Face forward on your flaws

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

The Queen from Snow White asked this question pretty regularly, hoping the mirror would say her name.

When I look in the mirror these days, I am fair, and by fair, I mean fairly certain I have seen better days. The other day I woke up and said to the mirror “good grief is that my face? “ And to quote my father, it looked a bit like a chewed caramel”.

Harsh I know. Aren’t we all, when it is 6.30 in the morning and your son says “get up mum, you sleepy head”. So you peel yourself off the bed, see your reflection and you have a birds nest in your hair and your cheeks look like you slept on a Jaffle maker. I wonder if the Kardashians wake up with Jaffle face? I am guessing not, it’s not on Instagram.

As a young girl I was forever looking at my reflection in the mirror, shop windows, side mirrors of my mum’s car; I couldn’t get enough of looking at my face. My mum recently reminded me how much I looked in the mirror; apparently I was the fairest girl I knew. These days I walk into a room with mirrors and I scare myself. I literally say “Arrgh, quickly where is the mud mask.”

How can I go from a little girl who loved her face to a 30- something woman who has a bad case of Jaffle face? When did women go from loving their faces in the mirror, to being so embarrassed of our faces and the story it tells.

I don’t know about all women, but I can look in the mirror and see all my flaws. Recently I found grey eyebrow hairs; they were sticking and curling out, laughing at me. And don’t even get me started on my pimple beard that my son tried to cover up with a Band-Aid. 

And while I am no Disney princess, I can relate to the Queen in Snow White, she had flaws, imperfections and self-doubt like the rest of us Queens out there. She was looking for answers about herself by looking in the mirror.

I think it is human nature for women to look to the mirror to find the answer to what is troubling them. Many times I have looked in the mirror thinking it was what I looked like that was causing me such pain, but really it was my soul that needed the pampering. 

We are a culture where the desire to be the fairest of them all is a constant battle.

It is a battle we fight with ourselves, the media and those we believe are perfect beyond belief.

But why can’t we see ourselves as perfect beyond belief, why not say that to ourselves, rather than about the models and celebrities who filter through our social media pages. 

It isn’t that hard to tell our mirrors “I am the fairest, flaws and all.”