I wake up and live every day completely bare-faced, pick out an outfit that hopefully looks decent and go about my day. I try not to spend hours upon hours putting together a look for the day, and I do my best to stay away from my mirror unless absolutely necessary.
The habit (can you call it a habit if it's something you don't do?) began at some point in my grade 11 year; so around 2016-2017. My mum told me about some article or study she had read about on Facebook that spoke about the correlation between self-esteem and the amount of time one spends looking in the mirror. I didn't do research, I don't think I even read the article my mum had mentioned, I just made the decision that from that point on I would try to be as conscious as possible about stopping myself from staring at every reflective surface I come across. For some reason 16 year-old me felt no desire to do any research, I just thought that if I stopped looking in the mirror all the time then I would miraculously become 100% confident with my appearance.
I didn't go cold-turkey like Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, who wrote about her experience with mirror-fasting in 2011. I still used apps like snapchat which show you your face as soon as you open the damn thing. Rather than avoiding my reflection, which in this day and age is practically impossible to do, I instead avoided analysing my reflection every time I came across it. If I saw myself in a store window as I walked past I didn't stop to make sure my hair was parted perfectly of that I didn't have food on my face.
"I thought far less about looks this month than I normally do. I didn’t feel better or worse about my appearance; I rarely felt pretty or unpretty. I just didn’t care as much." - Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, The Beheld
Sure, mirror-fasting didn't create a miraculous boost of confidence, but similar to Whitefield-Madrano's experience, it didn't have any negative effects either. Eventually, as in perhaps a year or so after making the decision to stop obsessing over my reflection, I actually looked into the idea of the whole thing. The New York Times published an article discussing the overall idea of the experience and why people were trying it.
When analysing the overall experience, the main thing I thought about was that the more often I looked at my reflection, the easier it was to pick out imperfections or things I didn't like. I could look in the rear-view mirror of the car and make a note that I had darker eye-bags than I had the day before. When I started the mirror-fasting, I didn't suddenly lose awareness of the presence of these blemishes or imperfections, but I gradually stopped obsessing over them. Another similarity to Whitefield-Madrano's experience, as I stopped focusing on a little pimple or slightly darker eye bags, I stopped worrying about what other people might be thinking about my reflection as well.
"...if I wasn’t thinking about it, I assumed no one else was either, which is actually true." - Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, The Beheld
For decades, centuries even, women have developed the habit, perhaps even the expectation to obsess over their appearance and make sure their face and body were always presentable for the public. This mirror-fasting trend, in my opinion, is a way of letting go of that exception without necessarily letting go of maintaining a strong, 'presentable' look. Not looking in a mirror doesn't mean a woman would suddenly lose her ability to put together an outfit she feels confident in, or lose her chance to smile confidently at anyone she comes in contact with. I see mirror-fasting as a way for women to let go of their fear of leaving any blemish uncovered. As you lessen your focus on your own imperfections, you'll soon come to realise nobody was overly concerned about them in the first place. That revelation above anything else was the biggest confidence boost I have experienced.
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