The Child Who Learned to Hate the Mirror
Sometimes children don't lose their confidence all at once. Sometimes they slowly learn to see themselves through the eyes of others.
When she was five, Anya loved mirrors; it wasn’t because she thought she was pretty. She was too young to understand beauty in that way, but it was because she loved looking at herself.
She would pull funny faces whenever she came back from school, still dressed in her uniform and her hair in two ponytails; she would play around with her hair, twisting and turning it in multiple ways, and often giggle while looking at her own reflection.
The mirror never really judged her.
Until society taught her otherwise.
It often started with the small, tiny comments.
One fine afternoon, a relative came up to her and, almost too casually, said that “when she was young, she was really fair; it looks like the sun made her dark.”
At this, everyone started talking.
But no one had really noticed that because of that one comment, Anya had gotten really quiet.
She was too young to understand why being darker was something to be ashamed and disappointed about. Children are remarkably good at learning the meaning behind words, even when they themselves do not understand the word.
That night she stood
in front of the mirror.
She observed her arms.
And then her face.
Here, for the first time, she wondered if she had to change herself.
There was something about what she had heard earlier.
A few years passed, and now her body became the topic of another conversation.
Someone in the gathering squeezed her waist and laughed.
She was told,
“You’re getting quite big, aren’t you?”
Another person commented and asked her to “watch what she was eating.”
Next came the comparison: “Look at all your cousins; they are so slim.”
Anya found this funny and started laughing, as she didn’t know what else could have been done in that particular situation.
Later that night, Anya pushed away her food and told her family she wasn’t feeling hungry.
But we know the truth, don’t we? She was hungry; she simply believed that hunger was something she constantly had to control in order for her to be socially accepted.
During a physical education class, Anya was comparatively slower than the others; she struggled with running and got tired very easily.
One fine day, Anya was running during a race, and she stumbled. As her classmate looked at her fall, he started laughing and asked her,
“Why were you even trying?”
Those were just 5 words. But they followed her home, to the changing room, photographs, and eventually to the mirror.
She stopped playing sports.
Then eventually came dance, and later on she stopped getting her pictures taken.
She always stood behind pictures; she chose clothes that would hide her body, and she avoided looking at herself for too long in the mirror.
The voice changed
Later came a shift.
The people who were always around her no longer needed to comment, as Anya memorized them well enough to repeat them on her own.
My skin is too dark.
My body is too big.
I’m not as pretty as my friends.
I do not look athletic.
I just don’t look right.
The external voice that came from society eventually became her internal voice.
That’s how shame entered the life of Anya.
It didn’t arrive dramatically.
It came disguised as:
To a fully grown adult, these are all just passing remarks.
To a child, these words often feel like instructions.
This is how you’re supposed to look.
You should be able to do all this.
This is what makes you worthy in today’s society.
And children do not have the emotional capacity to challenge these comments; hence, they end up internalizing them.
Years later, Anya stood in front of the same mirror she had stood before.
The only difference now was that Anya was much older.
She realized the reflection staring back at her was never really the problem.
The problem was everything she was made to believe.
She thought about the girl who once stood in front of the mirror without looking at her flaws.
That girl never really hated her skin.
She never counted the folds in her stomach.
Her worth was never measured by how far she could run.
She had simply just existed.
And perhaps that is the most painful part of growing up.
Sometimes children do not lose their confidence because someone tells them they have no worth.
They tend to lose it because, little by little, day by day, they are taught to attach their worth to things they were never meant to earn.
Things that were never supposed to determine whether a child deserved tenderness.
We often tell children to be confident.
We tell them to love themselves.
We tell them not to listen to anyone who bullies them.
But confidence cannot grow in an environment where a child's body is constantly being judged.
A child cannot learn self-acceptance while hearing adults criticize their own bodies.
And they cannot learn that differences are normal if every difference is treated as something that needs correcting.
Perhaps the question is not simply
“What should we be saying to children?”
Perhaps it can also be
“What are children hearing us say when we think they aren't listening?”
Because they are constantly listening.
They hear the joke about someone's skin.
They hear the comparison between siblings.
They hear the criticism of a body at a party.
They hear the frustration directed at someone who moves, learns, or looks differently.
And one day, when they are alone with a mirror, those voices end up being their own voice.
“What was wrong with me?”
So perhaps we should be careful with the words we leave behind.
Because a child may forget who first commented on their body. They may forget when the comments were made. But they will always remember how they felt.
And somewhere inside the adult they become, there still may be a little girl or boy standing before a mirror, quietly asking:
“What was wrong with me?”
The answer should have always been
Nothing is wrong with me.
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