Out of habit, I probably glance at my reflection at least 15 times a day. Whether it’s catching my face in the glass doors of Merion Hall or checking my phone’s front-facing camera, it all adds up. Much of my daily mood hinges on how I think I look.

That might sound egotistical — and maybe it is — but I’m hardly alone. Social media, constant filters and the cameras in our pockets make it nearly impossible not to scrutinize the tiniest details: a bumpy ponytail, uneven eyebrows, a shadow that wasn’t there this morning. It’s usually the things no one else notices that bother me the most.

I needed a break from using my reflection as a weapon against myself. So, I decided to stop looking at my reflection for five days. No mirrors, no selfies, no accidental glances in windows. Just five days to see what would happen if I stopped checking in on the outside and started paying attention to what was happening inside.

The first day started out as a cloudy, gray-skied morning — my biggest nightmare. When there’s an overcast drooping low, I already know what kind of day it will be. There’s something about the light — flat, almost clinical — that makes me look like a lifeless fish clinging to the sand, begging to be tossed back into the bright blue Atlantic. Or, in my case, just back under blue skies.

On any other morning, I’d check the mirror multiple times before class, just to make sure I didn’t look as drained as I felt. But not today. Today, the blanket my roommate hung stayed over the mirrors of my apartment. 

I found myself searching for Snapchat as an alternative, but I’d prepared for this moment. I had deleted the app altogether. My thumb hovered over where the app used to be, like a phantom limb. That quick check-in with my front-facing camera has always been more about control than vanity. It’s like confirming, “Yes, you’re still you. Yes, you look okay.”

Without it, I felt exposed, like walking through campus with a coffee stain on my shirt I couldn’t see but everyone else could. 

After the first two days, though, it got easier. My mind was elsewhere, and that was the whole point. The goal wasn’t just to avoid mirrors. It was to stop scanning myself for flaws and start tuning into the rest of my life. 

By Wednesday, I was starting to forget what I looked like. And not in a scary way — just in a quiet, unfamiliar way. I didn’t know how my face looked when I was laughing. I couldn’t check to see if circles deepened under my eyes or if my hair had fallen flat. But I was moving more freely. That constant scanning, “How do I look right now?” had dulled. Something was shifting.

When I later spoke to Deborah Ward, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, she explained a theory known as “contingencies of self-worth” — the different areas on which people base their self-worth.

“There are some people who really stake their sense of worth and value on their physical appearance, and that can be really damaging,” Ward said.  

Yet, there was still a tension.

“If you ignore it, you’re the odd person out,” Ward said. 

That line stuck with me. We’re all trained to participate. To check. To compare. To care about how we appear to others. 

Kim Logio, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, said we’re taught as children to do this as a form of learning to be “culturally competent.”

“You don’t walk through the grocery store in a thong bathing suit and no shoes,” Logio said. “You don’t walk into a restaurant wearing your pajamas. That’s not culturally what’s expected of us … But at what point does being culturally competent bleed over into this idea that you want to be interpreted?” 

Gender also impacts these expectations, Logio said.

“Women are held to a higher standard of beauty,” Logio said. “When a woman looks disheveled, unkempt, not put together, we think there’s something mentally wrong with her. We don’t have the same judgment as men. When they’re disheveled, they just were working hard. They were doing something manly, physical.”

That observation clicked when I thought about how often appearance plays a role in performance, even outside traditional beauty spaces. Emma Winther ’26, a field hockey player at St. Joe’s, said her awareness of appearance shifts depending on the audience. 

“If I were in the weight room and I look at my reflection, I don’t really care,” Winther said. “But if it were before a big game and we have a big audience, I would definitely make sure that I look good, my hair is good and my uniform is straightened out.” 

With her teammates, Winther said she feels comfortable and focused on the work, not the way she looks. But when strangers are watching, that comfort fades. Even in environments supposedly focused on game and fitness, there’s an added pressure for women to appear polished.

I realized how loud my own self-critique actually was. But without a reflection to scrutinize, my negativity started to die down. I actually liked my outfit on Thursday. I didn’t even know how it looked exactly, but I enjoyed how it felt — loose sweats, my favorite hoodie, uggs with just the right amount of fuzz. No mirror told me I looked good. I  just decided I did. 

On Friday night, instead of getting ready for bed by analyzing every blackhead on my nose, I lit a candle, brushed my hair without trying to “fix” anything and started paying attention to how I felt in my body instead of how I looked in it. 

That next morning, I caught the first glimpse of myself in days — my faint reflection in a car window — but it didn’t feel the same. I looked and let it go. I realized something strange: I wasn’t as curious about how I looked. Not because I felt perfect, but because I finally remembered what it feels like not to care so much.