{"id":3909,"date":"2008-11-03T07:00:12","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=3909"},"modified":"2010-11-24T02:38:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T07:38:00","slug":"mirror-mirror-on-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/11\/03\/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls<\/em>, Joan Jacobs Brumberg argues that increased access to mirrors in the 1800s helped spur middle-class Victorian obsessions with the body, particularly skin and the presence of acne on the face. Mirrors gave the average person more of an ability to imagine themselves through others’ eyes and to inspect every part of their body (and presumably find it lacking).<\/p>\n

Samantha J. showed me the logical end-point of this association between mirrors and negative appraisals of one’s body: mirrors that don’t make you do the work of negatively judging your body, but just go ahead and do it for you.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The one on the left says, “Is this one of those CARNIVAL mirrors?!” and the one on the right says, “I’m MUCH too young to be this OLD” (found here<\/a>). The mirror below (found here<\/a>) says, “Are you really gonna wear that?”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, if you want a self-esteem boost, or already feel really good about yourself, you could buy this one (found with the one above), which says, “I’m the fairest of them all…”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anyway, they might provide a (sort of silly) illustration to go with a discussion of how increased access to mirrors or other technologies (is a mirror a technology?) have affected perceptions of the body and our ability to scrutinize every inch of it (which could, of course, be part of a larger discussion about how changes in technology can affect cultural trends).<\/p>\n

Thanks, Samantha J.!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her book The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg argues that increased access to mirrors in the 1800s helped spur middle-class Victorian obsessions with the body, particularly skin and the presence of acne on the face. Mirrors gave the average person more of an ability to imagine themselves through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,2089,253],"class_list":["post-3909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-gender-beauty","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3909"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29861,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3909\/revisions\/29861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}