Mirror Theory

I have a theory about photos and mirrors. I think people look better to themselves in mirrors than they do in photos.

But then Karen said she couldn’t see any difference. Photo or mirror, she looked the same to herself.

There goes the theory, I thought. Then again, maybe not. Karen is beautiful. She is beautiful in photos, and she is beautiful in the mirror.

I am not beautiful in photos. In fact in photos, with only a few professional exceptions, I think I look drab and jowly.

But in the mirror, I always look pretty darn good, at least after a shower and I have combed my hair.

Why is that?

I have a theory.

I think what I see in the mirror is the result of a long and selective process. I have been looking at myself in the mirror for almost 60 years. Never once in all that time have I looked in a mirror for any purpose other than making myself look better. I think that is true of practically all people. I have never heard of a person using a mirror to try to make himself or herself look worse. If they hit the street looking like Michael Jackson or Tammy Faye Bakker, that’s their business.

If I hit the street looking like Michael Grant, well, that’s the best I could do. That is why I can get so discouraged when I look at myself in photos.

The difference is, I think, the camera sees me the way the camera sees me, without interpretation. In the mirror, I see me the way I have learned to see me. I have spent almost 60 years looking for good things. At the same time, I have chosen not to see bad things. Your perspective starts to get shaped. I am positive I look better in the mirror than I do on the street. That is because I have saved every little good thing I ever saw about me in the mirror, and eventually a template has emerged. The template has been forced to submit to reality and revisions over time, but the basic geometry still is of a 20-year-old lean-jawed college sophomore looking for something to like. I am looking at a vain portrait of myself, assembled stroke by stroke. A dumb camera can’t do that.

There is something else, and for this I will never have an answer. I am the only human being on earth who knows what I look like in the mirror. No one else can see me that way. When I look at myself in a photo, my left eye is on the right. I am seeing myself as anyone else sees me, with my left on their right.

But when I look at myself in the mirror, my right eye is on the right. When I first discovered that, it was disorienting. I had to devise a test before I could be satisfied. I raised my hand on the side of the eye my right eye was looking at in the mirror. I raised that hand to my face. Then I looked at my hand. It was my right hand. There was the proof: In the mirror, I was looking at myself backward, and I am the only one who can do that.

It reminded me of the funny and interesting results achieved when a person cuts two identical photos of himself down the middle, then puts the right side with the right side, and the left with the left. It’s like looking at two different people.

In the mirror, is the same principle at work? I don’t know, and I have stopped thinking about it for the time being, because a new question arises. Millions of people look at Sean Connery and drool at his good looks. If he is like me, in his mirror he must look even better to himself. But he is the only one who can see it. What would it be like, to be Sean Connery, and be the only one in the world who knows what you really look like? I will ask Karen. She is beautiful, and maybe she will know.