Mirror Mirror On The Wall

“A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.”
-Balthasar Gracian

A little girl wonders if she is pretty.

The question arrives out of nowhere, like a fly suddenly buzzing from room to room. How did that get in here? And yet, there it is: the age-old query. The fascination—not yet an obsession (thank God!)—with her clothes and her body and her hair and her face. She twirls in lace dresses and yanks a brush through her honey blond tangles, all the while pointing to purple shadows under her crystal blue eyes and asking her mother how to fix them. The little girl is six years old and already suspects her beauty, or perceived lack thereof, will determine her place in this world.

“Please mom pleeeeeeeeeease,” the little girl begs, “Can I please get a mirror for my room?”

The mother is horrified by the request, knowing all too well how many curses one mirror can hold.

The little girl wants a table as well, one to store her hair brushes and lip balm. A “vanity” is what she’s asking for—although she doesn’t know that word yet.

On a practical note, there is no space for a vanity in the little girl’s bedroom, a fact her mother is quick to point out. Not easily deterred, the little girl offers a solution: she will happily give away her play kitchen. Normally this proposal would thrill the mother, for nothing delights her more than getting rid of things, particularly big bulky items that her children have outgrown. But this idea hits differently. Trading a play kitchen for a vanity? At six years old? What kind of mother approves such a swap?

The father, meanwhile, is indifferent. Of course he is. The father sees no harm in a mirror because he has never been tortured by one. Every night, the father washes his face with a simple bar of soap and crawls into bed while the mother lathers her skin with potions and creams, carefully applying kraft paper triangles to her forehead in an effort to soften her wrinkles.

The mother cannot be indifferent because the mother knows better. For girls, a mirror is never just a mirror. She wants to give her daughter one as much as she’d like to hand her a live snake.

And still, the little girl begs.

“Please mom pleeeeeeeeeease.”

The mother finally concedes and tells her daughter if she can find a vanity at a decent price, she will consider buying one. She peruses Facebook marketplace for half an hour, but doesn’t find anything, to her own relief. Maybe it will take so long to find a vanity that the little girl will forget she ever wanted one at all.

The little girl, of course, does not forget.

Three days later, in an act of desperation, the little girl sneaks an ipad into her room. She flips the camera around to selfie mode, and props the device up on her toy chest, resting it against the beautiful engraved snow globe she received for Christmas. She pulls a chair in front of the camera and begins brushing her hair in front of the screen, so proud of her cleverness.

What happens next is unclear. Did she bump the surface? Did the ipad simply collapse? No one knows, but somehow the little girl’s makeshift mirror tumbles over, knocking the snow globe in the process. In a split second, glass shatters everywhere. Water and glitter flow like a river into her toy bins and all over the carpet.

The girl breaks into sobs, learning for the first time that admiring oneself always comes at a cost.

She runs into her mother’s room crying, hysterical, to explain what happened.

“I didn’t mean to!” she sobs, “It was just an accident!”

The mother embraces her, feels the little girl’s arms squeeze around her neck.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” the mother shushes into her ear, “None of this matters.”

This being the snow globe. The glitter all over the carpet. What you look like on the outside.

///

The mother is approaching 40 and cannot remember when all of her mirrors became cursed.

Was it in 3rd grade when she failed the vision test at school and had to get glasses? In 5th grade, when she weighed 68 pounds and still sucked in her stomach anytime she wore a bathing suit? In 7th grade, when she hung a mirror inside her brand new locker and realized her nose and forehead were too big? In 9th grade, when she made the cheerleading squad and began changing clothes in front of a dozen perfect bodies?

Becoming a wife didn’t break the spell. Nor did becoming a mother, as much as she wishes that were true. But now a little girl who shares her DNA is begging for a mirror, wondering if she is pretty. And that changes … everything.

///

The mother sells the play kitchen and uses the money to purchase a moss green vanity, complete with a mirror that lights up with the touch of a finger. When the father finishes building it, the little girl takes a seat on the matching bench and stares at her own reflection with astonishment.

“I feel so grown up right now,” she declares.

The vanity is placed against the wall, right where the play kitchen used to be. The mother wonders again, for the hundredth time, how to raise a girl in this world. How does a mother teach her daughter not to worry about being beautiful, when the mother herself still worries about her own beauty—or lack thereof—too much? How does a mother teach her daughter that she is fearfully and wonderfully made, when the mother herself so often forgets that truth?

“Where’s my brush?!” the little girl asks, interrupting the mother’s thoughts.

She begins running around the house from room to room frantically searching for supplies and accessories to fill out her new vanity drawers. She collects combs and scrunchies and clips and bows, many of which come straight from the mother’s stash.

“Well, mom, if you want to borrow any of this stuff, you can just come in my room and ask.”

The mother laughs. And so it begins.

The little girl corrals nail polish and bracelets and necklaces, eager to find a home for every little thing. She is practically floating as she puts everything in its place, like a glowing newlywed proudly stacking pots and pans in her new kitchen cabinets. Once everything is put away, she takes a seat on the tiny bench again and studies her own reflection. Today, she loves what she sees, and the mother is grateful for this small miracle.

Later that night the mother lathers potions and creams across her face, just as she always does before bed. But this evening, she stares at her own reflection for a moment longer, looking deeply into her tired emerald eyes and studying the smile lines etched into her skin, evidence of a life well lived.

Perhaps she’s had it wrong this whole time. A girl doesn’t break the curse by avoiding mirrors her whole life; she breaks the curse by learning to love what she sees in its reflection.

This story was written in Callie Feyen’s writing workshop, “Once Upon Another Time” — as inspired by the dangerous tales in Beasts & Beauty.

My Substack is always free to read, but you can buy me a coffee anytime you’d like to support my creative work. ❤️

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