mirrors

my self-perception through girlhood

Reflections (Morgan Weistling)

My mother often tells me a story from my childhood. I personally have no recollection of it, but she tells me of blood, of how I cracked my head open. A few months after I was welcomed into the world, I had reached in fascination for a round, unsecured mirror in the bathroom, which fell on top of my soft baby skull. Your father and I were too scared to scream. We didn’t even have time to call anybody else when we rushed you to the hospital, my mother says. 

I don’t remember the pain, or the fear, or the hospital. But this obsession with my own image has perhaps pervaded my whole girlhood. I have a friend I’ve known for over twenty years, since we were in our mothers’ wombs. She occasionally sends me photos from when we were kids, the garish pinks and purples I used to wear and the horrible pigtails that pulled my hairline back, Siwa-style. It didn’t matter to Younger Me that Future Me would think my outfits were uncoordinated and kitschy; Younger Me checked herself out in lift doors, the sides of buildings, any shiny reflective surface really. I loved experimenting with clothes. 

I was very determined as a child. I remember walking into a Toys R Us and really wanting a specific brown haired Barbie. I remember my mother telling me I refused to walk away without it. Now it takes me fifteen minutes minimum to decide on what to order for lunch. The range of possibilities the world offers is never-ending and scary! This is also when I stopped looking into mirrors. In primary school, I started looking in the small, square mirror of the school bathrooms and noticing how my transparent glasses shrank my eyes, how my uneven buck-teeth made me look like a rabbit. I didn’t like what I saw, so I looked away. Somehow, even as ugly as I was, a classmate of mine decided one day to show up to class with a rose for me. Horrified by the notion that anybody could find me beautiful, I threw the rose at him. I saw him again recently, both of us all grown up, completely by chance, and I thought of apologising. I couldn’t form the words. 

I was very skinny as a pre-teen, but I started gaining weight in secondary school. I was simply chubby, but that fact didn’t improve my confidence. My mother made me go to the dentist and wear braces, something I absolutely hated. In the bathroom, the silver truth hanging innocuously on the tiled walls told me: you are fat, you are ugly. Look at your round head, look at your flat hair. Look at your teeth. Why did your father give them to you? Look at your non-existent waist. Look at your short horsey legs. Look at your big thighs. Look at the way you stand, the way you walk. Look at your too-broad shoulders. Look at your small breasts. Look at how short and Asian you are. Every part of my body I picked apart. Instead of Barbies I started buying teen magazines. I imagined cutting out Miley Cyrus’s arms, Taylor Swift’s legs, Nina Dobrev’s eyes, Rihanna’s personality. I wanted, like Ursula, to steal their voices and their identities: only then could I look in the mirror and feel love for myself. 

Right after our HKDSE examinations (the Hong Kong equivalent of SATs, IBs, A-Levels, Abiturs…), my friends and I thought it time to shed our skins. Like snakes, we wriggled out of our old, awkward shells; into something not necessarily better, but new. My friend Maple grew her hair long and bleached it grey. I cut my hair short and dyed the underlayer a midnight blue. We got our cartilages pierced: a conch for me, double helix for her. In school we had to wear our hair in ponytails; my friends Hailey, Nicole and Katy let their hair cascade down their backs and started wearing short skirts, something our school also prohibited. We looked in the mirror and we felt happy with what we saw. This was finally something we had chosen for ourselves. I started wearing contacts, and my braces had come off. My puppy fat was shedding. I smiled more, because I liked the row of straight white pearls I saw. I didn’t hate myself so much anymore. 

With the newfound confidence, I started dating in university. My first boyfriend became the biggest mirror in my life at the time. He told me, you dress kinda lazy. Suddenly I was thrown back into the small school bathroom, its tiled walls and square mirror caging me in. You are ugly. I ‘feminised’ myself. Started wearing dresses, grew out my midnight blue hair and bleached it a grey ombre. I spoke with a soft voice and said yes it’s ok don’t worry about it haha, I hung out less with my friends Maple, Hailey, Nicole, Katy and tried to understand the conditions of his love for me in dark karaoke bars, where I sat politely and watched him and his friends throw back drink after drink. I loved him, but this wasn’t me. When things didn’t work out I cried for two months and lost a lot of weight. In the mirror, my eyes were sad and my waist had never looked so defined. I was the hottest I had ever been. But I had to find love for myself again, by understanding who I was. I had become somebody I wasn’t; so who was I now without him? 

Now, I am at the end of my Bachelor’s degree. I know I can’t drink much alcohol because I’m allergic to it, though I indulge in the occasional sip of a cocktail. I prefer staying at home and reading and writing silly little essays, sitting with my dog, staring out of the window and pondering. I don’t like clubs, but I like going on picnics with my friends. The mirror tells me I’m tired because of the overwhelming workload life is bringing me, but that I’m happy. I’m doing what I like doing and being around people that bring me joy. I don’t care as much about whether my breasts are big or my ass looks good anymore. I’m starting to look like my current partner and I see a lot of myself in him; a hard worker, a caring person, someone who will give me freedom when I need it and respect my decisions. But at the end of the day I look at the girl in my bathroom mirror, and I see the flamboyant kid under her sallow face, the awkward teenager in the curl of her lip, the grandmother she will become in the wrinkles on her forehead. I still cringe when I see old pictures of myself, but I’m trying to reconcile with that version of myself. You’re beautiful, I want to tell her through the mirror. You’re exactly where you need to be. 

'Cause I don't wanna lose you now
I'm lookin' right at the other half of me
The vacancy that sat in my heart
Is a space that now you hold
Show me how to fight for now
And I'll tell you, baby, it was easy
Comin' back here to you once I figured it out
You were right here all along
It's like you're my mirror
My mirror staring back at me
I couldn't get any bigger
With anyone else beside of me

(Mirrors, Justin Timberlake)