Posted by Racer on June 11, 2004, at 11:11:10
In reply to mirrors, posted by shortelise on June 11, 2004, at 9:39:09
HA! Man, I crack myself up.
Yeah, reflective surfaces are not my friends. They're in league against me, every last one of them. When I look into the mirror, right at first, before they realize I'm looking, my body looks kinda normal -- the hips are kinda average sized, etc. As soon as the mirror realizes that I'm looking, though, within the first few seconds, those hips expand to enormous proportions and I'm looking at the Venus of Willendorf.
Other days, my face is so hideously deformed that I can't believe small children don't run away from me on the streets.
There are days - as far as I can recall -- when the face in the mirror is average enough that I think I might not die of pernicious ugliness.
And I do remember there have been times when I thought I could pass for pretty, if no one was being especially critical, or looking too closely.
Most of the time, when I put on makeup, I look at pieces of my face, rather than the whole thing. Some days, the pieces are all negative: the papery wrinkles around my eyes, the chicken pox scar near my nose, the acne scars here and there. Other days, though, I look at the nicely shaped lips, or the quite excellent natural shape to my eyebrows, or even the pretty eyes themselves.
I think the mirror is a supernatural instument, which reflects back to us not what is really there, so much as our internal perceptions of our selves. On days that I think I'm pretty well worth the oxygen I remove from the environment, my mirror tells me that I won't frighten small children. On days that I want to breath more shallowly, so avoid taking more than my share, the mirror shows me someone quite obviously mad and twisted.
Long winded way to say, yeah, I think it's a real phenomenon, related to self-image.
poster:Racer
thread:355682
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040603/msgs/355723.html