What are mirrors good for?
I’ve been thinking a lot about when and how often I look in the mirror.
I’ve been thinking a lot about when and how often I look in the mirror.
And so I went about a typical weekday and took note.
We don’t have a mirror in the bedroom. This is good. This means that one of the last things I do before bed and first things I do when I wake up doesn’t involve examining how I look.
So the first time I look in a mirror is when I’m brushing my teeth.
Do I look in the mirror and think: Gorgeous, glowing, take a selfie to remember this. No, almost never. I get real close and observe all the things “imperfect” with my face, my body, my hair. Is there a new blemish? Do I feel bloated or dehydrated? Is that a gray hair?
I do my little skincare routine, put on a little makeup, put on some clothes, and then look in the mirror again. Better, usually. Acceptable. Sometimes even nice.
Because we don’t have mirrors anywhere else in the apartment, the only time I look at myself from morning to night is when I use the bathroom and wash my hands. I find that I often pause and take in my reflection, even if it’s only been a few hours and no, I don’t look like a new person. Still, here I am, trying to find a new “wrong” thing. (This fixation is what prompted me to throw my magnifier mirror in the trash last year.)
Other than my AM and PM rituals and occasional pee breaks, the only other time I’m confronted with a mirror is at my Pilates studio. I know this is likely to show me my form, and I appreciate that. It does help! I also mostly wear baggy t-shirts to work out in, both for comfort and also because I don’t need to see my body (and scrutinize it) during a time that I just want to push myself and feel good.
I’ve been thinking about mirrors ever since a close friend of mine revealed that, during a recent childbirth, the nurse offered to hold a mirror up so she could see what was happening. She described it as “the most unflattering view” of herself. And also that, when offered the mirror, she emphatically refused. It wasn’t brought out until the end of labor, which was indeed motivating.
I of course am meditating on mirrors from purely a vanity standpoint. Mirrors have other important use cases—checking for skin abnormalities, making a room look bigger, incentivizing someone during childbirth, and I’m sure plenty of other things I haven’t thought of—but this exercise made me think about when and why I intentionally pause in front of a mirror. How it makes me feel has been revealing. I know it’s right there above the sink, but I want to make a conscious effort to not scrutinize myself every time I have to pee.
I think it’s important to examine a seemingly mundane practice that may have woven together many of our days since we could first perceive ourselves in a reflective surface. I don’t know why it took my friend’s story about a mirror during childbirth to make me think about my own relationship to the mirror. Probably something to unpack there. But I’m glad it did, because I could stand to look at myself less, and when I do look at myself, be a little gentler. And, in general, think much (much) less about myself as a person in terms of how “good” or “bad” I look.
The same friend that recently watched herself push out a baby (“horrifying” “motivating”) also once lived in the woods for a month and never looked in a mirror. “I have never had more self-esteem in my life than when I had no way of viewing my own face.”
She added: “This is also probably tied to the health benefits of a natural circadian rhythm and hiking every day and eating a ton of lentils and drinking fresh spring water but whenever I spend too much time scrutinizing I try to remember when I didn’t give a shit.”
In short, I’m working on giving less of a shit. And planning a trip to the woods.
I wanted to share a few of my favorite Substack reads this week:
Alisha Ramos from wrote about her own experience and feelings around IVF amid the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that embryos created and stored in a medical facility are considered children. It’s a drastic move that takes the notion of “life begins at conception” and extends it, legally, to fertility procedures that take place outside of the body.
For those trying to have a child through in vitro fertilization, this ruling may place radical limits on the process. Several clinics in Alabama have already paused certain IVF services like fertilizing eggs and developing embryos for fear of legal repercussions. A doctor and reproductive medicine expert told the New York Times that this ruling will have a disproportionate impact on lower income people, people of color, and people in the LGBT communities.
“I can only imagine the anguish of the patients in Alabama who got a call just hours or even moments before their scheduled embryo transfer (where timing is everything) that they’ll have to scrap their entire IVF cycle,” Ramos wrote. “Thousands of dollars and months of their lives down the drain. This type of upheaval, on top of an already emotionally and physically demanding process, is incomprehensible and downright cruel.”
I love this recommendation from Breakthrough & Blocks to use smell to help your creative process. This isn’t just “light a nice candle and start writing” but asks us to identify specific smells to bring you to a specific creative space. For instance, what scent do I want to associate with sitting down and writing this newsletter? (Right now, for me, it’s Forest Lungs, because it’s the closest I can come scent-wise to feeling like I’m writing among the Redwoods.) It has me considering much more intimately where I want to transport myself during certain tasks, and how I can do that with a fragrance. If you’re a fragrance brand with a sample set, hit me up.
And even more relevant to my interests… Tembe Denton-Hurst of curated bags that fit books. My ask for her next roundup are clothing items that fit a book. What jacket has a pocket snug enough to slip in a paperback? Cargo pants with a pocket for each collection of short stories?
Thank you for reading this issue of Un/well. This is a reader-supported newsletter and I appreciate you.
Melanie
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Header and illustrations by Olivia Fu