Mirrors Are Making You Uglier

Ground-breaking news! You’re not actually ugly, you’ve just spent too much time looking at your reflection. We used to use mirrors to check whether we had spinach in our teeth. Now it’s used as a forensic tool to dissect our pores as if it were a crime scene. If you stare at yourself long enough after endless hours scrolling on social media, you’ll inevitably find more “flaws” that you will believe require fixing.

And here’s the kicker: to “fix” these imperfections, many people turn to the supposed easy way out and throw money at the problem. I remember during high school, there were countless times when I calculated how much of each paycheck should go towards my savings account for a Rhinoplasty. I believed that to make myself more beautiful, I had to change my nose. It needed to be smaller, slimmer and more upturned. Thankfully, I was just a kid and didn’t have access to that much money to fund it.

You’d think the current economic recession would slow things down, but the cosmetic surgery industry has still risen since 2023. Although this overall rise was only by 1%, it still blew my mind, as it’s no secret that current beauty trends have shifted to a more “natural” aesthetic with the rise of the curated “clean girl era”.

The “clean girl” aesthetic is already a heavily filtered, romanticised version of people’s appearance. As Amber Horsburgh, a cultural commentary creator on TikTok, points out:

“We’ve reached a point in social media where filters no longer enhance how you look; instead, they make you look like somebody totally different.”
— Amber Horsburgh

I think that when more people gain access to cosmetic plastic surgery, real natural beauty feels like the unfiltered “before shots” that no one asked for. There is no longer beauty in uniqueness. People are attempting to be copies of their idols, which inadvertently makes them look uncanny. The human soul is being sucked out with each millimetre of filler being added.