Legendary vampires disliked mirrors because they couldn’t see their reflections. The Wicked Queen in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" became quite nasty after looking into a mirror and asking, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of us all?" If we want to feel better about ourselves, perhaps we should follow their examples and ban mirrors forever. According to a Canadian study recently published in the journal Health Psychology, wall-to-wall mirrors in gyms and dance studios discourage women from getting the exercise they need because they quickly feel tired and discouraged. "The mirrors make women more self-aware," noted one of the researchers, "and they think of their shortcomings." Tell us something we didn’t know. You don’t have to be a mental giant to understand that mirrors are bad for most women’s self-esteem and that looking into a mirror can often be a painful experience. No matter how a woman takes care of herself, mirrors constantly remind her for the first half of her life how much she looks like her mother. During the second half of her life, she resembles her grandmother. No, not the skinny one who line-dances every Saturday night and still has all of her teeth, but the other one. Mirrors on fitting room walls in clothing stores are the worst. The most they can show is a close-up view of a woman’s body, standing less than a foot away in a tiny cubicle. By contorting her body this way and that, a woman of average proportions (the average woman in the U.S. wears a size 14) can only hope to catch a glimpse of an elbow, a hip or a partial thigh at a time. That’s all a woman can expect to see, provided the mirror, located inches from her face, hasn’t been fogged over with her breath. A better designed fitting room mirror would be located at least 20 feet away and the woman trying on clothes would look relatively smaller. Mirrors aren’t the only things tarnishing women’s self-esteem. Reflective glass windows on storefronts show more than they have to. Store owners should consider installing the type of non-glare glass already available with photo frames. TV commercials with beautiful 20-somethings attributing their flawless hands, bodies and faces to various skin care products should be run out of town. Show us real women with their wrinkles ironed out and their age spots erased, thanks to a certain cream or lotion, and we might be interested. During TV newscasts, why not show us the female counterparts of those veteran, male news anchors with weathered faces? As long as he has a winning smile and a gift of gab, it appears that a male news anchor can have a spare tire, gray hair and ear-to-ear wrinkles. Disproportionate ages are also found on the big screen. Richard Gere, Michael Douglas and Sean Connery always seem to be falling in love with women young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters. Finally, let’s do away with this "truth in labeling" nonsense. It certainly wouldn’t hurt our self-esteem if size tags were switched at the clothing factories once in a while. Many women would feel much happier wearing a size three or, for that matter, any single-digit size. Meanwhile, getting rid of mirrors would be a good first step in building up the self-esteem of many women.
