The well-known metaphor of John Gray that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, it is quite possible to translate from a non-scientific hypothesis into the category of a completely scientific theory. One does not have to go far to obtain its evidence. It is enough to assess the ability to sight and compare how representatives of different sexes evaluate their reflection in the mirror.
The differences in the male and female psyche are so indisputable and obvious that John Gray's hypothesis about the alien origin of the sexes can be raised to the rank of law. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, since a man and a woman perceive their bodies differently - and this explains everything. However, only a lazy person does not make notes and jokes about this today. The Internet is replete with publications, infographics, visual summaries and demotivators regarding gender differences in thinking and behavior. One of the widely discussed questions is: "Who looks in the mirror more often and do men and women have the same approach to assessing their mirrored image?"
According to observations, a person looks in the mirror on average 8 to 12 times during the day. If we add to this the screens of smartphones, glass of cars, shop windows and other reflective surfaces, then the number increases by an order of magnitude and can reach 70. Why do we do this so often?
Man is a social being and it is important for him to know how he looks in the eyes of others. Especially carefully we check and control our appearance if there is an important business meeting, a date or a public speech. The conventional wisdom that women spend more time in front of the mirror is long gone. Ladies have learned to do hairstyles and makeup almost blindly, and men, instead of a quick shave, can thoroughly care for a stylish beard. According to a study recently conducted by Avaj in a sociological group of 1,000 Britons, it turned out that women look in the mirror on average 16 times a day, and men much more - about 23 times. Moreover, the target setting is different for representatives of different sexes. Ladies do this to check their appearance or to fix something in their hair, makeup, clothes. Men predominantly evaluate how they look or simply admire their reflection. Experts believe that one of the reasons for such a scrupulous attitude to their appearance is the craze for selfies. We want to look our best on blogs and social media pages.
No matter how perfect the mirror surface is, there is no absolute obedience to the law of equality of the angles of incidence and reflection of a ray of light falling on it. Even a perfectly smooth, shiny and flat mirror has a lens effect, which means that the reflection is distorted.
Adding some psychological aspects to the physics of constructing a mirror image, you can get the following: we see ourselves in the mirror through the prism of our own beliefs, family and tribal foundations, social rules, and social norms. The classic of philosophical aesthetics M. M. Bakhtin described it this way: "I look at myself through the eyes of the world." And how we perceive our reflection directly affects our emotions and behavior.
- women see themselves in the mirror 1, 5-2 times thicker and lower than they really are. Most often, they find themselves not pretty enough, find fault with the details of their appearance and signs of age. At the same time, they evaluate their appearance as a whole and think about how to improve it;
- men tend to have an almost 5-fold overestimation of the level of their attractiveness relative to what they see in the mirror image. As a rule, they remain satisfied with their appearance and often just admire individual parts of the body. Moreover, they prioritize the degree of charm as follows: hands, feet, smile, eyes, hair.
If we talk in more detail, then the point here is not only in the defects of mirrors and the subjectivity of our self-esteem. The reason lies in the inherent ability of sighting (assessing the size and configuration of objects). This is important because a person perceives more than 70% of information visually.
Here are simple everyday examples that the eye of women and men is not the same:
- one of the most difficult tasks for an auto lady (even with a decent driving experience) is parking. Sometimes they cannot even drive into the gates of their own garage, not to mention that they can “park” without an accident in a tight parking lot;
- in everyday life, women more often than men come across pieces of furniture - as they say, they cannot fit in;
- a man can always accurately estimate the distance and say how many meters this or that object is. He will tell you the dimensions at a glance and correctly determine the configuration of the items.
That is why women, sighting worse, cannot assess how inaccurately the mirror reflects their proportions. And these are just those 1, 5-2 times for which they feel thicker and lower. And they completely trust the mirror eye and turn to it with the words of the character of Pushkin's fairy tale: "My light, mirror, tell me, but report the whole truth."
Men, on the other hand, blame the mirror surface. They are aware that the mirror distorts - "in a crooked mirror and the mouth on the side." In order not to belittle their merits and establish the truth, they add to themselves a bonus of attractiveness from 1 to 5 points relative to what they saw in the reflection.
The secret of reflection in the mirror common to all is that our brain builds this picture, relying on our own momentary feelings and emotions about our appearance.
- to the woman's hysterically desperate question "Am I fat?" firmly and confidently give a negative answer of four sentences: “No! You! Not! Thick! ";
- a man who asks hopefully in response to his "Well, how do you like me?" must certainly receive an approving statement: "Good!".
Then there will be no reason to talk about who is from Mars and who is from Venus, and there will be no need to sin once again on the mirror.
The ratio of human body parts is far from the ideal proportions of the "golden section". It is also characteristic of our body and the absence of complete symmetry. Convincing evidence that the left side of most people's faces is much more photogenic than the right side is a mirror image of a portrait photograph. Even before Photoshop, joining two right and two left halves of a negative resulted in two different people. This is due to the fact that the left hemisphere is responsible for the emotional and sensory part, which is reflected in the facial features.
As for proportions, a person generally tends to exaggerate the width and underestimate the length of all parts of his body. This has been proven empirically at the Institute of Neurology, University College London, by neurophysiologists led by Muthew Longo. Volunteers who took part in the eye study experiment rated their fingers on the projection screen as shorter in relation to their true size (and the further the finger was behind the thumb, the more evident was the error in the perception of its length). The thickness of the hands on the projection turned out to be 2/3 larger than it actually is.
It is quite obvious that a person is not able to reliably assess his true appearance (not to mention attractiveness). And this applies not only to mirror reflection, but also to photography or video.
According to some reports, the way other people see us differs by at least 20% from our self-esteem. A classic example would be a self-portrait. For example, Vrubel's estranged face or the always laughing Rembrandt clearly differ from the portraits painted by these artists by their colleagues.
In conclusion, it is very appropriate to quote from Colin McCullough's wonderful book "The Thorn Birds": "Not a single person in the world, be it man or woman, sees himself in the mirror as he really is." But these are already philosophical principles: I am in front of a mirror, but I am not in it; a person is not reflected, but looks into his own reflection.
