Have you ever met someone who was so happy with their appearance that if presented with a magic wand to fix any one flaw they would say, “No thanks, there’s nothing about my appearance I’d like to change”? Nor have I.
Now think for a moment about how you look at yourself in the mirror. If you are like many people, your eyes are immediately drawn to examine the aspects of your appearance with which you are least satisfied. You check to see whether your [fill-in-the-blank] is particularly bad today. You adjust or smooth or cover-up or whatever you do with that feature. Then you move to the next feature, and one piece at a time, examine your appearance, with a particular focus on the flaws and on fixing or hiding them. The result is that you spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at the parts of your appearance you don’t like, and tend to see yourself as a composite of parts, rather than a whole.
You imagine other people see you that way, too.
In contrast, when you look at others, you don’t notice details as much as you see their overall appearance.
You can try this out by staring closely at a friend’s face – you may find several marks that you never noticed before. In fact, try staring for 10 seconds at a mark on someone else and you may discover that you notice it several more times during the rest of the conversation. That’s because when you scrutinize something it seems more prominent in your mind.
But if you spend most of your mirror time scrutinizing your own perceived blemishes, you are left with a skewed perception of how you look, seeing a disjointed grouping of flawed parts.
Check out this clever campaign by Dove called “Real Beauty Sketches.” In interviews, the participants thought they were just trying to describe themselves in careful detail. So, do we see our appearance differently from how others see us?
Now think for a moment about how you look at yourself in the mirror. If you are like many people, your eyes are immediately drawn to examine the aspects of your appearance with which you are least satisfied. You check to see whether your [fill-in-the-blank] is particularly bad today. You adjust or smooth or cover-up or whatever you do with that feature. Then you move to the next feature, and one piece at a time, examine your appearance, with a particular focus on the flaws and on fixing or hiding them. The result is that you spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at the parts of your appearance you don’t like, and tend to see yourself as a composite of parts, rather than a whole.
You imagine other people see you that way, too.
In contrast, when you look at others, you don’t notice details as much as you see their overall appearance.
You can try this out by staring closely at a friend’s face – you may find several marks that you never noticed before. In fact, try staring for 10 seconds at a mark on someone else and you may discover that you notice it several more times during the rest of the conversation. That’s because when you scrutinize something it seems more prominent in your mind.
But if you spend most of your mirror time scrutinizing your own perceived blemishes, you are left with a skewed perception of how you look, seeing a disjointed grouping of flawed parts.
Check out this clever campaign by Dove called “Real Beauty Sketches.” In interviews, the participants thought they were just trying to describe themselves in careful detail. So, do we see our appearance differently from how others see us?
RSS Feed