Seeing Myself

Reflecting on my reflection.

Recently, Mark and I were scrolling through photos from a roll of film he had developed. When he flipped to a black-and-white shot he took of me, my breath caught in my throat. “That’s me,” I said aloud, taken aback because I had never seen myself represented so plainly and accurately. In the photo, I’m sitting across the table from Mark at a restaurant, my head cocked slightly to one side, my lips pursed in a soft smile. I’m wearing a black cardigan, my arms resting on the surface in front of me. When we met for lunch that day, I had just come from getting a haircut, lopping off my long layers in favor of a chin-grazing bob.

I loved the photo, but it didn’t take long for me to begin picking apart my appearance. I zoned in on my deepening smile lines and sagging eyelids. I’ve never loved my nose, and while I’m showing off my “good” side in the snapshot (I’ve trained myself to do so whenever a camera appears), I know the truth behind what this specific angle is concealing. I even began to question my haircut. Did it make me look old? Did it make me look like a toddler? Somehow it felt like both were true at the same time.

I’m 33 and have never had Botox, filler, or any other kind of cosmetic procedure. Working in beauty, this is basically unheard of, and I am frequently met with gasps when I divulge it at editor dinners. It might seem like I’m bucking beauty standards to make some kind of statement but the truth is I’ve always been too poor and busy for cosmetic enhancements. I’m also just kind of lazy. It’s a lot of maintenance. Plus, I don’t love needles.

I hate that resisting Botox at 33 is seen as some kind of radical act. It’s depressing. I currently have no interest in freezing my facial muscles (I personally think Botox almost always makes people look older than they are), but I can’t deny that I sometimes wish I had the time and money for other procedures. I occasionally dream of having an upper blepharoplasty (or removal of excess eyelid skin), the new hot plastic surgery that supposedly has Jennifer Lawrence and a slew of other stars looking so refreshed these days. A rhinoplasty would make it so I could stand to look at my profile.

The photo.

But, if given the chance, would I actually go through with these things? I’m not sure.

I also think that I’m just feeling the effect of living in an age where the term “Instagram face” is firmly a part of the zeitgeist. We are constantly being inundated with images of homogenized human faces, which by this point, plenty of experts have deemed as not normal or good for us. My job requires me to look at pictures of celebrities all day, and even though I may not always directly compare myself to them in the moment, my brain has started to form an idea of what is beautiful and acceptable. And when I look at myself in the mirror — or a photo taken of me — it’s obvious that I don’t measure up.

It sounds sadder than it is. I know that, in reality, no one else really measures up either — not even the celebrities themselves. I’m well aware of the copious amounts of makeup, lighting, hair extensions, veneers, skincare treatments, spray tans, plastic surgery, and Botox, all executed by the very best doctors and glam teams, that go into a single red carpet shot.

In the literature class I’m taking this summer, we’re reading Shakespeare’s Richard II. There’s a notable scene in which the disgraced king asks someone to bring him a mirror and proceeds to smash it to the ground, shattering it. My professor said that mirrors were such a luxury in Shakespeare’s time that they would not have been able to use a real one in stagings of the play.

What might life be like if mirrors were still so rare? If there wasn’t a tiny reflection in the form of an iPhone within my reach 24/7? If I didn’t examine the angles of my face in the flickering subway windows? I might never know if I have spinach in my teeth, but I’d probably be a lot happier.

Honestly, most of the time I don’t care to do anything about whatever grievances I have with my appearance. There are other things to worry about. But I do wonder if I will ever get to a place where I no longer think about it at all. Is that even possible in this day and age? Surely, things are only going to get worse, given the rise of AI.

For now, I know that two things can be true: I can love myself and also show symptoms of existing within an image-obsessed culture. I can look at old photos of my grandmothers and relish in the fact that my eyes crinkle like theirs did one minute, and in the next, be tempted by an Instagram ad for an eye cream that promises to obliterate crow’s feet. I can look at myself through a critical lens, or I can choose to throw the lens away altogether. At least for a little while.