Vanity represents the desire for and obsession with being beautiful. There is also an ironic bashfulness in her shrug, as a woman might also be overly critical or shy with her sexuality, while being ostentatious. The use of poppies for her hair further symbolizes this aspect of beauty and the power a woman holds in her sexuality.

In My Mother's Effect, the woman is my mother, Alla, staring back at me, as if a memory. She's bald, vulnerable, and eerily lonely. This is what is left of my mother's effect on me. I'm left with a fear that I would follow in her footsteps: divisive in her relationship with my father, drowning in alcoholism, and burdened by her escape from our family when I was a little girl. Would I be the same type of mother? Is this not a memory, but a reflection from a mirror? This reminds me everyday that I'm better than her. That I'm not her, and I'm not destined to follow either.