Have you heard the Snow White fairy tale question of the queen “Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who’s the Fairest of Them All?’  I have heard this and laughed about it and yet wondered if a mirror could talk what it might say if I asked that question when I was younger.  In our society the messages sent out to females is about “how we look” rather then what our value system is and how we live our life.  It's all about the package and the more young females hear this message, the more they start to think like their value and sense of self should come from how they physically look.  How slender and perfect they look.  It's been said that the negative body image messages start as early as puberty and without positive reinforcement to help a child come through this stage with a healthy concept of self, the dissatisfaction with the body can last an entire life time.

Many years ago a friend of mine told me a story of her sadness at losing a close friend who I think suffered with this. Her friend who had turned 50 and was a successful personal trainer, she had an exquisite figure and was in good physical health. However one day on her 50th birthday she became extremely depressed.  My friend became very worried about her friend and how she was thinking. Apparently she had mentioned to a few close friends, including her husband that she felt like killing herself. What eventually happened was she did commit suicide because she felt that her life was over as she had known it to be. Her previous view about her life was that as long as she was beautiful and young then she was desirable and happy. In her mind she thought that once she turned 50 her life of being beautiful was over because she had suddenly become outdated. She felt she would be labeled as being old, and to be old in her mind meant to have no value. She had bought into the belief that how her body looked and functioned was where her value rested. And now that she had turned 50 she was going to find a way to end her life, which she did.

My friend in telling me the story expressed how frustrated she had felt trying to tell her friend that just because she was turning 50 did not mean her life was over in fact it was the beginning of a whole new era of wisdom for her. But the reality is she bought into different messages such as what the advertising media gives out, look young, be sexual and be desirable at all cost. When these type of messages are taken in on a regular basis a person will learn and become programmed that there's something wrong with them when they get older. Their value is less than what it was when they were young. The self-esteem lowers and many times a person can become obsessive about how they look, what they weigh, what they own, where they live, how they dress or the status of their work. 

As I listened to my friend cry and release her feelings of loss she explained to me how she could really understand how her friend felt. She then explained how she told her friend that no matter what there will always be someone younger or more beautiful than you are.  There will always be someone who has more money or more possessions then what you have. It's a game the ego to gets caught up in and a total waste of time. She said she felt her friend had a fascination with how she looked in the mirror and that she thought when she started to get the answers back that were no longer flattering, it was time for her to leave rather than feel some imagined painful future she was focusing on for herself.

Since that time I have watched my friend through the years heal from her loss and watched her focus on strengthening her own self-esteem.  Losing a loved one can teach us much about where our value system is and what is truly important to us. It certainly helped my friend to bring more intimacy into her life and now she helps young girls so that they can develop a strong self-esteem during their puberty years.

She and I have developed our own little phrase for our mirrors and it is as follows,

“Mirror mirror on the wall, who has the strongest self-esteem and walks tall?”

What does your mirror say to you?