How a ‘Fat’ Mirror Helped Me Accept My Body — Finally
(Photo: Getty Images)
Jessica Knoll is the New York Times best-selling author of Luckiest Girl Alive. She’s been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and the articles editor of SELF. Actress Reese Witherspoon has signed on to produce the film version of the novel. In this essay, Jessica writes about how her own challenges with self-confidence informed the creation of her protagonist.
I hate my body and I blame Pier 1 Imports. Or maybe I blame ABC Carpet & Home for pricing the mother-of-pearl floor mirror that I really wanted out of my budget. I had been on the hunt for a piece that would fill up space in my new grown-up girl bedroom, and according to One Kings Lane, an oversized statement mirror was just the ticket.
With its grand stature and antique finish, the ‘Smoky Blue Floor Mirror’ from Pier 1 looked much more expensive than its three hundred and fifty dollar price tag—at least from what I could tell from the pictures online. I added it to my cart and checked the box for the white glove in-home delivery.
On the day it arrived, I eagerly shredded the foam protective padding and stepped back to take it in. To my relief, it appeared in person exactly as it did online (aside from the chip in the frame that I never bothered to report because life is too short to be put on hold by customer service). But there was one problem. My beautiful bargain statement mirror that complemented my soft blue duvet cover and my distressed grey-green bureau — that piece actually from ABC Carpet & Home, albeit the outlet — made me look fat.
It wasn’t all in my admittedly neurotic head, either. Friends who have stood before the mercy of the blue beast have gasped and turned away. The thing lives in my bedroom; I don’t have that option. And when an image you see everyday is incongruous with the one that’s in your head, something has to give—either the way you see yourself, or a pretty, brand new statement mirror that ties together your grown-up girl bedroom. It seemed silly and vain to leave the mirror on the street for the New York Department of Sanitation to pick up, so it stayed.
The bar for my outfits became comically low: doesn’t make me look like a fat hobbit? Thumbs up. It sounds totally self-esteem shattering, but it wasn’t, at least not during that first year of the blue monster’s reign. I was an editor at Cosmopolitan at the time and the elevators in the Hearst building are encased in floor-to-ceiling glass so that all the editors can check themselves out whilst pretending not to. It’s great fun, really. Most important, what I saw in the mirrors in the Hearst elevators matched what I saw in my head, making it easier to write off my reflection in the mirror at home as a freak optical illusion.
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I’ve almost always thought of myself as slender-ish. I’m short, 5’3, and weigh around 120/125 pounds. I work out a ton, eat my fruits and veggies, but I don’t say no to wine, cheese, and ice cream, either. I’ve gone through periods where I have been very hungry and very slender, no ish about it. I’m a driven, perfectionist millennial woman, the picture of the “Superwoman Ideal,” a well-studied construct that defines women who want to do it all and have it all. I know from my years of interviewing psychologists during my time as a magazine editor that superwoman types are particularly prone to disordered eating and body image issues. I am certainly no exception to that rule. But I had bought the blue mirror at a point in my life where I had made peace with my body. I had no idea the purchase would amount to an act of war.
At the time, I was also working on my first novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, about a fellow superwoman who believes that having it all—the perfect job, the perfect body, the perfect fiancé—could prove a solvent for her checkered past. She isn’t working out twice a day and subsiding on egg whites and kowtowing to her fiancé and his entitled inner circle because it makes her happy, she’s doing it because being thin and beautiful and, supposedly, in love projects the veneer of happiness. I was trying to make a point about the glorification of the #LuckyGirl standard on social media, how easy it is to slap an Instagram filter over an unsatisfying existence.
All the while, I was just as guilty as my protagonist—thinking that if I could just polish my exterior a little brighter, that everything would run smoother on the inside. And when I left magazine world to focus on the publication of the book, when I no longer had the elevators at work to soften the blue mirror’s blow, that misguided belief only deepened.
I hired an expensive trainer, counted my macros obsessively (I also learned what the hell macros are — nutrients, such as fats, carbs, and proteins). I went to bed hungry, and cancelled dinner plans—I didn’t deserve the extra calories in a glass or two of wine. I lost ten pounds, just in time for my book party. Standing before my blue mirror, in the size two Tibi dress I’d splurged on for the occasion, I could not detect one iota of improvement. I tried to remind myself of how I felt when I looked in the mirror at Saks, where I first tried on the dress—how surprised I was by how good I looked—but the ego wasn’t buying it. The blue mirror spoke the only truth I could hear—until recently.
My husband and I arrived at our beach rental house a few weeks ago. It was lunchtime and we were absolutely starved, so we decided to quickly change and head into town for a bite to eat. I undressed, my anxiety mounting. Would we be able to find a salad place? How would I stick to my guns when all I really wanted was a turkey and cheese sandwich on—the horror—white, a sort of Pavlovian response to smelling the ocean air. That was what my mother used to pack in the coolers we would take to the beach when I was a child. Extra yellow mustard for me.
Ready, I stepped in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the closet door in what would be my bedroom for the next month. The mirror has a white plastic frame; the price tag still stuck in the corner revealing its origins: Bed, Bath and Beyond. It’s looks like the sort of mirror you would buy for a dorm, completely out of sorts with the otherwise shabby chic décor. But when I saw my reflection, I suddenly understood why: I looked good.
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For one brief moment, I allowed myself to consider this image a reality—before immediately dismissing it as the sorcery of a skinny mirror. And a skinny mirror, unlike a fat mirror, is actually a thing that exists that you can buy. The California-based company, aptly named “The Skinny Mirror,” designs glass on a curvature, making the user appear taller and up to ten pounds thinner. The website refers to the product as “The Feel-Good Mirror,” proselytizing that you only look as good as you feel.
I’ve encountered a few skinny mirrors in my day, and they only served to make me feel worse: Hey! Here’s how much better you could look if you could just deal with being hungry like a champ.
“That’s your internal mirror talking,” says Vivian Diller, PhD, a specialist in body image issues and the author of Face It: What Women Really Feel as Their Looks Change. “The real work isn’t in changing our appearance so that we’re happy with ourselves, it’s in editing our self-reportage so that it’s kinder and gentler. We need to learn to talk to ourselves with the same level of compassion we show our friends.” In the meantime, Diller says, it doesn’t hurt to go out and get yourself a mirror that makes you look the best you can possibly look. Or, in my case, to look in the one I’ve got and not dismiss what I see as wishful thinking.
I know that blue demon is at home, waiting to destroy any progress —mental and physical— I make while I’m out here. I see now, even with just a little bit of distance, the sort of Stockholm hold the thing had on me. Which means only one thing—no matter that it accentuates the muted palette of my grown-up girl bedroom, no matter that it’s in perfect condition and that the three hundred and fifty dollar price tag is nothing to sneeze at, it simply has to go.
Maybe, I’ll treat myself to that mother-of-pearl floor mirror from ABC Carpet & Home. Or maybe, I’ll leave my summer landlord a check for $19.99. There’s a spare skinny mirror in the closet.
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