On Modern Day Vanity

An Essay Encompassing my Past Pieces More Formally

Written To Emulate Joan Didion's On Being Unchosen

(I must preface this with the warning that it discusses very sensitive topics, and if you are susceptible to mental health triggers, please avoid reading.)

I gazed in the mirror, although I could not really decipher anything at all. I recalled being there when we learned about our senses in class. We learned that when the environmental stimulus, light, strikes the smooth surface of a mirror, it bounces back at the same angle and is reflected into our eyes. Our retina perceives the photons, and our optic nerve sends neural impulses, or information, from the eye to our brain. It is a seemingly infallible process, which is why it was strange to me how it did not feel as mechanical as it should. I squinted, rubbed my eyes, closed and reopened them all together. I tilted my head, dimmed the light, walked away, and came back. I peered at the image of myself reflected in the mirror at all angles, inspecting and examining, trying to assess the reflection. I must have been absent the day we learned how to give meaning to the image looking back at us.

The mirror was the bane of my existence. Well, maybe it was not the mirror that tormented me, rather the deprivation that took place every day before confronting the mirror. I could not remember the exact moment that the mirror had seized me from my blissful ignorance, but I did remember the existence of a time before I had lost my youthful sense of buoyancy, and I cherished that reminiscence like a souvenir. Gazing into the mirror then, however, liquified that souvenir, and it suddenly felt like I was desperately trying to hold water in my hands. It was like this hyperconsciousness, this deeply intense yearning to fill a void, had always been me. I had always been chasing an aesthetic my five-foot body could never achieve, a fallacy that was unattainable. The definition of satisfaction and its sustenance had always been unfamiliar, and my complacency had always depended on the nutrition facts of a granola bar and the evident distinction between a teaspoon and a tablespoon.

Perhaps I was vain. The guilt of that notion cut almost as deep as the mirror. My life was perceivably perfect when observed in reference to Maslow’s Hierarchy. I had everything, how could I have possibly felt anything other than fulfilled? How self-absorbed could I be to let myself care about such trivial matters? I saw myself embody the silhouette I had been striving for. Maybe then people would sympathize with my debilitated mind. But no matter how frail my soul became, my stubborn body had never followed suit. I resented it for that. The only thing worse than suffering was suffering in isolation. I was an imposter to my own illness.

When I could no longer indulge in humanism, a professional told me it was not my fault that I became such a tampered and dwindled shell of myself. That I had placed an invisible wall between between me and the people I loved while morphing every facet of my life to fit into an hourglass frame. She told me that it was unsurprising to feel that way in a society where women are always on display. Of course, I had a visceral eagerness to strive for a completed essence, one that was nothing less than desirable. To evaluate my body’s sexual qualifications was an ordinary endeavor amongst girls alike. She told me that somewhere during my brain’s most malleable years, I had learned to fear dessert and avoid breakfast. She told me that it was inevitable for me to scroll through my phone, reinforcing these distorted ideas, because to not scroll would be choosing oblivion over infinity. My illness granted me a sense of control where I felt that I had none, a measure of compensation for all that I contended I lacked.

It was somewhere in the pulling at my skin that I was overcome with a feeling much deeper than the mirror could ever convey. I was suddenly aware of the absence of something, the absence of a girl that I missed dearly. A girl who was once enthralled by bookstores and late-night car rides. A girl who admired academia, who felt inspired by words and numbers. A girl who was grand and exuberant, who exuded a lightness that was infectious. A girl whose heart was a bottomless pit overflowing with love. I missed warmth.

I chose to heal, not for myself but to reconcile with the young girl who had so much potential. And although the mirror’s haunts are everlasting, I can taste the sweetness of youth. I get myself coffee in the morning, and schoolwork is no longer as much of a burden. I jump on my bed and dance to music. I cry to sad movies and laugh until I pee with friends. I do not evade birthday parties, and I belt my heart out to my favorite songs. I go to the mall and pretend I am a princess dazzled by the plethora of dresses. I derive and integrate functions with a newfound enthusiasm. I love getting sunburnt, taking pictures, and moments that make my heart race.

I wonder if we had better find a way to pass on these sentiments to our daughters. To teach them their worth is nothing but inherent, that they are worthy for merely existing on this earth. There must be some way to let them know that clothes are meant to fit them and that they are not meant to fit into clothes. Finding one’s role at seventeen is problem enough, without searching for value in empty testaments of modern-day beauty standards.

El