Mirror Mirror.

It's your f*cking nightmare.

A few weeks ago, I uploaded my first photo onto an Instagram page that had spent years simply existing with nothing on it. I did it because I kept getting feedback from friends and family that they spent half the time thinking I was dead and the other half of the time just generally not knowing what my life actually looked like. So I reached out to my photography-oriented peers and asked if they had shots of me from any number of adventures, and received a healthy collection of candids and group photos from America to Canada to Peru to South Korea. But as I was scrolling through my newly curated Museum of Me, I had a rogue thought pop into my head for the first time in my entire life: My nose looks kinda funny. 

The thought reminded me of a wintery day back in high school. Senior year. Standing in the hallway in my volleyball team jacket and sweatpants eating a pack of Gushers. Brittney says my name to catch my attention then ambushes me with her flip phone and snaps a photo.

“Can you stand straighter?” she asks. “I want to get a good photo of your nose.” Confused, I stand straighter and look right at the camera anyway. Without asking the obvious follow-up question, Brittney unveils the mystery. “My mom is getting me a new nose for graduation! I’ve always liked yours.” 

Back in the present, newly amused, I then exit out of the Instagram tab on my internet browser. That’s enough Instagram for one day.

Now a decade or so removed from the 2000s -  a period which makes up a good chunk of my formative years - I have become cognisant of this reputation it has for being extremely critical of the appearance of any woman or girl under the sun. Being skinny was the name of the game with an even tan and dirty blonde hair. It was the era of Abercrombie and Fitch (shout out to “Summer Girls” by LFO) - where my sister worked because she was a size zero at the time before going off to college in 2007. It was the reign of the original Mean Girls. It was when there was seemingly a whole movie sub-genre dedicated to Anne Hathaway transforming from her ugly, glasses-wearing, frazzled self to the new “It Girl” in whichever environment her character found herself in (I love you, Anne Hathaway, you will always be famous).  

On the flip side, there was the just as skinny emo, rock, or generic “scene kid” aesthetic, where black skinny jeans, a studded belt, doodled all over Converse shoes, and any number of band t-shirts served as a second skin. That’s what I would look like in the rare times I was out of uniform. It was an exciting day when my friends and I went to the mall and found our very own MCR style marching band jackets. 

Objectively speaking, between my own personal interest in things like K-pop or the WWE and the overall fads of the day, I was surrounded by all manner of apparent beauty standards and expectations (even the ever controversial Barbie dolls!). However for whatever reason, appearance was rarely a topic on my mind. My mother said it was because I was reading the “wrong magazines,” those magazines being WWE Magazine and Star Wars Insider, neither of which had pages dedicated to romantic astrology forecasts or makeup tips for young girls. Typically ending my weeks situated in front of the TV to watch Friday Night Smackdown, my brain didn’t construct any significant meaning behind the wrestlers - male or female - sauntering down the ramp and into the ring. Their appearance had nothing to do with me. After all, I wasn’t a WWE Superstar, nor was I ever planning to be.

It was the same with K-pop idols. Sure, they had a certain look to them. But that look had nothing to do with me. Only I had something to do with me so in no scenario would it have occurred to me to compare my body with that of a popstar or to anyone aside from myself. In no scenario would it occur to me to think of my body at all outside the category of “properly dressed” versus “improperly dressed” which was clear as day for someone in uniform as often as I was. In other words, if you came up to me as a teenager and started asking me about “body image,” I wouldn’t really know what you were talking about. After all, there’s no such thing as being born in the wrong body. 

One such scenario took place in the form of an all school assembly to watch a presentation from a woman who was making it her mission in life to tell every high school girl she could get seated in front of her that all the women we see on the covers of all manner of magazines don’t actually look like that. She needed us to know that they’re actually photoshopped to hell and back so we shouldn’t get bent out of shape trying to look like they do. 

From my place in the back of the auditorium, Converse-clad feet propped up on the empty seat in front of me, sweatpants still illegally on under my uniform skirt, eyes rolling in response to the woman’s pleading tone as I boredly picked at the guitar string ruined black nailpolish on my fingers, I thought - What does she take us for? Hopelessly self-obsessed brainless monkeys? Yes, I was a teenager with an attitude. Sue me!

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the singer of my band who was situated only a few seats away from me had secretly gotten into the habit of purging up her lunch some days in the bathroom. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the reason entire friend groups would sit around the cafeteria tables splitting a salad and a brownie six different ways as part of their “prom diet,” making a pact to collectively starve themselves, was part of this whole body image plague rather than them simply not having much of an appetite. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a significant number of my classmates would spend most of their twenties on a self acceptance journey where at the end they would look back on their high school selves and mourn the hatred they felt by simply looking in the mirror. Nonetheless at subsequent reunions, they would bond over discussions about preventative botox procedures not seeing how any of these things might be connected. 

The mere existence or concept of having a body image, I believe, is a form of perpetual dissociation regardless of if it is positive or negative. To me, normalcy is body neutrality. Something not even on the mind. Does everything work? Has anything changed from my baseline state? Did you wash yourself? If you’re coming at it from that angle, starving yourself or deciding you need your eyes or lips or butt “enhanced” through face paint or injections makes absolutely no sense. It is laughably absurd. It would be like deciding your pet hamster is in dire need of a wax job rather than just letting it be a hamster. 

I only just recently learned what fillers were and have since watched a good number of feminists or otherwise highly sensible women point to their face and describe where they have had fillers or, in the past, have desired to get fillers. What are we filling? I still couldn’t tell you. It’s just like in the Barbie film where they have a whole scene dedicated to pointing at this rumored “cellulite” spreading over Margot Robbie’s legs and even on a giant screen in the cinema I couldn’t see what they’re talking about or why it is so bad. Just like any number of cosmetics commercials on TV featuring women agonizing over their perfectly normal looking faces until flashing to the “after” picture where I can’t tell what has changed. Or if I can tell what has changed, can’t figure out why it is significant because the change is so miniscule. 

Because you look how you look. A desire to change that basic foundation, to me, is indicative of an internal problem even if it was brought about by external forces. And I think anyone who finds themselves in this kind of position should certainly stop and ask why. I certainly did. I’ve already described the two instances in my life in which this brand of dissociation hit hard and fast. The first was a realization that violent external forces viewed me as an object for sexual use or otherwise. The second was the time a makeup artist shaved off half my eyebrows and changed the skin of my face to something unrecognizeable. A real life version of getting the Anne Hathaway treatment had me immediately wanting to jump out of my own skin. But I had to get a grip. Push that all to the side as much as possible. Wash all that gunk off my face and assert my humanity in a male world. These two moments of this kind of dissociation stand out to me in a way that is so starkly separate from all my other days of just being myself, though those two moments also had a lasting impact. Clearly.

I’ve noticed when this conversation comes up in feminist spaces, particularly if you ever dare to specifically mention makeup, it fuels all sorts of accusations and grievances. Everyone comes out of the woodwork about how they have a heinous rare skin condition where if they just exist in their natural form then whoever looks at them in the street will scream out in horror and turn to stone. We get the “I do it for the art” types who… sure… just like me maybe they wanted to emulate the on stage look of their favorite emo boy or goth girl. But even that often has the impact of creating this scenario where you grow a complex at the thought of ever existing in your natural state because no one knows what your natural state looks like. And if they do, they get a shock not because you’ve secretly been a swamp monster all this time, but because you just rolled in with a different face. That would take anyone by surprise. Then of course one could always point out how curious it is that women in particular seem to have this sudden desire to engage in “art” religiously only on their faces daily. Just writing this out I feel like I’m beating a dead horse. Whatever. I’m probably not changing any minds here. Moving on.

I can’t be entirely mad or dismissive about all the “self care” and “body positivity” stuff going on in the present day though. I readily see how my friends who have struggled with all manner of mental health problems in the past because of body image are made happier - dare I say “euphoric” - by participating in any array of rituals. They meticulously curate the images of themselves and post them to Instagram to talk about joy, health, and spiritual wealth. Okay great. It just depresses me that any of this was necessary to begin with. Just like it depresses me how apparently relatable the now infamous Barbie movie monologue is to basically every woman I know. Meanwhile, I’m in the theater listening to America Ferrera’s words in horror thinking, “What a fucking nightmare.” 

So… that’s all I have to say about this topic today.

Here’s to defeating the monster in our minds.