TROUBL

I remember the first time I noticed it. When I was a teenager, my friend and I were lifeguards at a day camp swimming pool. One day, we went up to the lodge after work to change for dates that evening. When we were putting on our makeup in side-by-side mirrors, I glanced over at her and almost burst out laughing. She was making this bizarre face–cheeks sucked in, lips puckered, eyes wide, skin tight over her cheekbones. Like a fish-face you learn to make as a kid. I didn’t laugh out loud since she was in the midst of putting makeup near her eye, and I didn’t want to startle her. And after all, I thought, I make some weird faces when I’m putting on mascara — anything to get the eyelids farther apart. But, before I said anything, when she looked back in the mirror a moment later, she made that same face again. Her makeup was finished, and she had no reason to be opening her eyes like that or puckering up her lips. She just seemed to make the face automatically. Afraid of offending her, I didn’t say anything.

Over the next few days, I watched her around mirrors; in the bathroom at the movies, walking by reflective windows at the mall, in the car–and I realized that every time she went near a mirror, she made that face. I was appalled. Here was my friend, a beautiful girl who had no reason to look different, sucking in her cheeks to such an extreme that she looked freakish. I began to wonder: Does she know she’s doing that? Or, is it subconscious –a physical manifestation of how she wants herself to look? Does she think she really looks that way? And does she think that’s how she should look?

I started paying attention to the habits of my other female friends, and noticed that many of them had a similar tendency when faced with a mirror. None of the others’ “mirror faces” were as pronounced, but many of them jutted their heads out to reduce under-chin skin, or sucked their cheeks in, or puffed out their lips, or widened their eyes, every time they saw a mirror. A knee-jerk reaction, I suppose, to see what they wanted to see when they had to look at themselves. It has been interesting to watch, because most of my girlfriends are strong, intelligent women who don’t conform to society’s standards of beauty–most of the time. And yet, even now, when we’re on a trip together, if I see my amazing and independent friends at their mirrors, they are making their “mirror faces.”

I’ve long since ceased to question whether I have a mirror face; since it seems to be such a subconscious thing for others, I doubt I’d be able to catch myself doing it. But, I’ve certainly seen enough pictures of myself tagged on MySpace and Facebook accounts to know that I don’t always look as good as I do in my mirror at home! In fact, most of my girlfriends insist that we’re “not photogenic,” and find excuses to get out of pictures whenever possible, probably because they feel the same way. When they look in a mirror, they see a glamour shot looking back at them, so those photos from drunken parties probably strike them as odd. After all, they don’t really look like that in their minds.

This phenomenon is something I’ve kept mostly private. I don’t want to be the one telling all my friends that they’re really not as “attractive” as they think they are, or that they’re making themselves less so with their fish faces, but I’ve thought about it a lot. Which is why, when I came across this article in the New York times, I wasn’t surprised. Turns out, in a recent study, “participants identified their personal portraits significantly quicker when their faces were computer enhanced to be 20 percent more attractive. They were also likelier, when presented with images of themselves made prettier, homelier or left untouched, to call the enhanced image their genuine, unairbrushed face.”

Of course, what constitutes “attractiveness” is in the eye of the beholder, but scientists agree that most people are attracted to symmetrical and tight-skinned, thin faces. The kind of faces girls make when they look in the mirror. The faces we tell ourselves represent who we really are. The faces we see in magazines, airbrushed and made up, are beautiful beyond what’s normal.

All of this seems a little redundant, really. Does it need to be said out loud that we all want to be more attractive than we are? The human mind is capable of convincing itself of just about anything it wants, so why not go through life imagining one’s self to be 20 percent more attractive? What’s wrong with walking around with an inflated sense of self-esteem? Our culture tells us there’s nothing wrong with it.

We are special and individual. We are beautiful on the inside, and the inside is what matters. But, if we really believed our culture, shouldn’t we be able to be honest with ourselves about our “mirror faces”? Shouldn’t we just pick the un-enhanced image and be fine with what we really look like? Society tells us–and we buy into it–we’re beautiful on the inside, and that in order to show it, we must be beautiful on the outside, too. And beauty, it seems, is a fish-face.