Each mirror has its own spirit, reflects the looker in its own particular way. Some mirrors make everything look a little bit bent and strange, some are old and regal and make everyone look royal, some are brand new and too-powerful and just make you look like you have cancer and see all your imperfections. I have no idea how mirrors work, how they are made, what they are built with, who builds them (what kind of strange man in the 1700s and 1800s spent his life making mirrors), and am baffled and shocked that they have been around for thousands of years, the fact almost as surprising as that the Romans had elevators.
For as long as I can remember my friends have ragged on me because whenever I came upon a mirror in a street or a house I hunch over and make a bulldog face and get frozen in front of it, I stop and I edge to the side of it so I’m only seeing half of my reflection and scrunch myself up. I realize this outwardly looks like some kind of vanity but I’m not thinking that I look good, its that the image in front of me is completely swirling and strange to me, I’m just in there somewhere, screaming in the haunted house.
When I’ve been very skinny (after eating only avocados and tomato sandwiches for months and walking seven miles a day) I looked into the mirror and saw I was fat (but then looked at a photo and saw I was not fat), and when I’ve been fat, I can look at a full-body mirror and lift my shirt and feel somehow what I’m seeing is skinny or average weight (when a photograph proves otherwise, I’m getting fucking thick). Even with this miraculous reflection tool, it is hard to see oneself and one’s situation objectively. We’re too embedded in ourselves, looking out.
I remember talking to an ex-girlfriend in 2007 or something who got up in my face grinning, “Isn’t it weird that a plain girl like me” (or am I toning it down to be more “nice”, for no reason, and she actually said “a homely girl like me”?) gets all these guys, its my personality,”—I didn’t understand at the time, I thought we looked the same, we were equals, I couldn’t objectively see what she looked like or how she was or know what I looked like, I thought I was in love. But looking back at photos, yes, I was probably better looking by normal standards (but I didn’t know it or feel it at the time because I had/have Ugly Duckling Syndrome, I grew up a really fat eggroll kid shopping for jeans in the Husky section at Burlington Coat Factory, then for a while I got kinda-sorta hot—for a short guy, which is a specific taste—and now I’m trending back to a late 30s male classic body type, strong-fat). In the upside-down world I come from, it is not uncommon at all for smart-cool-socially-dominant girls to have a more conventionally attractive male partner (in my experience these guys often suffer from either low self confidence or over-reverence of social and intellectual qualities, or some combination of both; everyone else can see it, but shrugs and understands that love is not just about physical bodies, but sometimes those who are inside of it can’t see it, or do see it and don’t care, or you can say they’ve accepted their preferences, or they reject society, etc). In the conventional world, it is often the reverse, schlubby or dull guys can frequently have intelligent and conventionally attractive female partners.
The body, it decays, it lies, it’s a worthless vessel for the soul, it’s all true.
I tend to distrust and resent people who genuinely believe the body reflects the soul, i think it’s eugenics disguised as “looking good feeling good”, but I guess there’s a case to be made for it (health of body reflects health of lifepath and soul’s path). But also life and love is a fucking mystery and everyone is trapped inside themselves.
It seems very common for the men in my life that they seem to think they can get out ahead of their body changes by being the first one to acknowledge them, I know so many men who when you meet up with them its, “I’ve gotten fat” or “I’m getting fucking fat” that’s the first thing out of their mouths. Sometimes they have gotten fat, it’s true, sometimes it’s not true at all and what can you say, nah you’re fine. A friend and I for a while, the first thing we would say to each other is “you’ve gotten fat” or “you’ve gotten skinny” it got so bad that we decided to stop. My grandma did too, it was the first thing she said to anyone—you’ve gained, you’ve lost. People don’t generally comment on other peoples bodies or appearances these days unless its to falsely affirm their self confidence, so aside from these horrible, brutally honest truths between friends or family, all the data you’re getting out there aside from photographs is probably a lie (including the mirror, which lies like a dog).
And the bald guys—no one that isn’t bald or going bald understands what they’re going through—its an expected, socially-acceptable loss to anyone else (“oh, you look sexy, you look like Stanley Tucci!”), but oftentimes an existential reckoning with the loss of youth for the balding one. I’m not going bald yet but I’m always on constant nuclear alert for the day it will start.
There’s another troubling type of embeddedness, the face. Not just the lines and creases. See these lines? I’m truly disappointed, the good king Morrissey croons to us in 1991, when he has zero lines on his face, and is at his absolute peak hotness, it’s absurd. When I look into a mirror, I feel that my face and eyes are symmetrical, I’m looking through two eyes and they seem to line up perfectly. But when I was little I had seizures and seizures are like little strokes and it made my face slightly lopsided and asymmetrical—I can see it clearly in photographs and others can see it (sometimes) but I can’t see it in mirrors. I had a co-worker I didn’t know that well once ask me “How does it feel to have a Picasso face,” I thought that was really rude and I studied my own face for a long time to see if it was a Picasso face, I mean, maybe a tiny bit but not really, it was just a rude thing to say that lacked social graces. And some people who look at me can’t see it at all (or lie and say they can’t) and others can absolutely see it and point it out, or don’t point it out, but above all when I look in a mirror I look normal. Lack of symmetry, on an unconscious level, is simply not appreciated (understandably) in our society (Facial symmetry, like blondeness, being another thing passed down by God to show innate goodness and decency in people; Hey, symmetrical, have you ever, like, really reflected on your symmetry-privilege?)