Do you always search for reflective surfaces?

How long can you go without looking at your reflection? To find out Yolande D’Mello went on the mirror diet
Kjerstin Gruysm, a 20-something American woman had tried every trending diet on the planet. Tired of feeling low about the way she looked, she decided she’d simply avoid the person she saw in the mirror, and didn’t like, for a whole year. Her daily blogs claim it made her calmer.
When the media bombards you with images of the perfect body, skin, hair, nails, what you see in the mirror isn’t always satisfying. A rattled self-esteem is then your loyal friend.
The mirror diet, which is now a fad across the US and Europe, requires you to desist looking into any reflective surface, whether store windows, rear view mirrors, shiny cookware or your laptop screen.
A social anthropologist at the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, Kate Fox argues that the concept is not constructive. “Avoiding something in such a dramatic and drastic manner can only be temporarily liberating. It’s throwing the issue of appearance into sharp relief in the same way that crash dieting often serves to make people obsess even more about food.”
So basically, the worst that could happen is I’d end up ogling at myself. That seemed like a risk I could take.
Day 1: The first day of the mirror diet proved to be the least successful. After poking myself in the eye twice while trying to apply eyeliner, I embraced the gothic subculture with some smudgy kohl. Trusting family when I asked if I looked okay also seemed like a test. Do I ask mum, who pretty much thinks I could pull off a Lady Gaga if I wanted, or dad who thinks I need to go back to my school uniform?
Going about my usual routine, I realised that reflective surfaces were sneaking up on me. At breakfast, there was a spoon that made my head look bulbously large. The rickshaw’s rear view mirror seemed to look right at me, and every lift in the city saw me staring back at myself. It was hardly noon, and I had resigned to being the most selfobsessed person alive. Similar to a food diary that tracks on binge snacking, I started noticing how I had naturally trained my eyes on reflective surfaces.
I resolved to stare at my feet in an attempt to steady my roving eye in search of shiny objects.
Colleagues, curious about this new foot fetish, laughed when I told them I was on a diet. And laughed harder when I said I was struggling.
They seemed to think it quite amusing to point to my face and say, “Hey, what’s that?” in an attempt to get me to cheat. But it only worked the first four times.
Day 2: It’s day two, and apparently I’m not the only one. A research psychologist at the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol, Dr Phillippa Diedrichs says there is an increased pressure in modern society to look a certain way — a look that’s unachievable for most, so when people compare themselves, they fall short and are left miserable. What that means is that the lady from the marketing team spends hours looking at herself in the mirror before and after relieving herself, it doesn’t mean she likes what she sees.
Day 3: I decided to end the staring feet contest and look at people instead. A game of dodging mirrors turned into an exercise in self-actualisation. Are we so vain that we can’t walk through a parking lot without pondering about a bad hair day while peering into the window of a sedan? I was getting better at avoiding mirrors. And that resulted in walking around for 20 minutes with a coffee moustache. It felt good to laugh at myself.
I studied at a convent where the 20-minute break was usually spent re-enacting favourite cartoon characters. Some days it was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Power Rangers. Occasionally it was The Power Puff Girls, in which case, break-time ended with everyone fighting over who was Blossom. I threw a tantrum too, and usually ended up as Buttercup. But if I were to pick a character that a nine-yearold, scrawny and bespectacled me could honestly connect with, it would be Disney classic, The Ugly Duckling.
After 23 years, and countless salon visits, I still felt obliged to that nine-year-old to keep a controlled check on my appearance. But was it sensible to let my self-esteem get knotted in the probability of a bad hair day?
The diet is over, and I do recognise myself. I look exactly the same but feel less concerned about it.
Yolande.Dmello@timesgroup.com