Reflection And The Subjective Nature of Beauty

There’s a term about being ones own worst critic.  I try to remember that line each time I look into the mirror and pick myself apart.  Since childhood, I’ve been told that I was beautiful more times than I could count, but it never ceases to amaze me and leave me questioning everyones sanity each time I catch my own own reflection. 

I’ve experienced men gawking and strangers blushing with embarrassment because they just couldn’t help but tell me, the girl that walked by them in the grocery store, or the one sitting alone at the bar, how beautiful I was.  But I’ve also experienced the utter disgust and looks of pure hatred from people who took one glance at me and felt that I was a waste of air for the mere darkness of my skin.  It’s given me such a complex; being called beautiful.  It isn’t what I see when I look in the mirror.  I see every flaw, every bump and blemish, every broken hair that sticks out from my head.  I see every imperfection as if it were the main character in the story of my face. 

I remember sitting on the counter next to the bathroom sink and crying.  My tiny legs dangled while my hands covered my small face.  I didn’t want to turn around and face my own reflection.  At 7 years old, I was dealing with the complexities of being biracial.  My differences had been pointed out to me by so many people, that I finally understood what they saw.  I wasn’t fair skinned like my mother, but I wasn’t dark like my father either.  I was a shade of skin that I didn’t understand, and another kid in the neighborhood had told me I looked like mud.  I was mud.  A stupid shade of dirt that no one understood or liked.  A notion I would have never noticed had it not been brought to my attention.  My reflection became the last thing on earth I wanted to see.  And that day marked the beginning of a life of always being aware that I was different and the constant struggle to feel comfortable in my own fucking skin. 

I laid naked, my bare skin cold against the cement of the basement floor.  The full length mirror faced up next to me, exposing my vulnerable nudity in it’s reflection.  At 21 I wanted to be brave.  I wanted to be confident in the skin that had given me so much grief.  I wanted to document, if only for myself, that the body I hated was in fact beautiful.  Each flash blinded me in the gloom of the dark corner of the small room.  My eyes begged to close as the alcohol took its effects, but the adrenaline kept me alert.  I didn’t see the same person others saw when they looked at me, my reflection was the truth I often sought as my proof.  I saw what others did not.  I saw behind the skin and beyond the outside of what held me together.  Uncertainty seeped through my eyes, but the vulnerability of being just flesh and bones, the mere anatomy of my female body, gave me the strength to question the subjective nature of beauty. 

I stood in the silence staring at myself in the mirror that took up the entirety of the wall above the vanity.  I didn’t know how long I had been standing there frozen, my reflection an unexpected trigger of what seemed like another life.  No makeup, the three freckles on my left cheek unusually visible.  Every crease and line in my face distinct and exposing the hidden stress that had caused them.  The dark bags under my eyes were left naked and easy to spot.  My frizzy hair still damp from the night before, kinked and tangled from the mistake of leaving my brush in my car, inaccessible along with my makeup bag.  It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t look or feel pretty that hit me the hardest, making my throat rise with the acidic panic.  He appeared in the doorway to tell me I looked beautiful and laugh at my insecurity that was overwhelmingly apparent.  But it was only making me feel worse, him trying to convince me of something that wasn’t convincible.  It wasn’t that I felt ugly - I felt uneasy.  Because the part of me that was showing through was from a very ugly part of my life.  It was that I took one look in the mirror and saw the same me that had stood there starting at herself in June - no makeup, hair a fucking mess, eyes puffy, and the deep purple bags growing as the insomnia set in.  It wasn’t what I wanted to think about.  I had come so far and promised myself I wouldn’t let myself get like that again.  The way I was in those months when I didn’t leave the house, or shower, or get dressed, or care about anything other than not caring about anything anymore.  It was being reminded of that time that bothered me and flushed me with insecurity.  I didn’t want to see her again and I for damn sure didn’t want anyone else to see her either. 

So what makes someone beautiful anyway?  Everything we see and the way we see it is all too subjective.  You see what you think is me, but I see someone else.  In the end, aren’t we both right?