I am living proof that ugly ducklings don’t always grow up to be beautiful swans. Sometimes they really are just ducks.

My mother was about Hester’s age in 1941. She was not homely, but she thought of herself as unattractive because she had unconventional looks that didn’t fit into the classic mold for beauty that had women and girls in an iron grip back then. To her credit, she never made a big deal about my physical flaws.
While reading the story, I was feeling all relieved that we don’t have to deal with all the rules and conventions surrounding appearance that women used to be chained to, like redheads not being allowed to wear red, and worse. I know a woman who had a scholarship to Stanford in the 40s, but had to turn it down because she couldn’t afford a college girl’s proper wardrobe.

Then I remembered the way modern culture and fashion tries to chain women, especially young ones, to even worse rules and conventions that are still all about looks and “beauty.” My daughters and nieces struggle to be modest without being dowdy. I have friends who’s grandchildren mutilate their bodies in their effort to be fashionably attractive. Maybe we haven’t improved at all since then.

About the mystery of pregnancy for young children, I recently read the following written about my great-great grandmother by one of her daughters, the ninth of twelve children born between 1894 and 1917:

Mother wore long cotton dresses with a long white apron over them. We never know when she was pregnant—we didn’t know the word. I was one of the young ones, so I would be told, “We have a new baby” after the arrival.

But pregnancy would be a harder secret to keep as styles changed!

Now, the interesting thing would be what she thought about the situation a couple days later.

(But unaware of the pregnancy? Yeah—that’s weird. Even women who don’t show end up showing, you know?)