Nan

Nan

The story behind the portrait of my mom

Nan is a portrait of my mother. The reference picture I used was taken in the early sixties in Los Angeles where my father’s family had a home in West Hollywood. She is looking pretty hip with her nails done and cocktail in hand.

My mother was the first born in an upper class Irish Catholic family in Chicago. She was born into a culture with expectations from both her family's religion and their social standing. Of course this is true whether you were a boy or a girl, but somehow women have an obligation to be good, while there is an attitude for men that boys will be boys.

  • The phrase comes from a Latin proverb “sunt pueri pueri, pueri puerilia tractant” which translates roughly to boys are boys, and boys will act like boys. Western societies  have been saying some form of “boys will be boys” for at least 2,500 years.

After graduation from an all girls catholic high school, my mother was sent to secretarial school in 1938 knowing her younger brothers would be sent to Catholic Universities. The family had lost much of their wealth during the depression. I believe she took on the role of staying home and contributing her salary to pay househols expenses. Unlike her sisters who got married, she remained single into her 30’s.

Although she was technically a secretary, Nan ended up working for the President of Maybelline and later with the one of three founders of a large consulting firm Booze Allen and Hamilton. By 1950 she made more money than her brothers. She was successful and highly valued in her role, but an opportunity to move up into management would be an impossibility. She was trapped.

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