Mirror Mirror

We've been looking for beauty in all the wrong places. 

Trigger Warning: This post discusses eating disorders and contains descriptions of bulimia.

A few months ago I was walking home after a session with my lovely counselor, let’s call her Marie. She is helping me navigate through life without using bulimia. My assignment that week was to quit my compulsive recreational mirror use. If I wasn't applying makeup, doing my hair, or getting a once-over before I walked out the door, the mirror had to be turned around or covered. I told her that our hall closet was open at all times, so I could see the full length mirror on the door from various parts of the house. She told me to close the door as soon as I got home. No more arching my lower back to widen the space between my thighs. No more popping my shoulders forward to see my collarbones. How will I know I didn't spontaneously gain 50 pounds, I asked myself. How will I know if my last purge flattened my stomach at all? Where do I get my fix to ease the anxiety that doesn't let me leave the house if my skirt feels tight? These were all, at the time, genuine and debilitating concerns.

I stopped at CVS for dish soap, where I ran into Lena Dunham. She was on the cover of Vogue, her eyes as round as the polka dots on her peter pan blouse. I picked it up out of habit, and the anticipation of devouring it comforted me in a way I had never thought critically about. The only other thing that excited me as much as an unread magazine was what I called my stomach “clapping” — when I knew I was done purging because it was so empty that it contracted so hard I thought the sides would touch. My biggest dreams were to write the kind of articles I was about to read, and to be empty.

Marie knows I study journalism, but I don’t think she knows how many issues of Vogue and Elle are on my desk, under my bed, in a box in the closet and the trunk of my car. I don’t think she knows that I used to read every word, underline every phrase I wish I wrote, rip out stories I didn't want to forget, and cut out pictures to hang on my wall. I don’t think she knows that my most valued distraction from the illness she works to cure is considered one of the causes.

Until that day I sincerely believed that the images had nothing to do with it. I always made the distinction between real life and art and thought I simply appreciated the photography. I constantly told myself, “I like this picture, it complements the article, these women are beautiful, the angles of their bodies are aesthetically pleasing and photogenic, and that is all.” But now I’m not sure what actually happens in the black box of my brain when I process information. I always rolled my eyes when anyone suggested that society’s beauty standards could contribute to that kind of self-hatred. I thought they were insulting my intelligence, saying I was nothing but a silly girl who got duped by the TV. I thought I could have those bad thoughts in one part of my brain and enjoy media in another. But I’m starting to realize that a compromised mind doesn't make those kinds of logical distinctions, and everything that goes in is poison.

Now I doubt my old justifications. I wonder about the extent to which my page-flipping habit fueled my bulimia and disguised itself as ambition or career research. And now I have to ask myself why I want to contribute to an institution that can hurt people. Why do I want to contribute to an institution that, as it turns out, hurt me?

To be clear, fashion magazines did not give me an eating disorder. We have to understand that people don’t have severe self-image issues, mental illnesses or addictions because they don’t know that Photoshop is a thing. For me personally, the groundwork was already there and established for its own reasons, but the pictures of perfect women were a constant reminder of what I was trying to accomplish.

There are a lot of conversations going on right now about how this is a problem that needs fixing. In terms of self-acceptance, if a society is only as healthy as its weakest link, then we are very sick. And personally, seeing un-airbrushed models, before and after Photoshopped images, and Realistic Measurements Barbie did not help me. I think about the hard work myself and others have to do to re-program our brains, change our thinking, and repeat positive thoughts and behaviors over and over and over until they become habits. I didn't fall asleep hoping I would wake up to see models with higher BMIs, but that I would wake up not feeling so fucking awful. And that is why I think we need to attack this crisis from a different angle. I’m worried we’re missing the point.

If society’s recovery is going to be anything like mine, we as a whole need to make major and substantial changes in our collective personal life. We need to fill our days and months and years and lives with activities, goals and projects that have nothing to do with our appearance. We have to decide that we’d rather be remembered as smart than as pretty. We have to realize that people are here to contribute, not to be looked at. Different twists on the same photo shoot will not cure us. We have to cure ourselves, and it takes work.

I haven’t bought a magazine since then. I recycled a lot of old issues and ripped down the pictures on my walls, not because they were triggering, but because I didn't want them anymore. They are no longer what I choose to spend my time looking at. I still read the articles online, I still love fashion, and I still think the worlds these institutions create are magical and alluring. But the magazines themselves were always a validation and confidante that I don’t need anymore, and I hope our society as a whole will no longer need that kind of validation either.

I hope we learn to celebrate intelligence, productivity, leadership, courage and love so much that aesthetics fade in comparison. I hope we decide to focus on the messages and stories in photography and not the bodies. I hope we appreciate the craftsmanship and quality of the clothes and not what size they are. I hope that when we look at each other’s faces, we see life and not features to compare our own to. Beauty is wonderful. But I hope it becomes something we hold dear and enjoy, not something that drives us. I hope it becomes something that we love because we learn to see it in so many places other than the mirror.