A year without mirrors: could you do it?

Like ’em or loathe ’em, we all depend on mirrors to reassure ourselves that our make-up hasn’t melted, there isn’t a forest of parsley wedged in our teeth, or a pimple hasn’t sprouted before that hot date.

On average, it’s been found that women look at their reflections about 30 times a day – that’s about every half hour during waking hours. With so much primping and preening going on, could you stay away from your own refl ection for 365 days?

Kjerstin Gruys is giving it a go. The PhD student, with a special interest in body image, was becoming increasingly frustrated with shopping for her wedding dress when she read the opening line in Sarah Dunant’s The Birth Of Venus (Little, Brown, $30), about a convent of nuns:

“No-one had seen her naked until her death. It was a rule of the order that the sisters should not look on human fl esh, neither their own nor anyone else’s.”

“A lifetime without seeing oneself?” wrote Kjerstin on her blog. “It made me pause. What a different life those nuns had lived, compared to my appearance-obsessed world. Could I go even one day without looking at myself in a mirror? Maybe I should. Actually, how about a year?”

Kjerstin has since removed all mirrors from her life. Her bathroom mirror is now covered by a curtain, she takes different routes to work so she doesn’t have to walk past public ones, and has given up window shopping in case she glimpses herself in a store reflection. She’s also learned to put make-up on without a mirror.

When CLEO caught up with Kjerstin,  she was past the halfway point of the experiment and just one week away from her wedding – a day just like any other in her year-long, no-mirror challenge.

While any other bride would be having conniptions at the thought of not seeing herself on her big day, Kjerstin seemed relaxed. “I feel mostly good about it, though I’m a little anxious about doing my own make-up,” she says.

“Other than the make-up issue, I feel great about going without mirrors. I’ve been doing a lot of planning for the day – food, decorations, music … those are the things I’m looking forward to seeing. Oh, and my fiancé, of course. I like the idea of showing women that you can have a happy life even if you don’t look perfect all the time – or ever, for that matter.”

Research suggests that 80 per cent of women are unhappy with their reflection. Kjerstin, who struggled with anorexia in her teenage years, is very familiar with that sentiment.

“When I was younger and suffering with my eating disorder, I used to look in the mirror with unrealistic standards in mind. I was very thin, but wanted to be thinner.”

Even after resolving her body issues, Kjerstin found she wasn’t very nice to her mirror image. “There are things I like when I look at myself, but I still struggle to think nice thoughts. Before this project, I’d always focus on the areas I didn’t like.”

Now, Kjerstin barely remembers what she looks like and chooses to trust others when they complimenther on her appearance, rather than judge her own reflection.

“At the start, I was a bit worried about how I looked, but recently, I’ve been a lot more relaxed. It’s made me feel more authentic, more brave.”

Psychologist Dr Karen Weiss (Melbourne psychology.com.au) thinks Kjerstin’s mirror experiment is fascinating.

“I can only imagine it’ll have some positive effect on her body image – women criticise themselves far more than\ men do,” she points out.

“When females look in the mirror, they examine their bodies in bits. The first thing they’ll go to is the part they don’t like.”

If cutting mirrors out of your life seems too extreme, you can come to terms with your reflection by using other strategies. “Look at your whole body, not just in sections,” says Weiss. “Move further away from your image so you can take it all in. Practise being more compassionate when you talk about your shape. Women’s body satisfaction increases when they use their body in a functional way – yoga, dance and sex are all great ways to achieve this.”

By Emma Merkas