Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall

by Kjerstin Gruys

  Take, for example, an experiment in which several dozen undergraduates were divided into two groups. One group was given a two-digit number to remember, and the second group was given a seven-digit number to remember. Then the students were told to walk down the hall, where they were presented with two different snack options: a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad. Here’s where the results get interesting: The students with seven digits to remember were nearly twice as likely to choose the cake as the students who were given only two digits. It seems that those extra numbers took up valuable space in the brain—they were a cognitive load—making it more difficult to resist a decadent dessert. In other words, willpower is so constrained that all it takes is a few extra bits of information before the brain starts to give in to the temptation of a few bites of cake! This study hit close to home. Looking back on the years I’d spent struggling to avoid a few bites of cake (and most other foods, for that matter), I felt a surge of compassion toward my younger self. But would I be able to feel compassion for my current self during this year without mirrors?

  Another study recommended that people focus on only one resolution at a time as a way to prioritize limited willpower. Since avoiding my reflection would certainly require ample willpower, my year without mirrors would therefore be a bad time to restrict myself to a tight budget, to give up any of my other bad habits, or to go on a crash diet, for that matter. This all sounded fine with me! Considering how tempted-to-go-on-a-crash-diet I’d been feeling, reminding myself to avoid cognitive overload was one more source of motivation I could give myself to stay healthy while planning my wedding.

  My favorite study on willpower pointed to the importance of controlling one’s environment. This University of Chicago study, which tracked people’s reactions to different temptations throughout the day, showed that the people with the best self-control are, paradoxically, the ones who use their willpower the least often. Instead of fending off one urge after another, these people set up their lives to minimize temptations. They played offense instead of defense, using their willpower and self-knowledge in advance to set themselves up for success.

  This rang bells of truth from my own experiences. During my recovery from anorexia, I’d had to direct my willpower toward repressing urges to be obsessive and unhealthy about food, which was a constant battle. Even though I was committed to recovery, when left to my own devices, I tended to either rigidly eat the exact same “safe foods” at every meal or fall into bingeing free-for-alls. To work around my food quirks, I eventually learned to keep my home free of foods that triggered binges and to satisfy my urges to track food by keeping an online food diary, which helped me make sure I was eating a healthy variety of nutritious foods (including treats!) in normal portions and at regular times. I also gave myself permission to obsess and read labels to my heart’s content while shopping at the grocery store, even if shopping took extra time, as long as I left the store with a healthy variety of foods. This helped me feel more comfortable eating whatever I felt like when at home. These tactics helped me learn to eat more mindfully, which, to me, meant paying enough attention to my food to ensure that I was eating a balanced and nutritious diet, but not being so wary and restrictive that I became inflexible or missed out on eating for pleasure.

  These strategies were enormously helpful in terms of keeping my body fully nourished, but I’d had mixed feelings about them. I’d felt guilty for not having the willpower to simply snap out of my disordered eating by eating completely intuitively, i.e., without the added structure of careful grocery shopping, limiting the types of foods in my home environment, and keeping a food and exercise journal. But with my newly refined understanding of willpower, I felt proud of myself for developing strategies that prioritized my willpower where it mattered most—at the point at which I kept myself healthfully fed and sane. Realizing that I already had the skills to cultivate willpower was motivating. It reminded me that I would be bringing almost thirty years of life experiences to my no-mirrors project.

  In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin outlined a list of overarching principles to guide her throughout her quest to become happier in one year. She called it her “Twelve Commandments.” Encouraged by this idea, I gave some thought to what I had learned over the years, scouring through several of my old journals for revelations I’d arrived at along my path. I compiled a list of the ten most important things I’d discovered about myself, my body, my core values, and how to live in accordance with those values. In the spirits of Rubin and comedian David Letterman, I decided to call this my Top Ten Ways to Be Kjerstin list. Here it is:

  Challenge your assumptions by doing exactly what scares you the most. (If you don’t, you’ll never know and you’ll never grow.)

  Good enough is good enough!

  Your body is perfect, but your mind could use improvement.

  Equating your body size with health is the fastest route to poor health. Focus on healthy behaviors, not the number on the scale.

  Look to your role models for guidance at the crossroads. Act in accordance with the confidence you had as a three-year-old. If that doesn’t work, channel Miss Piggy.

  Be a role model.

  Fake it ’til you make it.

  Ask for help and accept it when offered.

  Sanity comes first.

  There is beauty in the breakdown. Let go.

  My Top Ten Ways to Be Kjerstin list, I hoped, would serve as a guide for me over the next 363 days in my quest to avoid mirrors and become a better Kjerstin.

  • • •

  I ENCOUNTERED THE FIRST OPPORTUNITY TO DRAW STRENGTH from my Top Ten list the very next evening. I’d been invited to a dinner party at the home of my mentor at UCLA, Dr. Abigail Saguy. Abby, as I called her, had been my primary advisor since the first day I started graduate school. In fact, she was the reason I applied to UCLA in the first place. Abby’s research—which explores how larger body size has come to be understood as a public health crisis—was at the forefront of academic knowledge about the politics of body size, and I wanted to be there, too.

  As a mentor, Abby was generous with both her time and willingness to share credit on collaborative projects; we’d worked closely together on several research papers and, throughout the prior five years, become friends. I was practically bursting with my news, but I questioned whether I should say anything. What if Abby told me I shouldn’t do the project? Going without mirrors for a year—though serious to me—wasn’t necessarily something that would be taken seriously by “the academy.” Was this one of those “better to apologize than ask permission” situations?

  Luckily for me, “the academy” hadn’t been invited to Abby’s dinner party. Instead, the group consisted of Abby’s family (including her lovely French husband, who had a penchant for gourmet food, and two adorable kids) and a visiting scholar from Israel, who specialized in research on eating disorders. Challenge your assumptions! I reminded myself. Abby isn’t going to kick you out of grad school for doing this. Then I thought, What would my three-year-old self do? The answer was clear: My three-year-old self—a confident and curious tomboy with short hair, a lisp, and elastic suspenders—wouldn’t have given a fig about what other people thought of her ideas or wacky projects. In preschool I’d collected bugs and slugs as pets and entertained grand ambitions to someday become “either an archaeologist, a veterinarian, a pastor, or a doctor and a woman!” and I even started a small business selling pet rocks to my neighbors for five cents each. I probably made at least two bucks, thanks to my excellent customer service (I went back to every customer a week after my sales to “see how things were going”). Anyway, the point I had to remind myself of was that my three-year-old self had been a weird kid, but she’d been too focused on doing what she wanted to do to give much thought about what other people wanted her to do. I needed to regress in order to move forward. I took a deep breath and went for it:

&
nbsp; “So, I had this crazy idea over the weekend and I think I’m going to go for it,” I offered to the dinner table, while we nibbled on bite-size chocolate confectionaries for dessert. The kids were off playing, whispering giggle-inducing jokes to each other in fluent French.

  “Oh? What’s that?” Abby asked.

  “Well, you know how I’ve been getting a little bit obsessive about wedding stuff, right?” I began.

  “I may have noticed, just a little,” Abby conceded with a smile. I’d been caught perusing wedding websites during one of our recent team meetings.

  “Well, I hit a wedding-planning wall last week while I was wedding dress shopping with my mom,” I explained.

  “Wait, I thought you already had a dress!” Abby interrupted.

  “Uh, yeah, that’s part of why I hit a wall,” I responded sheepishly. “Anyway, I’ve been feeling kind of obsessive about things—especially all the beauty stuff—so I’ve decided I want to stop looking in the mirror for a while. I want to see if it helps me focus less on my looks and more on other things.” No one at the table said anything.

  “Wow, that could be really . . . interesting!” exclaimed Abby’s husband, breaking the silence.

  “Would it be kind of like an autoethnographic experiment?” Abby asked. I nodded. (Autoethnography is a more science-y term that sociologists prefer to use rather than call something a memoir or autobiography.) Conducting an autoethnography basically requires that the autoethnographer consider her own subjective experiences in light of wider cultural, political, and social meanings. It’s a pretty cool concept, but even so, “the academy” doesn’t always take autoethnographies very seriously. I was okay with that; I wasn’t doing this to please “the academy,” just myself.

  “What if avoiding mirrors makes you think more about your appearance instead of less?” Abby asked next.

  “If that starts happening, I’ll stop,” I replied, pleased with myself for knowing the answer without hesitation. My self-protective survival instincts were still going strong. Sanity comes first!

  We chatted as a group for a bit longer, throwing around some ideas for how I would manage to avoid mirrors and what might result from the attempt. The conversation ended with Abby’s suggestion that I not let the project distract me from my dissertation research and writing. Hearing this made me feel a bit anxious, but she had my best interests in mind; as tempting as it felt to dive into this project with total abandon, I knew I oughtn’t do anything that might risk my ability to finish my dissertation and someday find work in academia. Altogether, telling her had felt like the right thing to do, and I knew that her concerns were justified—this was going to be a lot of work!

  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING DAY MARKED THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING QUARTER classes at UCLA. As I got ready in the morning, I was oddly conscious of each step taken and every product used as I put on my makeup and fixed my hair. As usual, my hair was a bit lumpy from sleep (I’m a night showerer) and needed some coaching to stay in place. How the heck am I going to pull this off without a mirror? Suddenly I was running late and couldn’t worry anymore.

  During my walking commute to UCLA, I noticed mirrors and reflective surfaces everywhere! To my right, shiny store windows lined every block; to my left were dozens of freshly washed (and thus reflective) cars parked curbside, bumper-to-bumper.

  Later that afternoon I stood in front of a small classroom and introduced myself to the seventeen students who had signed up for my course. After introducing myself and describing my expectations for class, I shared my plans for a no-mirrors year. Half a dozen hands shot into the air.

  “How will you do your makeup?” asked one heavily made-up young woman incredulously.

  I explained my hope to teach myself mirror-free makeup skills, and then waited to see what other questions my students would ask. This was fun! Only half of the raised hands remained in the air.

  “What about your hair?” asked the next student, who, I couldn’t help but notice, was wearing faux eyelashes and stripper heels to class. I wondered whether her waist-length platinum blond hair was homegrown or—ahem—synthetic.

  Stop judging! I admonished myself silently. I’d learned that the same internal voice that told me I wasn’t good enough had a habit of judging other women, too. They fed into each other, so it was best to quell such thoughts before they gathered strength.

  I responded similarly to her question, but was then a bit disappointed to see that the other students’ hands were no longer raised. Apparently protecting my beauty routines made up the totality of their concerns. With an internal shrug, I turned back to my lesson plans, determined to push these students a bit further than just worrying about hair and makeup by the end of the quarter. But would I be able to achieve this for myself?

  TWO

  April

  MIRROR, MIRROR, OFF MY WALLS!

  If you wish to avoid seeing a fool you must first break your looking glass.

  FRANÇOIS RABELAIS

  WITH THE FIRST DAY OF CLASSES BEHIND ME, I FINALLY felt ready to begin really strategizing for my year without mirrors. Of utmost importance was deciding on the official rules I would follow. My readings had taught me that it was important to make resolutions as simple and specific as possible. By this logic, a person resolving to “get healthier” would be less likely to have success than a person who resolved to “go to the gym for thirty minutes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.” This had made sense to me, but I wasn’t sure how to incorporate the advice. What part of shunning mirrors for a year would be simple? After some thought, I decided that I could help myself by coming up with a set of specific and (hopefully) simple rules.

  I had much to decide on, from choosing the official dates that the project would commence and conclude to outlining the inclusions and exceptions for exactly what I would be avoiding. Mirrors of all kinds, shapes, and sizes were obviously out, but what about other reflective surfaces? Would it be cheating if I peeked at my reflection in the window displays at Anthropologie, or if I saw myself in the security video greeting shoppers standing in line at Nordstrom Rack? (Clearly I had fashion on the brain!) And what about photos, or “virtual” mirrors, like the built-in cameras and video recorders on my smartphone and laptop? Would I have to give up Facebook, Instagram, and Skype? Finally, what the heck was I supposed to do about the side and rearview mirrors in my car? I wanted my project to be ambitious, but not dangerous! I began drafting a list of possible rules and some potential exceptions. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, but I needed a second opinion I could trust.

  I decided to call my younger sister for advice. Unlike Michael, who would be sharing a living space with me, Hanna wouldn’t be worried about whether or not my project might cause her any inconvenience. I figured she’d be tougher on me, and I wanted that. My mind was built to search for exceptions to every rule. Knowing this about myself, I needed to plan ahead for potential loopholes, to protect myself from myself.

  “How about when I’m driving? What should I do about my rearview mirror and my side mirrors?” I asked Hanna.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Hanna exclaimed, already exasperated. “You shouldn’t be able to see yourself in those mirrors anyway—at least not without moving your head. They’re supposed to be angled to show you the other cars on the road, not your face. Geez, no wonder you get into so many fender benders!”

  Gulp. She had a point there. My cherished lipstick-red Saab hatchback was riddled with “love bumps,” and the rear bumper was practically concave. I knew that a British study had recently found that 20 percent of female motorists admit to having applied makeup while driving, and that 3 percent had caused an accident while doing so. With a cringe, I recalled the streaks of waterproof Maybelline Great Lash mascara decorating my car’s interior ceiling; abstract art, it was not. I hastily wrote Car mirrors MUST be used, but for safe driving only! to my growing list of rule
s. Even if my year without mirrors didn’t successfully revamp my self-image, this particular rule had the potential to save my life.

  “Okay—what about my wedding photos?” I asked. This was sure to be a weak spot.

  “No exceptions means no exceptions,” she shot back. Then, she more softly pointed out, “It’s not as if you’ll never get to see them, just not right away. It will be good for you.”

  I still wasn’t convinced about the wedding photos. I made a mental note to myself to poll a few more friends for feedback on this particular point.

  The only loophole Hanna agreed to was my suggestion that I be allowed to see my shadow. I knew that there was a chance I’d occasionally peer at my silhouette to check for egregious errors in self-presentation (i.e., Mohawk-size ponytail bumps or major muffin-top), but I sensed that this wouldn’t become a crutch the way that looking at photos or video might. Besides, I had to draw the line somewhere, and considering all the shiny store windows lining the sidewalks of my walking commute to work, I wasn’t sure where else I’d be able to look except down at the ground in front of me.

  Then Hanna asked, “What are you going to do about makeup?” Unlike my sister, I rarely left the house without at least foundation, blush, and mascara (if not also concealer, face powder, eye shadow, eyeliner, and lip gloss), and she knew this.

  Thanks to my students’ queries, I’d already given plenty of thought to the makeup question. “I’m going to keep wearing it, but probably less,” I replied with confidence. “I’ll have to learn to put it on without looking.” As much as I wanted to spend less time and energy on my looks, I wasn’t interested in completely abandoning my personal sense of style and femininity. Wearing makeup most days helped me feel more pulled-together and professional. I knew dozens of women who rarely wore makeup, including my sister, and I didn’t think any less of them for it (rather, I admired this in the same way that I admired any woman with a strong sense of individual style), but it wasn’t for me.