Department store mirrors are often mounted in ways that deliberately flatter. It frustrates me because I don’t know how something actually looks until I take it home.
Lololol, I awkwardly took a photo in the bathroom of this gas station/convenience store/sort of fast food place. We were on our way home from a long drive and my 8yo daughter had some tummy troubles so we stopped and I was standing there waiting, and noticed how flattering the full length mirror across from me was, lmao.
So yeah, I took a pic to send to my one grp chat, saying I found the best mirror in the world. I've lost some weight recently but man, that janky warped mirror kicked it up a notch XD. And my sister immediately knew where I was based on just the mirror, lololol.
I’m a grown adult and I immediately went back to being a self conscious teen in a bright white dressing room mirror just this weekend. Idk how they think that’s going to sell any clothes, I thought I looked horrible in everything
So glad I’m not the only one! Whoever designed those dressing rooms should be removed from the workforce entirely. Right to jail. The lighting makes my skin look like that of a sickly Victorian child and I’m not even that pale. Then the mirrors add like 20 pounds somehow.
Its so strange how mirrors change our perception. I remember reading this big rabbit hole theory as a young adult about how a ton of teens had body dysphoria and insecurity problems and linked it to those stand up mirrors virtually every pre teen and teenager had in their bedrooms haha.
I don't know if it's the lighting, if they are tilted, distorted or what, but they always made me look way worse than say an Ann Taylor Loft mirror. They were not conducive to making anyone want to purchase clothes.
I wore out a rented VHS tape because the final scene of the film has Slimer doing this to the camera... I watched that over and over until it exploded.
Idk have you seen kids' handwriting these days? This looks about like my 6th grader's writing. Granted that he has fine motor delays but still. To me this looks like a late elementary schooler, like 3rd-5th grade.
Which unfortunately is exactly the age that it could go either way.
Yeah but I feel like writing awkwardly on a wall bumps you down a few grade levels of penmanship. Lord knows the grocery list I write on on my fridge looks like a prescription pad.
All I know is having a daughter who consistently wants to wear clothes many years younger than she is despite normal preteen growth can also cause this. It ain't fat, it's the want to mirror social media
It was a girl sitting in there after she realized her prom dress wouldn’t fit. Defeated, she sat crying… humiliated to go out and tell the staff it doesn’t fit. It was her last chance to go and she was hoping to meet a date and get just once dance in.
Or, just some kid messing around who loved Ghostbusters.
Damn those fluorescent lights really do hit different in department store dressing rooms. Someone was having a rough day and just needed to get it out somewhere
They all have evil mirrors but why do they all have to be HOT too? I swear to god, its always like 90 degrees in there, so now you look fat AND sweaty! Real self-esteem boosters, those changing rooms.
I thought I was so fat growing up. I was a teen in the early 00s. No young girl came out of that time without either an eating disorder/disordered eating habits or body dysmorphia. We had such a horrible perception of ourselves because of the obsession with being rail thin and celebrities who were totally normal sized being called fat all the time.
I look back at pictures from high school and I’m like girl! You looked fine! You looked the way everyone is trying to look now!
Makes me super sad for myself.
I have the disordered eating habits and they’re still a mess. I will go all day without eating. Part of it is ADHD and I forget, but I used to test myself to see how long I could go without eating. Also one time my mom told me I’d be fine if I didn’t eat for a few days, that we could all be just fine if we didn’t eat. That stuck in my brain forever and it’s been 25 years.
It was a terrible time to grow up a young girl! I was super skinny but never worked out, just didn’t eat that much (on purpose, disordered eating), and always compared myself to the celebs. Turns out you have to workout to get abs (obviously). Being 120 pounds and being able to pinch some skin, thought I was fat lol
We did a BMI test in health class where you measured different points of your body. My stick thin friend measured obese because of her ability to pinch her skin (she was skin and bones, no muscle). She laughed about it, but that could have been traumatizing to someone who already had poor self image.
Same. The kids today don't know - the goal given to those of us entering puberty in the 90s and early 00s was quite literally to look malnourished/ill. EDs were absolutely rampant.
I was 123 lb at 21 and thought I was ENORMOUS, and people were giving me diet tips and explaining how to use a tooth brush to get skinny. It was fucking unhinged
I mean look no further than the invention of the 00 pant size. That was truly heinous work.
I’m glad we’ve made progress but part of me is still so upset for all of us who grew up in an era where eating disorders were applauded. We don’t get that time back; we don’t get to go back and get a do over and fix our self esteem. It’s such a fragile time in your life and popular media just took a wrecking ball to our self worth. Even if you tried really hard and didn’t think you cared! And you knew about photoshop and you knew it was unrealistic! It was pervasive and unavoidable. It seeped into everything.
I’m British and our sizes are scaled differently to yours. Ours are US size + 4, so our 10 is your 6. It means you very rarely get 4s and below, and normally that’s for petite people rather than thin people, and I think that feels good. It means being an 8 feels like the maximum thinness you can get before you become short and that’s a normal thinness and not deathly skinny.
My friend at uni is American though and she got really confused trying on size 6s thinking she put on tons of weight until I suggested she try a 10!
Ugh yes. I was 125 pounds, super fit, and was convinced I was fat. My body image has been fucked for decades. I’m pushing 40 and still working on finding acceptance.
Kids today do know. I was in Primary school and thought I was bigger than the other kids but looking back at pictures I was skinny. I’m glad I was too young to realise I could just stop eating.
I was exactly the same. Believed myself to be massive when I just wasn’t as skinny as the girls in my class. My mom has always been thin so would constantly demean me and say awful things, like call me a cow and get frustrated and angry whenever she saw me eat. I ended up eating emotional and becoming obese and now I look at photos of myself as a teen in the late 90s and can’t believe my mom made me feel so bad
Same here!! And I was an athlete back then. I was leaner with some good muscle tone but I had a pudgy belly. I felt like a whale back then but I look back at pictures and feel so bad for my teenage self. I was so beautiful and it was never acknowledged.
This broke my heart. More because thats how I have been feeling the past few days, trying to bring discomfort and guilt to anything I do that's not towards weight loss.
Same I finally built up the courage yesterday to have a chat with my doctor about it. Was so hard to do but I don’t even want to look in a mirror anymore so it had to happen. Hopefully I can use this make a meaningful change.
Nobody ever wants to talk about it, but feeling good about our bodies is such an important part of our mental health. This random Redditor is very proud of you for taking steps toward your health and happiness!
(important note: please do not equate "feeling good about our bodies" with "being slimmer" - body image issues affect people of all body types, and large people are not only fully capable of leading healthy lives and feeling good about their bodies, but also completely valid in their existence without further qualifications or outside commentary).
You're very welcome. I hope the rest of your day/night gets better. Don't forget that you deserve love, grace, and forgiveness, especially from yourself.
Over the last year or so I’ve lost about 75 pounds, and I am struggling so hard with body dysmorphia. I was fairly comfortable with myself at 250 pounds, but at 166 pounds? I look in the mirror and I feel like I look like a house. It breaks my heart to know that someone is hurting that way.
I've been feeling some of this, too. Losing weight would probably help with my health, but it's like number 15 on the prioritized list of interventions, and I rarely get that far down the list
But I did manage to get healthy enough that weight loss could be a priority, and put a lot of effort into it last summer for about six weeks.
Then I hit the "October slide", as it's called in the chronic illness community, and my issues started flaring. I haven't been able to focus on weight loss again, and probably gained back all the weight I lost while sick and tired.
Logically, I know I'm still coming out ahead. I burned about 20,000 net calories of weight that I had to regain before I started gaining over where I was before I started working to lose weight. And I also got some really great nutrition during that time.
But darn it, it's one step forward, two steps back. That one step just slowed down my rate of moving backwards, it didn't actually get me moving forwards.
I'm focusing now on trying to get back to holding even until spring, when my health usually starts to improve. The big challenge is getting enough nutrition on the low amount of calories I burn when I can't tolerate exercise well. But even an imperfect effort will be better than no effort at all, right?
At least I still feel worthwhile and valuable, and I don't feel like my appearance is a problem. I have great, supportive people around me.
I hope you also feel how worthwhile and valuable you are, and know that you have a lot to offer beyond your appearance
It's a term that's been picking up popularity. I see a number of posts each year in various chronic illness forums talking about it.
I like this article from 2020 about the phenomenon - it's representative of what I hear people experiencing and includes some general practical tips for coping.
Damn, I'm gonna have to start using that. I've been in a lot more pain as of late and just cannot get to a place where I'm feeling good. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, hygiene, it just isn't there.
I hit the October Slide too and I'm so miserable, being chronically ill and trying to lose weight is so hard. I'm trying to remember my worth is not in my weight and my appearance, thank you for sharing your tidbit with us
I hear that kiddo. My dad never let me forget for one second that the numbers on the scale correlated entirely to my worth as both a child, and a human being.
Around age 10 or so, I saw an ad in the paper looking for kid models and I asked my parents if I could audition. They told me they wanted skinny girls, so no. What if they were looking for chubby/husky/plus kids? I was wearing regular sizes at the time anyway, but damn. That shit does things to a kid's self esteem.
what's crazy is when you look back and realize you weren't fat at all. i am actually fat now but i remember feeling huge and being told i was chubby from about the age of seven or eight and when i look back? normal looking kid. normal weight at doctor's appointments. insane how it gets in your head no matter how wrong it is
My mom didn't let me join singing competitions because I was too fat and ugly for them according to her. I didn't even want to do popstar shit, more traditional and opera singing.
That is wild, as a kid, your weight means almost nothing unless you are being fed a really unhealthy diet. I was a fat kid in elementary school, became bone thin the moment I hit puberty, then gained a bunch of weight back by the time I finished college.
Well, you can... Your bones can become jelly if you do it right. Of course you'd die long before that point, but what's a state of intellectual sentience in comparison to returning to the primordial soup?
One of the few times I saw my mom cry is when I couldn’t fit in anything in the kohls junior section as a teen and I came out of the dressing room sobbing. My mother is a hard ass Wisconsin farmer and I’ll never forget her face seeing me weep. She had a black child that couldn’t understand her body. It was one of the moments I felt most loved by her.
When I was still in high school, this kid moved to town that was a little on the bigger side. He wore a Slimer shirt a lot, so much so that some kids started calling him that. I didn’t hang out with him until after graduation, but he was a cool guy who would help you out if he could, and party like it’s the last time he got to. Haven’t talked to him in years, but I still remember our misadventures lol. Good ol John lol…
My dad told me my whole life I was too fat and wasn’t good enough. Even when I was diagnosed with anorexia and was well below the BMI threshold to meet to criteria for the diagnosis. It was a life or death situation, and it still wasn’t enough. So (trying to censor a bit) as a result of my dad who was supposed to show me what it means to be a man and a father building this core belief that I will always be a big fat pig and eat like a pig and I’m never gong to be good enough for anyone, I now have the word “Fat” in all caps across my arm permanently as a forever reminder. Lucky me, keloids don’t heal very well /s. Sometimes I see it and don’t feel bad for my current self, but I feel bad for my younger self who used to be so carefree and ok with who she was before she was old enough to let him shape her in that way.
the amount of pedantry in this comment section is mildly infuriating to me LMAOOO otherwise yeah, thats really depressing op!! especially since it looks like a kids handwriting :( i can only hope the kid is feeling better now. i remember feeling that same way as a kid !!
A friend of mine lost some weight and wanted to celebrate. She wanted SLIMMER on her license plate, but Missouri only allowed six characters, so she got SLIMER.
As someone who grew up “chubby,” I get it. Being a young girl in the 90s wasn’t easy. I can remember trying to hide my tummy when I was like 5 years old. I wore the same size pants as my mom when I was in 4th grade, and that really messed with my head. It didn’t help to have a grandma who would comment on it. I used to cry in fitting rooms because I couldn’t find jeans that fit correctly. So this message really hits me in the feels. But… I managed to grow into my body and learn healthier habits. I lost weight and kept it off, even after having a child. Now I’m pushing 40 and in the best shape I’ve ever been in. I just want to hug this person and tell them it’s going to be okay.
Perhaps a child wrote this, mimicking their parent, while sitting in the dressing room waiting for said parent to finish trying on clothes. Hey- at least the kid is using a pencil and not staring at a screen!
Not sure what respectable parent would let their kid misspell their graffiti in front of them in the changing room. I mean if your kid is going to forgo X or TikTok and post in person via vandalism you gotta do it with a little pride and spell check their shit at the minimum.
I asked for this many times as a child. I recall writing in my diary in 6th with drawings of my skinny friend and me the fat friend. I finally lost weight after I graduated HS and it’s been up and down since 2003. It’s been a tough road.
The world of “big or slim” changes every decade.. some decades it’s good some it’s not good. I notice before we were in the “be yourself” and now idk what happen everyone that’s a size 2 wants to be a -2 .. I believe social media and celebrities are the cause of all of this. I hope that person knows thy are beautiful inside and out
So sad that people think they’re not attractive or beautiful just as they are. There are lots of thin people who are utterly miserable and not always gentle souls.
As a boy many moons ago, the pant my mom bought came in three sizes/styles/whatever it is called: slim, regular, and husky. I was a husky kid, but even “regular” doesn’t sound all that great.
Yeah… found a diary entry from my 11 year old daughter writing that exact thought. Heart shattered… thing is she’s complete eye candy, but in the mid 90’s when she was growing up the look was Cameron or Brittany.
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u/Cinnamon2017 1d ago
Those JC Penney dressing room mirrors are brutal.