The girl’s vanity and jealousy arise from worth hinging on others’ approbation

Evidence

What astonishes Olivia are the promises she thinks she reads in this image in which she recognizes her childish dreams and which is herself; but the girl also cherishes in her carnal presence this body that fascinates her as if it were someone else’s. She caresses herself, she embraces the curve of her shoulder, the bend of her elbow, she contemplates her bosom, her legs; solitary pleasure becomes a pretext for reverie, in it she seeks a tender self-possession. For the boy adolescent, there is an opposition between love of one’s self and the erotic movement that thrusts him toward the object to be possessed: his narcissism generally disappears at the moment of sexual maturity. Instead of the woman being a passive object for the lover as for herself, there is a primitive blurring in her eroticism. In one complex step, she aims for her body’s glorification through the homage of men for whom this body is intended; and it would be a simplification to say that she wants to be beautiful in order to charm, or that she seeks to charm to assure herself that she is beautiful: in the solitude of her room, in salons where she tries to attract the gaze of others, she does not separate man’s desire from the love of her own self. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 848 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A young girl’s discovery of the boy’s penis can arouse envy rather than shock; The girl’s humility produces her inferiority, not the reverse — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 834; The girl’s narcissism follows from an early craving to be looked at by others (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The girl’s narcissism follows from an early craving to be looked at by others #corroborates (0.85)
• The adolescent girl fuses narcissistic self-love with desire for male admiration #corroborates (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 848