So I've been thinking about this for a while now and wanted to discuss the similarities between two of my favourite female character ever Betty Draper and Beatrice Horseman and they both were a victim of their childhood trauma which was put on to them by their parents and they passed it onto their successor and how their story took a nearly identical form. SPOILERS WARNING for Mad Men and Bojack Horseman Alright both Betty and Beatrice had childhoods that planted the seeds of their eventual downfalls. Betty was a model, raised to believe that her beauty was her most valuable asset, and the world around her solidified this belief and it created a stigma in her mind that she is only valuable until she got her beauty. Her mother forced the idea in her head that she was nothing without her looks, turning her into a woman who used beauty as armor. Beneath her perfect exterior were insecurity and rage, a desperation to control the world that continuously slipped through her fingers. Beatrice, on the other hand, was born into a wealthy family, but money did not shield her from emotional neglect and abuse. Her mother was lobotomized after a breakdown, just because he attached herself to her son and didnt know how to live without him and her father was a controlling figure who dismissed emotions as weakness. Beatrice learned that vulnerability led to punishment, and she got stuck with this ideology, so she built emotional walls so high that even those she loved could not climb over them. Unlike Betty, who obsessed over her external image, Beatrice walled herself off internally, seeing emotional attachment as a weakness she could never afford. Both women learned twisted forms of love. Betty's love was conditional, an exchange for admiration or control, while Beatrice’s love was an being a stone hearted mother because she never wanted to get emotionally connected with Bojack because eventually one of them will have to be alone and she was doing this twisted mercy on him. Eventually, their children, unfortunately, bore the brunt of their mothers' traumas. Betty's obsession with appearance and control deeply affected Sally. Betty projected her own insecurities onto Sally, constantly criticizing her weight, her behavior, and her choices. Sally grew up in an environment where love was conditional, based on how well she fit into the mold Betty wanted to shape her into. This strained their relationship, and Sally spent much of her childhood seeking affection and validation elsewhere. Beatrice's relationship BoJack, was even more catastrophic. She viewed him not as a child to love, but as a reflection of her own failures. Her emotional distance and cruelty damaged BoJack’s sense of self-worth, contributing to his destructive behavior throughout his adult life. The chilling moment when she burns BoJack’s toy, saying, “It’s a piece of your father you can keep,” captures her coldness perfectly. Both Betty, Beatrice raised a child who would spend his/her life chasing the love and approval that she could never give. Betty and Beatrice both met the same tragic ends, shaped by the same emotional distance that defined their lives. In her final moments, Betty’s need for control was shattered by the lung cancer diagnosis that would eventually take her life. Despite a lifetime of carefully curating her appearance and controlling those around her, she could not control the most fundamental aspect of her existence—her death. She asked Henry, not to reveal her condition to anyone but he informed Sally about it and Sally informed Don about it, who was prolly the last person she wanted to tell, not because of hate but she didnt wanted him to interfere his pride in this. Beatrice’s demise was perhaps even more tragic. She died alone in a nursing home, her mind ravaged by dementia. In her final moment with BoJack, she does not recognize him, mistaking him for a stranger. But she got what she always wanted, a woman who had spent her life keeping others at arm's length was left utterly alone, with no one by her side as she faded away. Both of th3m were women trapped by the ideologies they inherited and internalized. And they also shared the same tragic end. Betty, who always sought control, lost control over the one thing that mattered most—her life and death and even her family. In her final moments, she could not even dictate how her family would respond to her illness. Her last attempt to maintain her image crumbled when Sally told Don about her condition. Beatrice, who spent her life pushing others away, died alone, and the tragic comedy was that she was forgotten even by her own mind. Her isolation in her final days was the ultimate result of a life lived in fear of emotional closeness. The walls she built to protect herself became the walls of her prison, and in the end, she was left with nothing but the coldness she had embraced. And it was sad to see both of their conclusion The lives of Betty Draper and Beatrice Horseman are tragic tales of women shaped by their pasts, doomed to repeat the patterns that destroyed them. Their twisted forms of love left scars on their children, and their inability to change or escape their circumstances led to their lonely and tragic ends. In the end, both were the victims of the very ideologies they believed would protect them, leaving them to fall with no one by their side.