Me and the mirror
Body image, self worth, and making sense of what we see
Welcome to the Esther Studio newsletter! I’m Carly, PhD, a marketing professor and jewelry designer living in the Midwest. While I normally write about clothes and personal style, in today’s post, I’m meditating on body image. If “body stuff” isn’t what you want to read right now, I totally get it. See you next time.
I’ve been looking at my body in the mirror a lot lately. I stop and stare when I’m getting dressed in the morning, or getting undressed at night. I take a good look when I’m in the restroom, passing the mirror on the way to the toilet or shower. I also make any reflective surface a mirror. I’m insatiable.
My time in front of the mirror is time spent thinking or, rather, judging. I focus my scrutiny on certain parts of my body. Since bodies change throughout the day, each judging session brings new information and feelings. Sometimes I think I look great, and I’m happy. Sometimes I judge myself so harshly that I feel not only upset about my body, but upset about the judgment itself. Regardless of the outcome, I’ll keep coming back for more.
The patterns I’ve been falling into are called body checking. This term doesn’t refer to a run-of-the-mill once-over before you leave the house to make sure you don’t have anything in your teeth. Often linked to disordered eating, it goes beyond regular grooming practices to cover a preoccupation with one’s appearance.
My body checking habits aren’t constant. There are weeks, months, or even years when I’m more lenient with myself or, rather, more loving towards myself. This isn’t one of those times. As a feminist and a scholar of body image, I know what’s going on, but I still feel a bit powerless to stop it. I’m not panicking, but I don’t feel great, either. My relationship with my body feels a bit like a yellow light. I’m noticing, and I’m cautious.
What if I don’t look?
I have a former student who once told me about the summer she spent working at a camp that didn’t have mirrors. This summer affected the way she considered herself, and the way she carried herself. In a way, she was free. I often think about this story and wonder what it would be like to be a bit oblivious to what I look like. I fantasize about that freedom.
Recently, I’ve tasted this mirror-less nirvana on the treadmill, of all places. I don’t know what came over me, but I realized something quite serious: When I look at myself in the mirror when I’m running, my pace feels ambitious, maybe even too fast. Conversely, when I look at a neutral space, like a blank spot on the treadmill’s dashboard, and focus on how my body feels instead of how my body looks, I could run even faster.
It’s a small shift, but what a difference it makes. This change in focus allows me to turn down the noise of my body checking.
I don’t quite know what to do with this information. I don’t think it’s practical or realistic to live in a world without mirrors, so this situation feels like a standstill. Somehow I know that if I want to move forward, I have to really consider: when I look in the mirror, what am I hoping to see?
“Seeing” my worth
As a researcher, I spend a lot of time asking questions and looking for answers. As a human with shaky body image, I spend similar kinds of energy trying to get a sense of exactly how I appear - not only to myself, but to others. This is an impossible task.
The challenge of a mirror is that it’s flat, and the image it reflects back can be distorted, making it unreliable. No matter what I do, I can’t tell how big or small I am, or what shape I am, in three dimensions.
If I twist my words just right, the need to see myself “objectively” sounds scientific. Unfortunately, it’s not that noble. If I’m being honest, I’m looking for data to prove that I’m either beautiful or ugly, desirable or undesirable, which can only go poorly. If my data are favorable, the high is short lived. If my data confirm my deep-seated fears that I’m ugly or undesirable, I’ve just made myself feel bad.
As a woman, so much of my self-worth is wrapped up in my appearance. The only comfort I can glean from this truth is that I know I’m not alone in this, and I know it’s not really my fault. But it’s no way to live.
Like any psychological phenomenon, body checking is a problem when it takes up too much space - when it stops a person from enjoying life’s pleasures. Right now, I’m at a place where I’m not particularly enjoying myself, and I don’t want to slide further into my preoccupation with my reflection. The main tool I’m using to help with this is the same tool that got me into this trouble in the first place: my curiosity.
What can a mirror do?
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can best understand my mirror image in order to dull its effects. This process has been a bit bumpy.
At some point in my mental gymnastics, I decided that, because I will never be able to see myself in three dimensions, I can’t rely on the mirror to reflect reality. I decided that I am not my mirror image. I felt like a genius. Maybe I could be free.
Unfortunately, the physics of mirrors is fairly inescapable: when light waves reflect from the flat surface of the mirror, they reflect, in an equal and opposite direction, as the original waves. Oh.
It was my friend Allison who, via text message, found a way to reconcile these ideas.
“You AREN’T your mirror image,” she said. “You are existing in, and perceiving the world, as YOU (not as you appear in the mirror). Yet, everyone else perceives you as [what you see in the mirror].”
As we touched on the disorienting experience of “skinny mirrors” versus “fat mirrors” - mirrors that distort our reality in “positive” or “negative” ways - we saw the fragility, impossibility, and even power of negotiating so many images.
“My current thought,” Allison said, “is that there are multiple versions of what you ‘actually’ look like. Just as how two people can have two different interpretations of a moment in time. It might not be a dichotomy, but rather a spectrum.”
Allison’s idea is a reminder that, like most things in life, understanding our bodies (in any context) isn’t black and white. Reducing our bodies to a mirror image, or discounting that image entirely, is not the point. In fact, it’s what can get us into trouble in the first place.
Life beyond the mirror
As I try to come to terms with what the mirror means to me - an ongoing project, naturally - I’m focusing on being gentle with myself. I am not my mirror image, and I am my mirror image. My appearance is also fluid - it’s everything that happens when I step away from the mirror and actually live my life.
I am the way my curly hair swirls in the wind.
I am the way my eyes crinkle when I smile at a friend.
I am my freckles that emerge in warm spring sun.
I could, in theory, see these things in a mirror, but I can also feel them, imagine them, or ignore them.
What I don’t want to do is dwell on them.
Thank you for being with me here today. I hope you’re doing well! If you don’t mind sharing, I’d love to hear in the comments (or in an email) about your relationship with the mirror. Have you ever been preoccupied with your appearance like I have? Have you found a way to deal with all the “body stuff”? Let me know your thoughts so we can learn from each other.