A Distorted Reflection

I’ve always considered art to be “my thing”. I’ve spent hours toiling away at a canvas, picking exactly the right shade of green- olive, pea, emerald, or lime?- making sure every brush was the perfect length, mixing and matching styles and lines. I’ve always obsessed over pieces for days, creating and removing and re-creating to ensure it was the absolute best. But this time, this particular work, absorbed my mind for hours, days, what felt like years. 

It was a simple day. I went to pre-calc, biology, literature, and government, until it was time to go to my favorite part of the day- 2-d studio art. The room always had that odd yet comforting smell of drying paint and markers and sometimes, when the 3-d classes came into the studio space, of wet clay. I walked in and found my familiar spot in the corner, with my favorite desk, and pulled out my watercolors to finish up my most recent work: a pond with lily pads and hopping frogs. My teacher came in, a beautiful brunette haired woman who always seemed to have a smile that radiated positivity throughout the room, and told us to go to our seats. We were given a while to finish up our projects, before we would be assigned our final work of the year. 

I spent a while finishing up my frogs. I just couldn’t seem to find the perfect shape for their tiny webbed feet. 

After a while, we got the usual “hush hush” that seemed to move throughout the room like a snake. My teacher began to come around the room with a rubric and detailed instructions for the assignment. I received mine with a smile, what exciting new adventure would I get to embark on next? 

The assignment was simple. Find a reference photo of myself that I liked, or find a mirror so I could paint myself. A self-portrait. I hadn’t done one since my second grade year, when I was wearing Dora the explorer shirts and neon shorts. This was going to be interesting. 

When I got home that day, I started looking through the photo albums. The first picture I pulled up was me in 7th grade, pink and orange striped shirt. Hmm. Teeth looked a little wacky. Next picture, one of me with my friends in her hot tub. Ugh, a giant pimple right on the center of my chin. Third picture, one of me with my little sister. What is my hair doing? Photographs out. I have to use a mirror. 

I pulled a canvas out from my stack in the garage, and some paints I thought would work best for what I needed to do. Acrylics are pretty permanent, which shouldn’t be too bad because the assignment should be a breeze… plus they work best with this canvas and are easy to blend. It was time to start. 

I walked up to my room and pulled up my floor length mirror. My reflection stared back. I started with the outline. Face shape. Was I more circular, oval, almond, square? I finally settled on some odd mixture between oval and circular, then moved on to some more sketches. This process repeated with the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, the nostrils, and my hair. The outline took a while, because I wanted it to look exactly perfect. 

Over the next few days, I started working on the actual painting process. It took a while, making sure every pore was in the exact spot that I wanted it. I finally finished, a week early even, just glad to get it done. 

In my class, projects always go through a two step process. We make what could be a final draft and show it to our teacher, then make some corrections based on her feedback. I scheduled my review session during lunch the next day, so I could finish up some last minute tweaks then submit and start another project for fun. 

12:07, and the bell rang to signal lunch. I grabbed my canvas and carried it to the art room to meet with my teacher. She looked over it for a few minutes, making small notes, smiling at parts and frowning at others. Finally, she looked up at me and sighed. She never did that. Weird. 

“So, we need to talk about this. I love your work, it always looks amazing. I can tell you put a lot of time into this.” 

Perfect!

“But.. we need to go over the criterion of the assignment. It’s a SELF portrait, not a facetuned portrait. You’ve gotten rid of all your beautiful features, you’ve changed your face to make yourself look like a fictional character.” 

That’s not good. 

“So, here are your options. You can submit this, and take a hit to your grade for not addressing the assignment. This is not a portrait of yourself. You could make small changes, and try and fix it to look more like you. Or, you can redo the entire work to look most like yourself.” 

Redo my entire piece? I spent days! So what if it doesn’t look exactly like me! This portrait looks amazing! THAT should be what matters… not whether the assignment is met. 

But wait, I guess I do need to follow the rubric. And I guess this doesn’t look like me. I suppose I could redo it. I could spend many more hours. But still. 

I went home, and looked in the mirror again. How could I portray myself and still make the portrait look good? I didn’t have the perfect model face to be put into a portrait. I guess I could keep my original as a representation of my best work, then use the new portrait just for the assignment. 

I spent the next few days redoing my project. I redid my process, paying extra attention to every detail of my face. I never noticed I had a freckle there, I always covered it with concealer. My eyelashes are actually longer than I noticed, I always covered them with fakes. Every moment I spent staring into the mirror, every brush stroke, made me realize exactly what I looked like. I never liked the way I looked, and the mirror just amplified that hatred. It was almost over though. I could finish this. 

When I went back in to submit the updated portrait, my teacher smiled and looked up at me. 

“This is a true self-portrait. Your eyes look just like your own, and your hair captured that chestnut color. Wonderful.” 

I thought nothing of it for weeks. I got my grade, an A. Reflection of the time I spent. That was fine, even if I thought my first was better. 

Until a few weeks later, I got an email from my teacher- she wanted me to display my self-portrait in an exhibit in a few days. That was fine, great even! A chance to show how awesome my work could be. Until I read a message at the bottom, in bolded print: The updated portrait, not the original. 

Seriously? This horrible, awful, ugly picture staring back at me. So what if it was accurate? It wasn’t pretty, because I wasn’t. I couldn’t understand. 

But I couldn’t back out now. I had never stepped back from an exhibition. I would stand, speak a few words when people came by, then admire the work of others. Easy peasy. 

The night came, and I was in my sequined red dress. I set up my piece in the back corner of the hallway, with my written words on the piece and the process. I sat and waited for the people to start rolling in. 

As people came by, they stopped and whispered. They must be saying how awful it was. I was upset, I wanted to show my work. 

A guy came past, and told me my piece looked nice. It couldn’t, because how could it if I didn’t? After all, it reflected my own face. And since I’m not a work of art, neither could the piece. 

After a while, I got tired of staring back at myself, so I walked around to look at others. I told my friend that her piece was amazing, she looked so pretty in it!

“Oh thanks, but I hate it. I think that I made my eyes too round!” 

It was nonsense, she was so super cute in that photo, she was definitely overthinking it. 

I moved to another table, with one of my brother’s friends. He told me a similar story. 

And the next friend, same thing. 

It was all crazy. They all looked so good, how could they not believe it? How could they not see that they looked perfect in every picture? Why couldn’t they see themselves how I saw them? 

And I soon realized- everyone felt the same way. We were so absorbed with the negative thoughts on ourselves, we never stopped to appreciate the beauty surrounding us. If others could see the beauty in me, why shouldn’t I be able to see it myself? But I realized, I could. The only person saying anything negative about me was myself. I’m the only one who cares about the exact size of my pores, or the length of my hair, or the color of my eyes. And if others don’t judge me, why should I judge myself? I could be beautiful. I was seeing myself through a distorted view, a lens that no one else used. But it didn’t need to be this way. I could be beautiful on my own. I could embrace my reflection, undistorted.