The mother's elective surgery put up against young Annie's struggles with weight and race (in the film's only mawkish moment, the child wishes she could rip her skin off), compared to Elizabeth's shockingly
vulnerable scene in which she asks an actor lover (Dermot Mulroney) to critique her
naked body and contrasted with Michelle's compensatory indiscretion with a boy less than half her age (the exceptional Jake Gyllenhaal).