This dialog went on regularly until once when the queen was having a bad hair day and was desperately in need of support, she asked the usual question and the mirror answered,
“Alas, if worth be based on beauty, Snow White has surpassed you, cutie.”
– Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner

Like unto the wicked step-mother of yore, I too have a magic mirror.  But as opposed to telling me the truth, or even just what I want to hear, this mirror actively lies to me.  And it’s great! 

I have a love/hate relationship with mirrors, but it’s a relatively recent thing because I was never a mirror gazer growing up.  I heroically resisted lots of “girlifying” attempts on the part of well meaning friends and family, and had only the usual amount of angst about my looks.  Gradually I first succumbed, then became addicted to mascara, developed a late blooming but fierce love of fashion, and realized that I was a pretty decent looking girl…

Until!  Kiri took me home with her for the Thanksgiving break our junior year of university!  This act of kindness towards my semi-orphaned-in-a-strange-land state hid a crippling dagger which would be thrust deep by her cousin.
“I like your mirror face,” she said one day as we put on on various coats, hats, and lip gloss, preparing to head out into the cold.
“What do you mean?” I asked, pausing mid-act in swinging a scarf I’d bought in Paris around my neck.  I sensed the approaching danger.
“We all do it.  When you look in a mirror your face automatically shifts a bit.  Because the mirror’s a two dimensional surface, it reflects your three dimensional face back a little skewed, so you don’t actually look the same in the mirror as you do in real life.  We make mirror faces because we’re trying to show off our best features, it’s all psychological–”

I tuned out at that point because I was deep in the horrors.  I’d just come to terms with what I saw in the mirror!  My previous adolescent nonchalance had taken an abrupt nosedive when I came to university and saw the assorted Quirky Chic Girls, Effortlessly Stylish Girls, Not Exactly Stylish But Rich Enough To Fake It Girls, and other types you invariably bump into in a crowd of forty thousand people (I learned quick, but the lingering air of shame scuppered my aplomb).   In a matter of moments, my recently rebuilt sense of confidence had crumbled.  Parisian scarf, English hat, and new leather gloves notwithstanding, I spent the day torturing myself over my buck teeth, asymmetrical face, Hapsburg Lip, and sallow skin.

None of which I actually had, of course, but since my faith in mirrors was shattered, could I actually trust what any of them showed me?!

Years later I’ve made peace with the Mirror People (my own reflection in particular), but I’d be lying if I said my current mirror didn’t help the process a bit.  By some magic trick of the light, a flaw in the glass itself, or some other miracle, anyone who looks in that shiny surface has slightly longer and thinner legs, fuller hair, and a waist that just maybe an inch or two smaller.  Not huge changes, just enough to make you feel like a fox when you walk out the door.

Until you catch sight of yourself in a those sadistic fun-house jokes they stock GAP changing rooms with.  Hiss….