Creating The Webbd Wheel: Mirrors
In which we look ... but do we see?
A mirror is a reflection, a surface image. That’s all. It only shows us visual details, and even those are misleading. A mirror cannot even reflect the image other people see when they look at us. It can only show a reverse image.
Our latest version of a mirror is a selfie. Selfies, too, are limited to superficial visual details during one moment in time. Even that one depicted moment may be a lie, as our technology allows us to manipulate digital images so elegantly. Selfies do not and cannot reflect a whole person. Their power lies in the stories we make about them when we see them.
People die taking selfies.
The magic mirror in the Snow White fairytale has always intrigued me. Why is it so important to be the fairest in the land? Did Snow White’s mother’s position depend on it? The fairytale never tells us why a woman is willing to kill her stepdaughter in order to retain her position.
In the early 1800s, when the Brothers Grimm translated Snow White, was a woman’s appearance her only value? Do we still believe our appearance is more important and valuable than who we are and what we contribute? Certainly medical science and technology would indicate appearance is paramount, with cosmetic plastic surgery widely available and utilized, colored contact lenses, and hair and skin dyes, not to mention the billion-dollar cosmetic business and image manipulation technology.
Who programs a magic mirror to be the arbiter of the fairest? After all, ideas of beauty differ widely across time, culture, and even individuals.
Or was it not beauty at all the mirror was talking about, but youth? Are only the young beautiful?
During my lifetime, in what seems to be a reversal from the 60s hippy movement, more and more of us portray women wearing nail polish, jewelry, glitzy dresses and accessories, high heels, heavy makeup, exotic underwear, and tortured hair.
A mirror would say that’s a woman, but it’s really only a costume, someone’s idea of what a woman should look like. Appearances lie all the time, though. In fact, appearances are increasingly deceiving.
A mirror is not reality. It leaves too much out, too much unseen and unrevealed. We don’t always see with clear eyes. An anorectic, for example, sees a fat person rather than a starving skeleton.
How does a woman like my character Queen Snow White become imprisoned by a looking glass? What has led to her enslavement? She spends all her days sitting in front of the mirror, but she never sees. Does fear blind her? Or jealousy? Or self-hatred? How did her reflection become more important than what’s inside her, or her daughter and what’s inside her? Why is a beautiful queen so filled with self-hatred and misery if beauty is the most important thing in life?
Mirrors (and appearances) break. They shatter. They distort. They confuse. They’re hardly a reliable source for decision making.
For those of us who don’t spend a lot of time looking in mirrors, catching sight of one’s reflection can be quite a jolt. Our internal experience rarely takes into account our appearance in the eyes of others. We can feel we’re looking at a stranger, which is disturbing, to say the least.
In post #40 of The Hanged Man, Rose Red, unlike her queen mother, looks in the mirror and sees. She has a moment of heartbreaking clarity, unobscured by the mists of love and guilt.
She sees, and she doesn’t look away from what she sees. She doesn’t put lipstick on it, or tell herself she was mistaken, or comfort herself with polishing the appearance of reality to make it less … real. She looks. She sees. Something in her finally tears free. She acts.
Is a mirror good or evil? Do mirrors serve us, or do we serve mirrors?
(This essay was published with post #40 of The Hanged Man.)