when will my reflection show who I am inside?

My niece is in her Disney princess era, and it’s so adorable. I keep trying to get her interested in Mulan, my personal favorite Disney princess, but she’s too obsessed with Rapunzel at the moment. Anyway, upon watching Mulan again, I realized that the film is a bit too nuanced for a three-year-old. Mulan wants to prove herself and be seen as more than just a fragile princess. With a face of heavy makeup, she stares into the river, gazing into her shaky, evolving reflection.

The prospect feels a little too relatable, too close to the chest. Recently, I’ve also spent too much time looking in the mirror and wondering when I will finally be free from the shackles of beauty standards. The other day, I was watching a TikTok of a girl who was shopping at Brandy Melville, using the audio “am I too old to be here?” The caption said something like me, aged 27, at Brandy Melville, and a lot of the comments said that “they wished they could look like her at 27.”

I am 27. Not for the first time, I started to feel old. Too old to be Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend, too old to restore collagen production, too old to go outside sans sunscreen. I used to get recommended beauty treatments all the time, especially by friends. You should use this. You should use retinol. You should see someone about your acne. 90% of these tips are unsolicited. I never used to really notice it before, but now, because of a heightened sensitivity about my age, I guess, the slow crawl towards thirty, I’ve become more conscious of them.

I wonder when my looks became the most interesting thing about me. Then, I realize they probably can’t help it. We are constantly being sold and shilled products in a dystopian social media age; everywhere you go, you are encouraged to look like a better version of yourself. My country is at war, and I saw Instagram stories from aestheticians telling people that war is no excuse to skip your Botox appointment. It is comforting, in a way, to know that even if we live in a post-nuclear age, the Botox clinics will still be open, kind of like cockroaches, waiting to appear from the rubble.

When I hear these things, I feel like I’m missing the boat, some kind of boat I never knew I was supposed to be on. I feel like you go from being young to being old overnight. One second, you’re a baby, in college, seeing the world for the first time, shopping at Brandy Melville with a sense of awe and wonder only reserved for the observation of American consumerism. The next, you are too old for that t-shirt, and if you stand under a certain lighting, people can see each and every fine line you have. Suddenly, I shouldn’t have laughed when I did. Those laughs are now villainous smile lines that need filling out. It seems like we’re being told we made a million mistakes, that we’re all wrong, when you had no idea that you were supposed to be following any kind of rules.

Then, if you get interested in maybe trying out these treatments, people attack you for being shallow and vain and contributing to the billion-dollar beauty industry. It seems like you can’t win. Over time, our looks became the concern of other people, not just ourselves, and it seems like everyone has something to say. I feel like Mulan being told she can’t go to war, except I’m already in one, and like Commander Tung is a plastic surgeon giving discounts on your first service.

When I look in the mirror, I still see a younger version of myself. My brain can’t wrap around the fact that I am now nearly thirty. I wonder where the time went, and I realize I spent a lot of it worrying, like I am now, except then it was over pimples and finals instead of war. Now, I worry: did all that worrying age me? It’s a vicious cycle, almost conspiratory in in its irony. We are supposed to worry about getting older, thus speeding up the process. It would maybe be funny if it weren’t so sad.

I was advised to take Differin, but it means I can’t go out in the sun. Imagine that. Summer, and they keep you from the precious sun, the very thing that gives us the vitality of life. What is life, then, I had to wonder? I lasted two days before I gave it up. When I saw myself in the mirror with reddened cheeks, slightly tanner, I felt like I was finally looking at myself for the first time in a while. I saw joy on my face. There you are, I thought to my reflection. How could I have known that was all it would take?

It’s not just about your face. I need to worry about my muscles, if exercising is helping instead of hurting me. Do this, don’t do that, don’t be bulky, get lean, cut, eat rice cakes. In a way, it does make me feel young again, because I feel like I’m 13 years old and back on Tumblr, being told to do wall sits for an hour and eat an apple only when I feel like I might faint. People think it’s fine to comment on everyone’s body, even when no one asked for advice. Everyone is telling you to eat more protein, then they say not to, and to eat fiber instead. Again, it seems like every road leads you to criticism, to one more flaw you never knew existed.

Anyway, Mulan never really cared about makeup. She cared about her country. It makes me wonder why can’t pour the energy we spend on policing our own looks and those of others into something more productive, like advocating for others or charities or climate change. The world seems like its chock-full of productive people, full of solutions for your frown lines and big noses, and so why can’t we devote this much care to the things that really matter? I know capitalism wants us to be preoccupied with our looks and consumption so that we don’t fight the system, but really? The injustices of the world get more impossible to ignore, no matter how much we’re screamed at to just get the filler, get the treatments, lose weight, look like you’re ready for Miami.

Mulan really ate with these lines:

How I pray
That a time will come
I can free myself
And meet their expectations
On that day
I'll discover some way to be myself

So, I guess my final message is not to worry. I saw another informative TikTok that said that women should decenter their age. “The average 45-year-old man thinks he has a lot of time, while a 25-year-old woman thinks her time is running out. This is part of the conditioning meant to pressure women into making choices that benefit the patriarchy due to panic.” (@unconventional_gift).

There’s no need to worry, and not because worrying will age you, but because the things we are afraid of are so arbitrary that if they are not bringing you joy, they don’t belong in your life. Go out in the sun, eat sugar, smile, and laugh. Life is too short, and time moves too fast.