The Mirror and the Self: Who Are We Becoming?

We live in an age of mirrors. Front-facing cameras, selfies, Zoom calls, Teams meetings, Instagram filters, and our daily lives are saturated with reflections. We no longer encounter mirrors as occasional tools; they are now constant companions, built into our phones, our habits, our culture. We are reflected to ourselves so often that our image has become a performance.

To "be seen" has become the closest thing to existing. Visibility is mistaken for vitality. However, this relentless exposure comes at a cost. The more we are seen, the more estranged we become from what we see. We find ourselves alienated not only from others but also from our bodies, faces, and presence.

We are not just looking in the mirror; we are becoming the mirror.

The Architecture of Shame

The modern beauty industry, in its hyper-capitalised form, has built an architecture of shame disguised as empowerment. Marketing slogans tell us we can become anything, so long as it is beautiful, youthful, and polished. Self-care is encouraged, but only in ways that result in visible transformation. We are told we are in control of our image, our bodies, and our futures. However, the freedom on offer is highly conditional: you may become anything, so long as it aligns with what sells.

Beneath the glittering promises of "glow-ups," "makeovers," and "filter-free confidence," the subtext is clear: as you are, you are not enough.

This is not a new phenomenon. For centuries, societies have policed beauty, often tied to class, race, gender, and power, but the scale and speed of contemporary self-surveillance are unprecedented. What was once an occasional insecurity is now a 24/7 feedback loop of inadequacy.

This leads us to a profound philosophical question: What is the cost of this becoming?

Sartre's Gaze: Becoming an Object

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his existential philosophy, described the experience of the gaze—that jolt of awareness when we realise we are being watched. In that moment, we are no longer just subjects acting freely in the world; we become objects, seen and evaluated by another.

"The look," Sartre wrote, "objectifies me. I am seen as I am. My freedom is stolen."

In today's world, the Other is no longer merely another person. The Other is the algorithm. The feed. The front-facing camera. The comments. The mirror. Even when we are alone, we anticipate being seen. We evaluate ourselves as if from an outside perspective. We curate. We perform.

Beauty, then, becomes public, performative, and strategic. Skincare is no longer just about health or comfort; it has evolved into a form of self-surveillance. Makeup becomes a mask, not a joyful adornment, but a necessity for social visibility. We are no longer. We must appear.

The Tyranny of the Ideal

The consequences of this constant gaze are not merely philosophical; they are deeply psychological. While Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is a clinically recognised mental health condition marked by obsessive focus on perceived flaws in appearance, subclinical symptoms, compulsive comparison, excessive grooming, and chronic dissatisfaction, these symptoms are widespread. Cultural indicators suggest the mindset of BDD has gone mainstream. In 2018, a trend dubbed "Snapchat Dysmorphia alarmed plastic surgeons as people began requesting procedures to resemble their filtered selfies. These are not mere touch-ups; they are existential aspirations. The goal is not beauty, but belonging.

Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, described how women are taught to internalise the gaze of others and see themselves as objects: "She is made to be seen." While her analysis focused on gender, this objectification has since expanded its reach. All bodies, regardless of gender, are now pulled into a machinery of aesthetic self-surveillance.

Even those who appear flawless online may still suffer in silence. "Perfect" influencers often confess to exhaustion, eating disorders, and dissociation. Aesthetic perfection becomes a full-time job, and one that demands constant self-erasure.

When you are always becoming something for someone else, you stop becoming anything for yourself.

The Discipline of the Body

Modern power does not work through physical force, but rather through internalised surveillance. The panopticon, a prison design where inmates never know when they are being watched, becomes a metaphor for how we police ourselves.

The beauty industry, like the panopticon, ensures that we are never truly alone. We become both prisoner and guard. We exfoliate not because someone demands it, but because we believe we must. We discipline our diets, track our steps, inject our faces, not as rebellion, but as compliance disguised as self-expression.

We post progress pictures not for celebration, but for approval. We turn our bodies into projects, never complete, always pending.

This is not self-care. This is self-surveillance.

The Denial of Death

Why this obsession with beauty, perfection, and youth? What more profound anxiety fuels the relentless pursuit?

In The Denial of Death, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that much of human behaviour is driven by an unconscious fear of mortality. To combat the terror of death, humans create symbolic systems, religion, legacy, and achievement, that give the illusion of permanence.

In the realm of beauty, ageing is not seen as natural but as a failure. Wrinkles are treated like wounds. Grey hairs are urgently dyed. Sagging skin is a crisis to correct. The industry does not sell health; it sells the illusion of immortality.

From Botox to body contouring, the message is clear: you must not age. You must not decay. You must not die.

However, we are mortal. We tire. We wrinkle. We fade. Moreover, the more profound tragedy is this: in trying to escape death, we also escape life.

The Shame of Imperfection

At its core, the beauty industry does not run on aspiration; it runs on shame.

Your skin is not clear enough.

Your nose is too broad.

Your belly is too soft.

Your body hair is "unsightly."

Your face is too old.

Moreover, for every flaw, there is a fix.

Shame is the emotional currency of the industry. It keeps you coming back.

Psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm, in The Art of Loving, described the "marketing orientation": the belief that we must present ourselves as desirable commodities in the dating market, the job market, and the social world. We become products. We design our "personal brands." We align our appearance with the aesthetic of value.

This commodification of the self turns our identity into a hustle. You are not just yourself; you are an advertisement foryourself. What if the self is not a product?

What Is the Self?

Existential therapy begins with a fundamental premise: there is no fixed, pre-existing self to uncover. The self is not found. It is made. As Sartre wrote, "Existence precedes essence." We are what we choose, what we do, and how we show up in the world.

That freedom is both terrifying and exhilarating.

But capitalism and the beauty industry hijack this freedom. They say, You can be anything, so long as it looks like this.

We are taught to confuse identity with appearance, and self-worth with aesthetic value. When the "ideal self" remains unreachable, we fracture. We reject the body we have. We hate the face we were born with. And in doing so, we lose contact with the present moment.

We become, not beings, but projects in perpetual beta, forever unfinished, forever unworthy.

What Happens to Intimacy?

In therapeutic settings, one of the most painful themes to emerge is how shame disrupts intimacy, not just with others, but with oneself.

Shame makes us hide.

You avoid mirrors.

You retreat from others.

You dismiss compliments.

You pretend you do not care.

To be truly seen is to risk being truly rejected. Thus, we armour ourselves through makeup, through silence, through constant self-editing.

But no amount of polish can protect us from the fear that we are unlovable as we are.

And the beauty industry, in its current form, will never love us back.

Can We Reclaim Beauty?

So what do we do? Throw out our products? Abandon skincare? Smash the mirror?

Not necessarily. Beauty is not the enemy. The problem lies in how beauty has been defined, commodified, and imposed. The current terms are broken: standardised, commercialised, dehumanised.

But we can start again, gently, with better questions.

What does it mean to be beautiful to yourself?

Can beauty be something you feel, not something others grant?

Can skincare be care, not correction?

When beauty becomes a ritual of presence, rather than perfection, it has the potential to be healing, rather than harmful.

Presence, Not Performance

Existential therapy calls us back to presence. To be present is to resist the constant pressure to perform. Authenticity does not mean total exposure or raw vulnerability at all times. It means knowing when you are choosing for yourself versus acting on behalf of others.

The answer isn't to reject the mirror, but to change how we look into it.

Not as an enemy.

Not as an editor.

But as a witness.

The mirror cannot tell you who you are. But you can.

Being Seen or Being?

There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel beautiful. It is human to want to be seen and valued. But there is danger in building an entire life around a body that must never be flawed, tired, or human.

Perfection is cruel. And fleeting.

What we long for is not flawlessness. What we long for is acceptance.

The self is not reflected in the mirror, not really. The self is in the choosing. In the showing up. In the quiet, radical act of saying: I am already enough, even if the algorithm disagrees.

That is the kind of beauty that endures.