Mine had bulimia (unsuspected until we were all in our late teens) and terrible body image/shape issues (not hidden at all, ever), so a big thing I did with my DDs was to never, ever, comment on their looks or mine. I also made a point of always praising the process by which an end product was achieved, but not the end product itself (mum was always more concerned about the end product and how everything looked, and what the teacher said about it).
She was also a very hippie-ish person in many ways and eschewed nail polish and makeup or spending much time doing her hair - maybe a throwback to her boarding school teen years in a strict Irish convent. So we all had to muddle through as best we could without any advice and sometimes in the teeth of outright discouragement -- according to her we were far too young for all that malarkey (at 16). Not helpful imo, and actually I believe girls need to have the support and encouragement of their mother or some female mentor figure (in my case an aunt) to shed childhood and enter womanhood with confidence in their appearance because that is a big part of being a woman.
So I have never restricted my own DDs from doing all the leg and armpit shaving and experimenting with makeup and hair that they wanted. Nor have I ever commented on any of the results except to remind them that Mrs X The Dragon Teacher will send them to the office if she sees the nail polish. They like going to get a manicure occasionally and I send them off with my blessing. They know how to ask for what they want and to leave a tip.
Weirdly enough mum was a great cook so I learned a lot from her, but refused point blank to get in involved in sewing and knitting, which she also did a lot of, so I couldn't sew or knit to save my life for many years until I was faced with the necessity to run up a halloween costume and realised it wasn't at all the complicated business mum had always implied it to be (she's a total perfectionist).
Being a total perfectionist put us all off from talking with her too, so if there was any problem we just dealt with it. She really couldn't deal with things not being hunky dory all the time and I think we all felt responsible to not rock her boat.
The perfectionist in her also meant we we didn't get to do much by way of chores (nothing could be done right except by her), and that is another way I have differed from her approach. The DCs all have their (what I see as) fair share of things to get done, that they are responsible for, and I am satisfied with an honest effort. There is such a thing as a clean enough house, a tidy enough bedroom, etc.
We do a good deal of chatting, and they know I am a shoulder for them to cry on. They mock me for my taste in music and fondness for reading, but in a funny way. After a few years of inflicting visits to museums and art galleries on them they have grown to enjoy those trips as much as I do. I think there's a good deal of give and take. There are also lots of hugs and pats on the back, which I feel the boarding school squashed out of mum.
Mum was always a really intelligent and in some ways very sensible person and I hope I inherited some of that in my dealings with the DCs. She talked with us about her childhood but overshared about unfairness she experienced (imo) -- there was always a gloss to it of How They Did Me Wrong. I don't confide at all in my DCs as a result, though I do chat about childhood back in the dark ages before computers, etc., and about my aunts and uncles and their extended family. They wouldn't really know these people any other way as they live elsewhere.
A lot of what I do is based on asking myself WWMD and doing the opposite
I wait in trepidation for DD1's first novel...