rejection, Jennette has worn the same outfit to each audition, an outfit that she finds embarrassing and unfamiliar. Her mother insists she wears it to an audition for a guest role as a hermaphrodite on Grey’s Anatomy.