Mirror Image?

I remember when I was about ten, we were at a family reunion and my rather plus-sized aunt ran over to my 8-year-old sister and exclaimed, "THERE'S MY LITTLE LOOK-ALIKE!!!!" My poor sister burst into tears on the spot. No one wanted to look like my aunt.

Fast forward twenty years: About a year and a half ago, our favorite babysitter Hillary informed me that my girls refused to play with any blonde Barbies. She went on about how cute it was that my BLONDE girls would only play with the ones that looked like their mom. I was a little touched; I mean after all, it might be the first instance where ANYONE preferred Barbie's brunette friend to beautiful, blonde Barbie!

Well, within the last year, Amelia's hair has started turning dark, and instead of embracing the brunette tresses that she loved so much before, I would catch her looking at her hair in the mirror and saying to herself, "Why is my vanilla hair getting mixed in with chocolate?" Now when people tell her (which is pretty much daily) that she looks like her mom. I see her wince at my hair and tell them one of two things, "Ya, but my hair is STILL vanilla" or "I don't look like my mom; I look like Aunt D" (my very blonde sister). Sometimes she is just quiet, and I seriously thinks she feels bad that she looks like her mom.

What happened to my little three year old that only liked the chocolate Barbies? Is she going to have "issues" because the whole world tells her that she looks like her mom and she really doesn't want to?