Is My Mirror Just a Caricature?

What happens when you look in a mirror? Is what you see reality? Are your eyes really looking at what your neighbor sees? Or your boyfriend? Mirrors are amazing things, they are the only things that allow us to see ourselves with our own eyes. And that gives them power over us.
Imagine never looking in a mirror. Not once, not ever. Every idea of yourself would be a mixture of what other people say, and your own imagination. Your sense of self would not be connected with the way you looked, because you would have no earthly idea how you looked. What would that mean to the world; society? What if who we were had absolutely nothing to do with pout lips or muscled shoulders? Would personality and character take precedence?
So what if we took away all the mirrors? What if we couldn't see ourselves with our own eyes? This is part of a theory called "The Looking Glass Self," which is a working sociological theory. It boils down to a single idea, which is "We see ourselves through the eyes of other people, even to the extent of incorporating their views of us into our own self-concept."1 And it's easy to see this theory at work when you look at people in their teenage years. They are all strongly influenced by their peers and will often try to conform or even change their appearance to "fit in." When it comes to appearances, without the mirror, we are mercy to the ideas of others.
Fortunately, we all own a mirror. What's more, is that we all seem to own 3 or 4 mirrors. Mirrors to look in when dressing, smaller mirrors for our face, mirrors are even decoration. No matter where we go, we are able to see ourselves with our own eyes. With the mirror, other people's opinions are not so heavily weighed into our self conception. We know our eyes are green, our lips are full, our muscles are developed because we can see them, and we are able to judge them on our own. Our perceptions of ourself become more and more keen. For example, anybody can tell me my eyes are bright green, but only I can see for myself the way they glitter in the light, or change colors around the rim of my pupil.
I guess the real question to ask is- is it reality? How much of what I see in the mirror is real, and how much of it is perception? For example, most women look in the mirror, and see cellulite on their thighs, flat hair, imperfect skin, while most men look at those women and see none of those things. What they see is not what the men see, so which one is real? If nobody notices that tiny imperfection on your face, does that make it an imperfection?
The mirror has become more and more important to our sense of self. In fact, it's become so important that many people are solely concerned with only the view from the mirror. People actually base their entire self concept on what the mirror says to them. They can rationalize anything to the mirror. They become addicted to the mirror, and what is says to them.
The mirror has so much power over us, it can actually destroy us. How many people have looked in that mirror, and hated what they saw so much it actually makes them cry? What about the anorexic girl who looks in the mirror at 90 pounds and thinks "fat?"
There really is no escaping the looking glass self, or the mirror. How does one disguinish between reality and imagination? How do you see yourself in real terms, and not only as a projection of what it's "supposed" to be, or what it isn't? The only answer I can come up with is that there is no reality. What I see in the mirror isn't real, because how do you define real when it means so many different things? What I see is not what you see, but you are helping me to see it anyway. It's the combination of your perceptions of me coupled with my own ideas about me that I see that makes the mirror reflect what it does. On a desert island, alone with a mirror is the only way to truly see only yourself, and conversely, living among people without ever looking in a mirror is the only way to truly imagine yourself. I guess the real power in the mirror lies in finding a way to balance the two. To be the person you would be if the balance was perfect.
Otherwise, all you're looking at is a caricature.