We Need To Talk About Mirrors

When I was about seven or eight, I became completely enamoured with a Disney Snow White Talk ‘n’ View Magic Mirror. It was gold, with flashing lights and coloured rhinestones, and when you pressed the central button, the characters would take their turn to materialise in the mirror, flitting from the grins of Dopey and Doc one minute to the doe eyes of Snow White and heavily arched brows of the Evil Queen the next. My sister and I used to squabble over taking turns, each one of us eager to overlay the reflection of our childish chubby cheeks with the cartoon-caricature features of the holograms.

Back in those days, we didn’t think twice about looking in the vanity mirror. We had nothing to scrutinize, no conception that some people even did scrutinize their appearance - no idea that the worth of a woman was often weighted in her looks. It was light-hearted folly, and we loved it.

It’s approximately fifteen years later now, and my feelings about mirrors have changed dramatically, just like the looking glass that melts into “bright silvery mist" as Alice clambers above the fireplace to  visit the Looking-Glass House. Our world of the hypervisual behoves us to be image conscious. Try as you might be to sidestep the constant scrutiny on women’s bodies, you’re obliged to participate in some sort of insidious third-party judgement, whether that’s being confronted on the tube with a posters boasting nubile limbs and pore-free skin, or tabloid papers that objectify before-and-after baby bodies.

"Research has shown that gazing at your reflection for just ten minutes a day can increase anxiety"

It’s little wonder women harbour hang-ups when they’re socially conditioned to examine their perfectly-normal selves. We live in a society that is battling body image; research from the Department of Psychology, Kings College London has shown that gazing at your reflection for just ten minutes a day can increase anxiety and distress – even for healthy control participants in the experiment with no BDD (Body Dysmorphia Disorder) symptoms.  

In the Disney adaption of Snow White, the Magic Mirror never lies. The crazy thing is, mirrors don’t actually show our true reflection. As David Bate points out in Photography: The Key Concepts:

“...an infant achieves recognition of itself through its primary identification with its mirror image or other person (mother/father).  The fact that a child’s identity is instituted through an identification with an image that is ‘over there’ means that its identity is based in a misrecognition, an alienated image as itself. Thus human identity is always a precarious construct; precisely an identification (process) that is subject to ‘others'".

"Our reflection fails to take into account our feelings and thoughts we bring to each it day, depending on the infinitesimal shifts in our moods"

It’s hard to cast your mind back to the days of being a tiny toddler, when the allure of shiny objects – teaspoons, kitchen foil, patio doors – held newfound joy as we peered beady-eyed at our reflections. In those early stages of life, we’re conditioned to gain pleasure from misrecognising our reflection. Not only that, but our reflection fails to take into account our feelings and thoughts we bring to each it day, depending on the infinitesimal shifts in our moods.

During a recent scrapbooking session, I came across an interview in Red Magazine with Claudia Winkleman. She stated that she’d grown up in a mirror-free home because her mother wanted her to be less image-conscious; a family tradition she’s continued to practice with her own children, particularly with daughter Matilda.

“My mum feels that one’s exterior cannot be given too much importance. She wanted me to be clean, but she definitely didn’t want a daughter who was constantly pouting in the mirror. That's possibly why I’m so bad at putting my make-up, because I’ve always done it on my bedroom floor with no aid!”

Perhaps if there weren’t such a huge scrutiny on the female aesthetic, perpetrated by the media and pressures of social media alike, then we wouldn’t look at ourselves so much. My analysis of this changes day by day though. There are myriad reasons why we’re looking at ourselves more than ever before – and feeling down for what we’re greeted with.

“Before I gave up mirrors, I’d never imagined I could feel beautiful without knowing what I looked like”

I believe in societal acceptance for all bodies, of all descriptions, and I think that shunning the mirror would improve both our estimations of ourselves and the way in which we view others. Take Kjerstin Gruys for example, author of Mirror Mirror Off the Wall, who gave up looking in mirrors for a whole year. “Before I gave up mirrors, I’d never imagined I could feel beautiful without knowing what I looked like” Gruys said. Testimonies like this help challenge the idea that we are simply the sum of what we see in the mirror. Because actually, I feel more confident about myself when I’m pleased with an article I’ve written, accomplished a new skill, paid a compliment or done a good deed. Productivity, progress, and having complete conviction in my decisions - these are some of the things that have helped me focus less on the skin-deep stuff and helped me feel more fulfilled.

I’m going to try and stop looking in mirrors so much. This might well signal the start of some Bridget Jones mishaps ahead (see Mac eyeshadow applied to cheeks in the taxi for further details) but if we’re to fight societal relationships to beauty and personal worth, we need to stop worrying about what the mirror does, or doesn’t show us. It doesn’t mean that we’ll all love ourselves instantaneously, or watch our worries fade overnight, but remembering that the glass is only half-full when we appraise ourselves each day could go a long way towards self-love.