Dear Diet Culture Letter: Body Checking and Assessing Your Relationship to the Mirror

Dear Diet Culture,

It’s me, Sunday.

The notion that looking at yourself in the mirror may cause more harm than good is a hard pill to swallow. We exist in a world that is surrounded by mirrors and yet we are very rarely talking about how this impacts our relationship to our body. And Diet Culture, I know that you are at the root of this.

You see, you are everywhere and we cannot escape you, even when we are looking in a mirror. And let me remind you, I’m not just talking about mirrors in the dressing room or at home. I am also talking about anywhere a person sees their refection, for example in a window or on a phone. But for today, we are just going to focus on that good ole’ mirror that most people have in their home, especially the infamous full-length version.

When people look in the mirror they are often searching for something. They want to check something, feel something, not feel something, or understand something. It’s never as simple as just wanting to see their reflection just for reflection sake. There is always more meaning here and more that’s happening that is unseen from the outside.

The idealized thin body that you have created, Diet Culture, is often what people are hoping to achieve and thus be reflected in the mirror. But it’s not just the thin body that you have led them to want and feel like they need, but also you have imposed very specific body standards for different body parts (that are ever changing btw). For example, you promote images of women with flat stomachs and very thin waists, legs and arms. But then most recently, you have wanted them to have larger butts and hips, as if someone can selectively change certain parts of the body.

So when someone is looking in the mirror they are not only influenced by what you have told them their body is “supposed to” look like, but they are often also looking directly at certain parts of the body, like the ones mentioned above, to “check” to see if they are ok, worthy, desirable, and acceptable. And this checking can happen hundreds of times each day. Don’t believe me? Try counting.

So what’s really happening when a person is checking their body in the mirror? Usually they are seeing a whole lifetime of experiences that they have had in their body that impacts how they are seeing their image reflected (external and internal weight stigma are great examples). Additionally, things like current mood, levels of anxiety, how much sleep they have gotten, and the degree of activation of past/current traumas, upsetting experiences,etc. also impacts how the reflection is received.

It’s a lot of things to consider, ya know? But here’s the kicker: you convince people that the way they see themselves in the mirror will improve when they loose weight, but really the only thing it fixes for many people is the degree to which they experience weight stigma. And I know this because never have I ever met a women that hasn’t said, “I look back at old pictures and I love my body, but I was so unhappy with it then.”

This is because changing the shape of the body doesn’t resolve the internal work of what it takes to decrease the amount of shame someone holds around their body.

Fitting your unrealistic, Eurocentric beauty standards does not make someone instantly happy with their body when they look in the mirror. Spending a lifetime trying to meet an “ideal” that is ever changing, like a target that keeps moving, and seeks to oppress does not make people happy or ok with their body. Although, I know that’s what you want them to think.

But you know what does help to improve how people see themselves in the mirror that has nothing to do with changing the body? Here’s a few: Getting curious about what they are seeking out when they look at themselves in the mirror, how they are feeling before/during/after checking themselves in the mirror, how they speak to themselves when looking in the mirror, and what happens after they look in the mirror. It sounds simple, but after unconsciously using the mirror all.the.time this practice can feel hard.

It often starts with noticing the experience of body checking in the mirror, before seeking to change it.

Sincerely,

Sunday, aka your most passionate Dietitian Katherine who wants you to know that body checking is often an attempt to ease the anxiety you are experiencing but really it makes it worse, and to know that assessing your relationship to mirrors is a critical part of doing body image work