I read this figure aloud to Michael, who bemoaned his fate. We were relaxing in bed on a weeknight.
“Well, you’re never average, Sweet Pea,” he suggested, in what started out sounding like a compliment but quickly devolved: “So unless we drastically cut back on our evenings out, I’m destined to be an upper-limit outlier. I’ll probably hit forty weeks of waiting by the time we retire!”
“Oh, yeah?” I countered. “I suppose that might be the case, except we’re already a lower-limit outlier in our frequency of date nights. We’re skewed.”
“What’s that? You want to screw?” he punted back with a twinkle in his eyes. I just rolled mine.
“Speaking of statistical probabilities, how many times in your life has a line like that actually worked?” I teased.
“Well . . . never on average girls!” he admitted. Indeed.
• • •
WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THAT BUYING A BIKE WOULD have turned out to be one of the most challenging mirror temptations I faced during my first few months without mirrors?
One of the hardest transitions from L.A. to San Francisco was adjusting to rarely driving my car. Even though I brought my trusty love-worn “Saabaru” with me, I was barely able to use it because the parking situation in the city was so horrific. It cost thirty dollars a day to park in any of our neighborhood’s pay lots, and if I wanted to park near the About-Face offices on days that I did volunteer work, it was up to ten dollars an hour in most garages. Because of this, if I managed to snag a free spot on one of the streets near our apartment, it took a lot to persuade me to drive away from it. This was a contrast to L.A., where I enjoyed the flexibility of driving whenever and wherever I wanted, knowing that I could always find free or cheap parking at my destination and that a reserved garage space would be waiting for me at home when I returned.
During my first weeks in San Francisco, I walked everywhere, so long as the trip was under two miles. If the route seemed dicey, or if I was running late, I’d take a cab. This worked fairly well, but I soon realized that walking half a mile to the nearest grocery store and then huffing and sweating myself back again with arms full of groceries wasn’t so fun. Indeed, on particularly hot days I just stayed home all day to avoid getting sweaty or overspending on cabs.
Obviously, I could have taken the bus, but I am notoriously motion sickness–sensitive, and the numerous hills and turns involved in a typical San Francisco bus trip seemed like an invitation to throw up in public. And so, facing the impossible choice between housebound isolation, blowing my budget on cabs, or puking several times a week, I decided it was time to buy a bike.
And so it was that I found myself perusing the sale options at my local bike shop. Walking into the store, I was surprised to spy a huge full-length mirror at the front of the sales floor. I imagined that, perhaps, serious bikers wanted to check themselves out on their bikes before purchasing. This was something I could resist—a piece of cake!
I flagged down a dreadlocked and enthusiastic salesperson and explained the purpose of my visit. I warned him of both my constrained budget and utter lack of coordination. He promptly walked me down a long row of bikes (organized with the most expensive bikes near the front of the store and the cheapo options in the back where budget customers were less likely to bring down the ambiance). Once we arrived at the very end of the adult bike section, he pointed out a few suggestions and then rolled the best contender to the front of the store so I could fill out a test ride form.
And then, eyeballing me with squinting contemplation, he said it:
“Yep, well, you’re definitely over five-feet-two and you’ve got pretty long legs, so you ought to be a size small in the coed bikes.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Long legs?” I asked, eyebrows raised. I’d heard “strong legs” and even the occasional “great legs” in my day, but never “long legs.” I hoped he might say it again.
Without pausing, he clarified, much to my chagrin: “Well, yeah, I meant, like, in comparison to your torso. You have a really short torso. I need to make sure you’ll be able to reach the handlebars.”
Oh. Short torso. Right. Of course.
And with that, I learned what felt like an infinitely important detail about my body while standing about seven feet away from a humongous mirror I wasn’t allowed to look at. Needless to say, I wanted to check myself out. Was it true? Did I indeed have a short torso with comparatively long(ish) legs? How could I not have known this about myself! Argh!
Look-away-look-away-look-away-look-away-look-away!!
Somehow, I managed to get myself outside for a test ride without stealing a glance.
On my breezy trip around the block, I was struck by two thoughts. First: Wow! This bike feels awesome! As promised, I was able to reach the handlebars without feeling off-kilter. The brakes worked. The wind whistled. The sun shone. I was loving it!
Second, a nagging thought: Wait—didn’t somebody else tell me that I have short arms? When was that? Who was that?
Just as I arrived back at the bike shop, I remembered: At my first fashion job after college, one of the fashion designers had measured me to see if I could substitute as a size medium fit model so I could try on prototype garments to check for construction and style details. It turned out that even though my “boobs were in the right place,” (thank goodness for that!) my arms were, unfortunately, “one half inch too short.”
Seriously. One half inch too short. In that instant, my promising life of (fit) modeling was over!
Remembering this as I walked back into the bike shop, I knew that it must be true: I had a short torso and short arms to match. I’d been assessed by two unbiased experts, which made it official. I didn’t know whether to laugh at the ridiculousness of this knowledge or cry in frustration. I still really wanted to look at my officially disproportionate body in the mirror, but instead I just bought the darn bike and got the heck out of there, tires squealing.
The good news is that I fell completely in love with my new bike within days. The experience even helped me come to terms with the weird news about my torso. As annoying as it felt to be given unexpected news about my body by a person I didn’t know, I took comfort in the fact that the salesman communicated the news nonchalantly. It wasn’t like he’d said, “You may want to sit down . . . (long sigh) . . . I don’t know how else to say this, but . . . you have a short torso. Here, take a tissue.” Nope. It was just matter-of-fact. No biggie. It was a fact, not a judgment, just a piece of information that needed to be taken into consideration when choosing the right bike to fit my body. Buying a customizable product that fit my body instead of trying to fit my unique body into something overly standardized: What a refreshing idea!
• • •
LATER THAT WEEK, I FOUND MYSELF SITTING AT MY DESK, attempting to grade my students’ reading responses. I couldn’t focus. I’d read for a few minutes, scribble a note or two, and then reflexively look over my right shoulder at what used to be a mirrored closet door. Instead, I stared at the blank white bedsheet I’d used to cover the mirror. I became aware, suddenly, that I must have developed a habit of looking in the mirror frequently while working from home. What the heck? I thought as I caught myself looking again. A few times I even got up, as though to go find the missing mirror, and then sat back down, blinking to myself in disbelief. These self-peering instincts had been subconscious, but my non-peering reactions were conscious and impossible for me to ignore. The reports of women looking at themselves in the mirror thirty-four to seventy-one times per day had sounded outrageous when I’d first read them, but suddenly seemed less so. I ached to see myself. It made me anxious. And, surprisingly, lonely.
I realized then that I missed seeing myself for reasons quite separate from vanity. I’d counted on my reflection for companionship during long stints of time spent alone, especially on days I worked from home.
I’ve al
ways considered myself a closeted introvert. In spite of my seemingly extroverted enjoyment of speaking my mind during class, or of standing in front of 150 college students to lecture in my own classroom, I am completely drained by the end of most social situations. On days that I teach, I arrive back home barely able to mumble a plaintive hello to Michael, and usually end up ordering him to leave me alone or at least stop talking while I recover from my day in solitude. While at parties during college, I often wished nothing more than to be curled up alone in my dorm, reading a book or watching a movie. I always looked forward to days in which I was able to work from home or alone in my office at UCLA, which were typically filled with writing, editing, and grading. They were not, however, filled with much social interaction. Or so I’d thought.
Was it possible that my reflection had served as a sort-of friend during my time spent alone? And, for that matter, exactly what kind of a friend had she been? More important, given all the horribly cruel and bullying things I’d thought and said to myself over the years, what kind of a friend had I been to her? I knew the answer: a “frenemy” of the worst sort, expecting silent support and companionship on demand while saying mean things about her behind her back—and sometimes to her face! But in this strange moment of realization, I had to ask: Who was I without her?
Without my reflection around to wave hello to me during my work-from-home days, I began experiencing strange moments when I questioned my very existence. If I couldn’t see myself, did I exist? But how did I know? You know that saying about the tree that falls in a forest with no one to hear its sound? Well, I was starting to suspect that the tree would probably feel less shitty about the situation if it could at least watch itself in a mirror during the fall.
My cats, Diesel and Dolce, helped me work through these first weeks of solitude. Unlike stereotypically aloof felines, my boys were plain needy for attention. There’s nothing more effective at halting a philosophical meltdown than the plaintive yowling of hungry animals. Apparently not only did I exist, but I existed for the sole purpose of feeding my cats.
The fact that I began questioning my own existence in the absence of mirrors started to make more sense when I learned that psychologists actually use mirrors to test other animals for self-awareness. Although most animals react to their images as if confronted by another animal, chimpanzees and orangutans (but not gorillas) show evidence of self-recognition when placed in front of a mirror. Similarly, two-year-old humans begin to develop what’s called mirror-guided self-recognition at around the same time that they begin to show other evidences of self-awareness, such as using personal pronouns or smiling after mastering a challenging task. For both chimps and young children, the mirror-guided self-recognition test involves secretly putting a dot of red paint (for chimps) or a huge sticker (for kids) on the forehead of the primate in question. If the chimp/child notices this change to her appearance in the mirror and reacts by, say, touching the paint spot or reaching for the sticker—on her head and not on the mirror—she has passed the test. (Learning this, I couldn’t help wondering whether the kids who passed this test got to keep their stickers. That would have made me smile after mastering the task!)
In this first month without mirrors, despite having some times when I felt more worried about my looks than ever before, I also experienced several blissful spells of not thinking much about my looks at all. These episodes—if I can call them that—are a bit hard for me to describe, mainly because I didn’t realize I was experiencing them until they were over. (How does one describe the feeling of unawareness?) I didn’t know what to call them, but I knew that during them I felt peaceful and fully engaged in whatever activity I was doing. It felt like progress and made me deliriously proud of myself whenever it happened. The moments in which I realized with pleasure that I’d gone hours or days without wondering what I looked like were infrequent, but promising.
No description for how this felt resonated quite so clearly as a passage I stumbled upon while rereading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which had been recommended to me by a friend who said it was filled with references to vanity.
In the passage, Admiral Croft, a sensible and kind man, has rented the opulent estate of Sir Walter Elliot, the exceedingly vain and spendthrift father of the book’s reserved and practical protagonist, Anne. Anne visits Admiral Croft and his wife, and it pains her to see someone else occupying her home. Admiral Croft, sensitive to her feelings, mentions that they had changed very little about the home, explaining, “I have done very little besides sending away some of the large looking-glasses from my dressing-room, which was your father’s. A very good man, and very much the gentleman I am sure—but I should think, Miss Elliot” (looking with serious reflection) “I should think he must be rather a dressy man for his time of life. —Such a number of looking-glasses! oh Lord! there was no getting away from oneself.”
I was tickled by Admiral Croft’s decision to rid his bedroom of mirrors (save for his “little shaving glass”), but it was his stated desire for “getting away from oneself” that really gave me pause. The idea of “getting away from oneself” resonated deeply, perfectly encapsulating what I’d found so rewarding about my episodes of calm engagement in my work and leisure activities. It was both poetic and ironic: In these moments of getting away from myself, I’d begun feeling like myself again.
I’d love to say that I learned how to feel this way all of the time, but that wasn’t the case. Rather, in between episodes of getting away from myself, I continued feeling a bit lost without the self I’d previously been able to see in the mirror.
At times I even began experiencing some mild paranoia about my weight and the state of my skin. What had started out as a secret pride in my mirror-free makeup application skills quickly dissolved into illusions of rapid weight gain and acne. On a logical level I knew that my appearance couldn’t have changed dramatically in such a short time. Yet I felt lost without the constant reassurance of viewing my reflection.
Having suffered from an eating disorder in the past, the weight-gain paranoia was a bit alarming. I knew I was being unrealistic, but a small part of me (the anorexic part) whispered, “Maybe you should go on a diet, just in case!” I resisted. But then one night I dreamt that I’d gained hundreds of pounds without realizing it. For all the body acceptance I’d accomplished and preached to others during my waking moments, some of these fears were still deeply ingrained. In my dream, I’d been walking up to my office building at UCLA with a friend when I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass doorway. I was as large and voluminous as Violet Beauregarde’s blueberry-ballooned body had been in Willy Wonka’s infamous chocolate-factory tale. I turned to my friend and, in a panic, plaintively begged for an explanation. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?!” I wailed in terror and confusion. My friend only shrugged in response.
I woke up in a cold sweat and scheduled an appointment with Gia, my therapist, for the next time I’d be back in L.A.
“Is this dangerous?” I asked her.
“What do you think?” she countered.
“I think trying on wedding dresses was dangerous! Being a bride is dangerous!” I exclaimed. “But giving up mirrors is feeling kind of scary, too. What if the nightmare comes true? If I gained a ton of weight, it would freak me out so much that I might do something extreme.”
“More extreme than giving up mirrors?” she asked, eyebrow arched. (Excellent point. I love a therapist who’s not afraid to joke around a bit.)
“Ummmm . . . okay, well up until this week I’ve thought this was a good idea!” I explained.
She agreed, and then asked me if I’d actually gained any weight.
“Two pounds, but that could just be a normal fluctuation. Or because I used the scale at the gym.”
“Definitely. That’s normal. Are you weighing yourself regularly? That would probably keep your imagination from running too wild.”
“My scale at home died an e
arly death a few months ago. I didn’t replace it because I thought I didn’t need it anymore. Am I acting anorexic if I buy a new one, like, immediately?” I asked.
“No, that’s normal, too. And you’re a bride-to-be. Brides without any history of eating disorders go through this stuff, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Go get yourself a new scale and see if that helps. Call me any time if you feel panicked, but I think you’re doing fine. I think this project is going to be amazing.”
I bought a new scale that very evening, and as promised, it helped calm my fears tremendously. My body wasn’t ballooning out of control, just my imagination. I returned to my Top Ten Ways to Be Kjerstin list and underlined the third item: Your body is perfect, but your mind could use improvement.
• • •
I DECIDED THAT CONSTANTLY ASKING PEOPLE “DO I LOOK OKAY?” ought to be informally against the rules (unless, of course, I was facing a particularly important occasion in which poppy-seed-teeth would actually be life-changing). However, one afternoon I found myself staring at Michael across our kitchen table, wondering with frustration why he couldn’t read my mind to tell me not just how I looked (good, bad, so-so, etc.), but exactly what I looked like.
What kind of a soul mate are you? I silently implored. How can you not know that I need to know this?
He stared back at me and deadpanned, “What?”
“Nothing,” I responded, playing it cool. He didn’t take the bait.
Was my hair bumpy? Fluffy? Sleek? Was my makeup invisible-yet-ethereal? And how about that belly-button doughnut? I was at a loss. Yeah, I used to not be so vain, I thought, but now I know better.
Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall Page 8
