From Mirror with Love

The relationship between a woman and her mirror is supposed to be problematic. The mirror is said to show us that we age and lose our beauty; it is also supposed to show us that we are not as beautiful as beauty ideals want us to be. This is why it is also said that the mirror contains a male voice, telling us about our defects (see the Snow White Fairy Tale).

All this is to a great extent true. Yet things have changed since Snow White was put out, and can change still more. In literature the mirror is sometimes (but not always) negative. For instance, in Fifty Shades of Grey Ana is inspired when she looks at herself and Christian standing side by side in front of the mirror. In Charlotte Bronte's Villette, the mirror shows Ginevra how beautiful she is; Ginevra and protagonist Lucy Snowe have a cat fight and an excellent reconciliation in front of the mirror too!

Esther Summerson in Dickens's Bleak House comes to accept that she has lost her beauty after an illness by looking at herself determinedly in the mirror. The mirror in Jane Eyre hides a terrible secret one night, and is even darker in Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. The mirror image becomes lethal in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

Yet it is people's unjust actions that actually bring misery in Heights, Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, not the mirror itself.

The mirror is an instrument of the goddess Aphrodite and therefore sacred and an instrument of beauty. For me, the mirror is indispensable because it shows me who I am and where I am each day. I feel confident when I look in the mirror. Some writers say that one day we must feel ready to turn our backs on our mirrors. I don't agree with this.

To an extent, the mirror shows me who I am, and how I can look better, if I want to. 

I agree with this Clinique ad!!!!!!