Not long ago, an article in The Atlantic featured a concept we re-visit every week in our body image groups: objectifying ourselves. Making ourselves no more than what we look like. Though a different demographic than the young women in our groups, Arthur Brooks, a 58-year-old white man, discusses self-objectification and why it is so destructive in his piece. Viewing ourselves as nothing beyond our appearance is destructive to women, men, non-binary people, children…
Do you remember the first time you ever looked in a mirror? I’m sure this wasn’t my absolute first time, but my earliest memories of looking in the mirror are as a very young child in dance class. We had the mirror there to make sure we looked the way we were supposed to- that we were doing what we were meant to do. And as I got older, it ingrained in me that the mirror was there to make sure that my body was shaped the way it was supposed to be shaped.
Whether for dance, or to fit in with a certain community or sport, you may have been conditioned to look in the mirror as a way to see yourself as something to be manipulated in order to please others. Our bodies and our looks become a thing to be dealt with-to be fixed. This is self-objectification. Here’s what Arthur Brooks says about one of the unexpected consequences of self-objectification:
Seeing yourself as an object rather than a subject can…lower your performance in ordinary tasks. Researchers found that in learning experiments that people are less likely to try new things when they are focused on themselves.
Look at that. Just like our recent BAP post described: getting out of your own self-obsession helps you get involved in the world around you. We participate more when we are not overly-self-focused.
But here is what Brooks reported that is fascinating about mirrors: for those of us who struggle with self-acceptance, looking in mirrors may actually be part of the problem.
…mirrors are not your friend. They help even the healthiest people objectify themselves; for people with self-image-related maladies, they can be sheer misery. In 2001, researchers studying people with body dysmorphic disorder (those who think obsessively about perceived flaws in their bodies) found that the longest time the participants spent looking in the mirror (and thus focusing on the source of their distress) was 3.4 times longer than the longest mirror-gazing session of those who didn’t have the disorder.
What do you think of that? Obsession with perceived flaws includes staring at those perceived flaws more than 3x as long as others look in the mirror. You already didn’t like it, but you are staring it and checking it and re-examining it again and again and again… Am I suggesting you put your mirrors in the closet, along with your scale?
Maybe. But I have also come to know this truth: we can learn to look at ourselves in a way that fortifies our dignity, rather than draining it. Valerie Monroe teaches us the mirror meditation and if you haven’t tried it yet, please do. If you’ve done it before, please do it again. Practicing it regularly will allow you to see YOU, not just the object you have been trying to manipulate.
