Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall

by Kjerstin Gruys

  Unfortunately, our joint venture actually started out worse than my first bridal salon experience, and felt all the more disappointing because of my high expectations. Instead of bonding, my mom and I bickered over directions the whole way to the store. Nothing builds anticipation like a few U-turns and wandering around strip-mall parking lots. Once we arrived at the first salon, instead of being fussed over by an attentive pack of fairy-godmotherly sales associates, we were treated with disdain by yet another snooty saleswoman (I was sensing a trend here) for daring to request last season’s discounted samples instead of the pricier new designs. “Oh, they’re in the back,” she said, dismissing us with a flick of her hand to fend for ourselves in a poorly lit walk-in closet stuffed with dresses in various states of disrepair. It smelled of mothballs, and the carpet was stained. Suddenly bonded again, now that a shared enemy had made herself known, my mother and I persevered. Release the hounds; the hunt was on!

  After an exhaustive search through the sample rack, we found my Wedding Dress #4. It was a strapless A-line gown, with lace trim at the bust, asymmetrical ruching across the waist, floral appliqués at the hip and on the back, and a long train with a delicate lace overlay. Pulling it out of the garment bag, I remember thinking that I didn’t even need to bother trying it on: It was so not my style. I’d always hated ruching (it reminds me of mummy wrappings) and floral appliqués (too girlie). And yet, thanks to my mother’s urging, I soon found myself standing in front of the shop’s massive three-way mirror, seriously considering a dress with both. I worried that this gown, however flattering, was lacking in the haunting uniqueness I was looking for; I doubted if it could possibly be “the one.” But my mom was certain it was.

  “Oh, Kjerstin. This could be it. I think it is. It’s beautiful! I’m getting goose bumps!” And she was. My mother actually got goose bumps. I was puzzled. Shouldn’t I be feeling something goose-bumpy if I was wearing “the one”? At the very least, I thought, I ought to be crying and flapping my arms around, like those crazy women on Say Yes to the Dress, right?

  But I had to admit, it fit beautifully—though Ms. Snarky Snootypants Saleslady couldn’t resist mentioning with a huff that it seemed “a bit tight behind your armpits.” Minuscule back fat be damned, my curves looked balanced instead of wonky. There was no doughnut in sight, thanks to the powers of asymmetrical ruching. I could breathe.

  The price tag read $700, a steal at 85 percent off the original price. I still wavered, protesting that I wasn’t sure, but my mother insisted. “I’d like to buy this for you,” she offered. I was touched. I sensed that buying me my wedding dress would feel like a gift to her as much as to me.

  I still had my doubts, but I was also broke, frustrated, exhausted, and couldn’t face another minute of second-guessing my taste or my body. Hearing my mother tell me that she was certain came as a relief. I needed a dress in which I felt comfortable, and in that shared moment with my mom, I also realized that I needed to give up my plans for bridal perfection (though I had no idea how). Perhaps I’d fall in love with the dress over time. Good enough would have to be good enough. I nodded my head, my mom wrote out a check, and then it was done; I owned a fourth—and hopefully final—wedding dress.

  After months searching for and trying on wedding gowns, I was relieved to have found a dress I felt comfortable wearing. But I was also getting really, really sick of staring at myself in the mirror. While shopping for dresses, I’d become the worst version of myself: insecure, indecisive, and vain. My vanity had already cost my family and me over two thousand dollars in white dresses, an amount higher than my monthly salary at UCLA! Worse, I’d lost both time and emotional energy in the process. The dress shopping had pushed me to an uncomfortable edge, and—with the requisite dress fittings (plus bridal makeup and hair trials)—there was only more vanity to come. I’d definitely reached that point of diminishing returns, and something had to give. It was time to take a serious look in the mirror.

  Or was it?

  ONE

  March

  BEAUTY, LOVE, AND THE ANGST OF SEX AFTER PASTA

  People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

  ELIZABETH GILBERT

  FOUR CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS (AND ONE MORE WEDDING dress acquisition) in two days left me exhausted but proud of myself. I was ready to go home to California, and soon found myself on my five-hour flight back to Los Angeles. I’d made grand plans to “get some work done” en route and, as usual, my intentions for work devolved into something more closely resembling a self-help therapy session between my inner thoughts and the personal journal I keep on my laptop. At the beginning of the flight I was all business, but by the time I landed, I’d hatched a crazy plan to shun mirrors for a year.

  After settling into my cramped-yet-cozy window seat and waiting anxiously for the cue to stop hiding my electronic devices, I opened up my laptop and began to review the syllabus for my upcoming freshman-only seminar, titled “Gender, Appearance, and Inequality: From Evolutionary Psychology to Contemporary Feminism.” I’d taught this course once before, but it had been over a year since then and I needed to reassess the planned readings and assignments.

  Teaching this seminar had been one of the greatest joys I’d experienced since entering my graduate program. I was the sole seminar instructor to a small group of students and was allowed to choose any topic I wanted and customize the syllabus as I saw fit. I took it upon myself to design and teach a class I wish I’d been able to attend during my own college years. Over the ten weeks of the class, my students would be learning about the relationship between a person’s looks and her opportunities. Each week, we would explore how appearance shapes our experiences in a different social arena, including childhood, education, our careers, our romantic relationships, and our health and health care. We would consider how our culture’s beauty standards reinforced inequality across other social categories, like gender, race, class, sexuality, and age. As I perused the prior year’s lesson plans, I skimmed over article titles and book chapters, noting any that needed to be replaced with more current research.

  I could hardly wait for the first class, scheduled for the upcoming Monday afternoon. I enjoyed nothing more about my job than opening my students’ eyes to the various ways in which having (or not having) “beauty” shaped their lives, and then giving them tools to combat these issues. And yet, it sometimes felt as though I had only depressing news to deliver (well, depressing to anyone who wasn’t a supermodel). Whether one subscribed to the tenets of evolutionary psychology or to those of feminist sociology, the facts about beauty and one’s life chances were the same: Appearance dramatically shapes our lives, and in predictable ways. At every single life stage, and in almost all social relationships and interpersonal interactions, good-looking people tend to be advantaged over less attractive people.

  Indeed, psychologists have identified a widespread belief that people who are beautiful are also kinder and more intelligent than people who are plain. This so-called halo effect has enormous impact on our life experiences. More adorable babies are paid more attention by their parents than homely babies. Ugly children are presumed by their teachers to be less intelligent than good-looking children (although extremely beautiful children are often penalized for their looks, purportedly because their teachers resent them). Overweight girls are less likely to attend college, regardless of their academic preparedness. Above-average-looking women earn 12 percent more than average-looking women throughout their careers (the effect is even higher for men, at 17 percent). In fact, if you compare the best-looking workers with those who are the most homely, you see a difference of approximately $230,000 in lifetime earnings. Beautiful women tend to marry better-looking and higher-earning men. Attractive people get better terms on home
loans (although they are more likely to default, since lenders overestimate their ability to pay). Even good-looking criminals tend to receive lighter sentences compared with homely criminals committing the same crimes. Statistics like these made me feel like apologizing to my students at the end of each class for causing them emotional trauma!

  I could anticipate how these facts and figures would make my students feel because I knew how they made me feel. Even after spending an entire week of class discussing the subjects of social change and activism—not to mention the years of research and real-world experiences I had behind me—it was difficult for me to envision a world in which beauty didn’t afford so many privileges. I knew that most of my students would be disgusted by some of what they read—including stories of parental neglect and peer bullying of overweight children, of “hogging” (a cruel bar game in which men intentionally “seduce” fat or unattractive women and then let their buddies and the woman in on the joke), and of court cases in which companies blatantly refused to hire (or made a practice of firing) workers who didn’t fit the right “look”—but I couldn’t control how my students would make use of this information. I hoped that they would feel angry, and that their anger would motivate them to change the world. But I feared that, instead, my students would feel fearful that such atrocities could happen to them, and that they would then use this fear as an excuse to change themselves. I wavered between these reactions on a daily basis myself.

  Even with the embarrassing multiple wedding dresses saga fresh in my mind, as I read through my syllabus on the plane, I couldn’t help but wonder if I ought to be spending more time and money on my appearance instead of less. Didn’t this body of research basically prove that improving my looks would improve pretty much every aspect of my entire life? More money! More respect! Lighter criminal sentences for my hypothetical crimes! By these accounts, investing in and obsessing about my appearance wasn’t vain or silly, but instead strategic and rational.

  I caught myself before this thought went too far. It amazed me how easily my anorexic conscience could sneak its voice into my internal debates. I knew the data, but I’d been leaving out part of the story: In addition to all of the “beauty makes your life perfect” research, I also knew that, despite all of its perks, beauty has only a negligible impact on overall happiness. For example, in a recent study on the connection between beauty and happiness, participants were asked questions about their levels of happiness while, unknown to them, their looks were being rated on a one-to-five scale by researchers, either face-to-face or from photos. Those who were rated to be in the top 15 percent in terms of beauty were found to be 10 percent happier than those in the bottom 10 percent in terms of beauty.

  Although a 10 percent increase in happiness may seem pretty meaningful, I couldn’t help but note that this meant that the most stunningly beautiful people in the world would be only 10 percent happier than the most strikingly unattractive. In other words, the most anyone could (theoretically) gain by improving his or her looks would be a 10 percent increase in happiness, and that was only if that person went from strikingly ugly to strikingly beautiful, which seemed pretty impossible. By that same logic, moving from “average” looks to being strikingly beautiful (which still sounded pretty difficult) would have an even smaller effect on improving happiness.

  In a similar study, researchers found that, despite being highly prized by respondents, physical attractiveness again predicted only small variances in survey respondents’ reports of pleasant feelings, unpleasant feelings, and life satisfaction. Clearly, even if people believe that beautiful equals good, beautiful does not actually equal happy. As Leo Tolstoy wrote, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

  Making sure my seminar students understood these findings would be of critical importance if I wanted them to make fully informed decisions about the time, energy, and money they spent on their looks. For the same reasons, reminding myself of these studies felt timely.

  While I considered this body of research and how I would present it to my students, my brain quietly switched from teaching mode to self-overanalyzing mode.

  It was obvious—scientifically obvious—that being what our culture considered beautiful was no recipe for happiness. I knew this on an intellectual level and from personal experience. And yet I felt as though being anything less than beautiful wasn’t good enough, wasn’t safe enough. I opened up a blank document in Microsoft Word and started journaling.

  The FACTS:

  Beauty = good for $$$, dating, not getting “hogged,” & home mortgages

  Beauty = not that great for being happy

  Clothes + makeup + celebrity-endorsed organic juice fasts = expensive

  Anorexia & Dieting = getting sick, being in pain, being miserable, feeling insane

  The average American woman is 5'4" and 165 pounds.

  The average runway model is 5'9" and 110 pounds.

  I am 5'5" and 155 pounds.

  The FEELINGS:

  Being very thin = feeling safe and good about myself

  Being 5'5" and 155 pounds = feeling ugly, ashamed, and unattractive

  THIS IS SO MESSED UP!!!

  I knew I wasn’t ugly. In fact, if people who said I looked like my younger sister, Hanna, were telling the truth, I was probably pretty, or at least cute. But for some sick reason, despite all of my accomplishments and good qualities, the idea of being merely “cute” or just “pretty” felt like a failure.

  It may seem strange that I could feel so insecure about my appearance while imagining myself to be above average in looks. A weird combination, I admit, but a common one: Research suggests that 80 percent of adult women are dissatisfied with their bodies, and that this problem starts early, with 42 percent of first- to third-grade girls wanting to lose weight and 81 percent of ten-year-old girls afraid of being fat. Yet we also know that the majority of women believe themselves to be above average in looks (a mathematical impossibility, which is why psychologists call this a positive illusion). In other words, most of us are dissatisfied with our looks while thinking that we are above average in appearance. Strange indeed, but it made perfect sense to me: Being above average (or “cute”) doesn’t mean squat when your culture tells you that anything less than airbrushed supermodel perfect is actually the same thing as being ugly. Add to this the widespread messages from our media suggesting that a woman’s beauty (or lack thereof) is her most defining attribute, and suddenly it’s easier to understand why a healthy body image is so rare among girls and women in our culture.

  My own body insecurities have mostly had to do with how a romantic partner might view me. I’d always known that my family would love me no matter what I looked like, and I’d even begun to suspect that my academic colleagues took me a bit more seriously in my current “geek-chic” style and slightly chubby state, rather than if I were glamorously en vogue and very thin. I’ve always loved my friends for their intelligence, kindness, goofiness, and quirks, and had learned to appreciate these things in myself—when it came to friendships, that is. But I didn’t believe that I could ever be lovable in the romantic sense if I wasn’t skinny. Instead, I’d long imagined that being stylish and beautiful was a trade-off I could offer my boyfriends in exchange for my numerous faults, such as being bossy, impatient, emotional, neurotic yet messy, and a know-it-all. In particular, I worried that my feminism needed apology. I’d often imagined that dating an outspoken feminist like me was something any decent modern man ought to accept, but also something that few would really celebrate. I told myself that being a feminist might be more palatable if I could at least look really hot while passionately defending gender equality. I aspired to be a feminist trophy wife, as if such an oxymoronic state of being could possibly exist.

  Of course, falling in love with Michael—and having him love me back—was hard evidence that I didn’t have to look like a Victoria’s Secret model to
be loved. He even seemed to cherish my outspoken feminist side. Despite realizing this on an intellectual level, it was still hard to accept emotionally. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Michael to suddenly come to the realization that he’d made a mistake and could do better, either by finding a more beautiful woman with my personality or by finding a more agreeable woman with my looks. This was my greatest fear.

  The next thing I typed into my journal was important:

  What matters more to my happiness, my looks or how I feel about them?

  And then:

  Other than me and my imagination, does ANYONE ELSE actually have a problem with the way I look?

  My family, my friends, my colleagues, and my soon-to-be husband didn’t seem to have a problem with what I looked like. I was the only person in the entire world who did. (Okay, to be totally honest, I was a little worried that my future mother-in-law, Sherry, didn’t think I was pretty enough or thin enough for her beloved firstborn child, but I tried to temporarily set aside this nagging suspicion.)

  My insecurities clearly had little to do with my actual appearance, and everything to do with how I felt about it. I didn’t have a body problem, but a body image problem. In addition to being a perfectionist about my looks, I’d somehow allowed them to determine too much of my overall value as a person; I’d conflated my body-esteem (how I felt about my looks) with my self-esteem (the feelings I had about myself as a whole).