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Who’s the Fairest One of All?

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Today’s post comes from NASA’s Curiosity Rover.

I hate it when they do this.

“Rover, take a self portrait.”

So I extend my flexible arm and take a series of shots with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Gad, do I hate acronyms! Call it a mirror, why don’t you? That’s what I’m doing – looking myself over, or letting them look me over. And it’s not even accurate! I position the arm so it’s out of the picture and then stitch the shots together so it appears the camera is floating above me.

curiosity020313

Flattering? Hardly.

I’m a drab pile of bolts on a dried up, rocky beach at a resort no one has been to in a billion years. And I’m sorry, but my front wheel is not that big. Can’t we take this from an angle that emphasizes my sleekness – the economy with which I was assembled? There’s not an ounce of me that isn’t functional and critical to the mission, but “lean” is not the word that comes to mind when you look at this conglomeration. Anything but. With an emphasis on the butt. Get a load of that thing back there – it’s like a small town, complete with it’s own municipal water tower. Ghastly.

My best feature is my ivory coloring against the red backdrop, but would it hurt to have a little more dazzle in the package? Something that glitters? A bit of whimsy? And no, I’m not a fan of the markings they put all over me. Imagine waking up with tattoos you never agreed to – and they’re all so technical! Why can’t I have something cool, like a mermaid?

The other thing I hate about “mirror time” – it reminds me that I’m out here all alone on this bleak landscape, and I’m never, ever leaving this planet.

Sigh.

I’m perfectly fine if we never do this again. Let’s put this shot in the scrapbook and get back to drilling holes in stuff. Please?

CR

I’m sure it’s a miserable feeling for the Curiosity Rover when every glance in the mirror is a major disappointment. But what does he expect, a Ferrari? Trying to live by unrealistic and inappropriate beauty standards is a quick pathway to despair. The mirror doesn’t lie, but our expectations can mislead us.

What’s to be gained from looking in the mirror?

93 thoughts on “Who’s the Fairest One of All?”

  2. My mirror is bluntly honest and the only variation on reality comes from the filter that is my brain. It’s all right there. I did see an interesting article about ow liking at your reverse image in the mirror messes with your brain and the way you see yourself having to do with which side of your head you part your hair on. The disconcerting g thing is how all the stuf I the mirror just snuck up on me out of nowhere yesterday out of the blue I grabbed a mirror out of the toothbrush drawer a little mirror to look inside your mouth and I half it up to find the image of the back of my head. It took a while to manipulate the thumbnail sized mirror around to get my head in the picture and when it finally showed up I didn’t recognize it. Actuly I’m pretty sure that is someone else’s head but how do they do that anyway?

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  3. Good morning. I wonder who that is looking back at me from a mirror? I know what I see in the mirror is more or less me. I’m sure what I see is not exactly what others see. It is probably a good thing if I don’t spend too much time wondering how I look from another person’s prospective. I guess, like CR, I’d rather not be dwell too much on the image others have of me in a picture or in their eyes. Too much time spent looking myself in a mirror might add to the somewhat negative self image of myself that I already have in my mind.

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  4. There are three topics on which I will confess neurotic behavior, especially with one of our counselor numbers flying off today and not reading this. The three topics are related, but maybe only to me. One of the three topics is mirrors and photographs. I hate having my picture taken and almost always look as if I do in photographs. I have never put up a real picture of myself on facebook. And I stand in front of mirrors the required number of minutes a day but never really look at myself. Nuff said. Curiosity and I are welded from the same metal.

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    1. I also don’t like having my picture taken and it is almost impossible for me put a smile on my face when posing for a picture.

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    2. I have avoided being friends with any classmates on fb for a variety of reasons. But once you start, it’s hard not to add anyone who asks. Today they are all posting school pictures, which somehow always include me. The grade school ones don’t bother me, but the high school ones are too much.

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  5. TO There was only one post yesterday after I posted some information about a seed swap. I guess all of you were busy listening the State of the Union Address or was it the State of the Euphemism Address.

    I posted information about a seed swap I have organized that will be held at the Landscape Arboretum staring at about I:00 in the afternoon on Friday and also running from10:30 to the end of the noon hour on Saturday. The swap is part a Sustainable Ag meeting and is also open to Arboretum visitors who aren’t attending the ag meeting. I will be at the swap along with a number of other seed savers offering seed samples from their collections and my collection to anyone who would like to try them. The swap will be held in the visitor center.

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    1. Have a great time, Jim. This sounds right up your alley. Unfortunately, I will be sitting on a hard bleacher one last time for gymnastics. Saturday is the last meet of Teenager’s high school gymnastics career – and probably her entire career!

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      1. Thanks , Nan, for the link to the article about seed libraries. I have seen some other information about them. I can put anyone bringing seeds to the seed swap on a list that will let them into the Arboretum at no charge to participate in the seed swap. The main reason for the seed swap is to encourage seed saving. There seems to be more talk about seed saving recently, but it is still largely a lost skill that needs to be rediscovered. There are many good reason for saving seeds and I think that saving your own seeds adds a lot to the fun of doing gardening. My phone number is 507 256-4876 if any one wants to let me know that they would like to bring seeds to the seed swap.

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        1. Jim,
          Saw this at the end of yesterday and would love to come, as it sounds great. (work conflicts) I do a little casual seed saving out of pure thrift. It would be fun to see how people who really know what they are doing go about it.

          We found a number of old envelopes with saved tomato seed in the apartment when my sainted aunt died. I’m looking forward to planting those out. Is it too early to start some indoors?

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        2. I start my tomato seeds near the end of March. If I start them any earlier they get too big fro me to handle before I can put them out in the garden. If you have a way to keep larger plants going and want extra early tomatoes you could start them earlier.

          I suppose you don’t have any information about those tomato seeds. If your aunt was saving seed they might be an heirloom of some kind that was keep by her over many years or came another person who saved that seed for many years. Usually heirloom seed is saved by families because it has some very good qualities and was a family favorite. Good luck to you on growing out that seed.

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        3. I may be able to get there on Friday. If I do, I’ll have to get out the envelopes and see what is written on them. I know there will be some of my great-grandmother’s little juice tomatoes. Nice prolific cherry type, pick a bucket of them, wash off, cook down, put through the Foley and can. Excellent for chili or a bloody Mary.

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        4. Many seed savers among the young gardeners in my neighborhood, encouraging. I can’t make it this weekend but it sounds like a great event.

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      1. No, you don’t need to bring seeds and you can get some seeds if they look like something you would like to try. If you have some seeds to swap I can put you on a list for free entrance into the Arbroretum. Call me at 507 256-4876 if you have seeds and want to be on the list to get in free.

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  6. its always surprising to me that the guy in the mirror is tied to me at all. i look at the little beady eyes looking out of the grizzled old beard that is supposed to be me. the stuff going on inside here has nothing to do with any of that stuff in the mirror but unless you live in a vacuum the stuff that is your physical presentation is part of the deal. i am lucky i have fun with it. i adorn it with wonderful hats ad suit coats and let my face go from goateed to full bearded and my hair go from einstein to shaved head in the two extremes available today. never more to wear the shoulder length locks of my pubesctent era. did you know goatee comes from the beard of a goat.
    i get a kick put of watching my kids and family at times of discussion like around the dinner table or standing in the kitchen when in midsentance they are struck by the image looking back at them for the mirror on the wall of the dining room credenza or the reflection in the windows after the sun has gone down. we have a good time with my son who cant make it through a sentance without eyeing that handsome devil in the glass and cocking his head to reply to the unspoken callings of the image on the other side. my daughter who is in 8th grade is developing into a beautiful young lady has the smiling face int he mirror syndrome to figure out how to deal with too. the face in the mirror is pretty demanding. if you look sad or confused it tells you so without doubt. if the look is confident you can celebrate the moment that the world on this side of the glass is allowing celebration and be happy for that. we all have so many variables int eh cosmos calling out and the mirror sometimes feels like a cruel ingredient to throw in there. if im happy leave me alone if im not then leave me alone if im in angst and trying to figure it out who wants to see that? if the hair on my head or the nose on my face are up to snuff my day will be good? not a very good indicator is it. my dogs do quite well without any feedback for the mirror. their bad hair days are very like their good hair days and the way they approach the world seems to come 100% form within with no outside factors in the equation. if i could be as pure of heart as my dogs maybe i culd put the mirror in its proper perspective as it is i will look at the probing eyes in the reflection and hope they have a more or less satisfactory trip through the universe today and look relatively good doing it.

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  7. There are full length mirrors in the poorly lit women’s rooms at work. The regular mirrors over the sinks there have a unique ability, with the lighting, to make you look a bit ill, regardless of how you feel, and the full length mirrors are equally bad. I have given up on using them for anything besides checking to make sure my clothes aren’t bunched up or watching out for stray curls protruding where they ought not to be. Easier to lie to myself from the mirrors at home…

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  8. I’m not sure there’s much to be gained from gazing in the mirror. If what’s looking back at me is any indication, I don’t think they make mirrors the way they used to. Or perhaps it’s my eyesight? Whatever it is, there’s a huge discrepancy between what I see when I look in the mirror and the image I have of myself in my mind’s eye.

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  10. Morning–
    As I sit here at my desk, my back is to the door. But I have an old truck mirror standing on my desk so I can see who comes up behind me.
    I got a lot of comments about my rear view mirror. No sneaking around me, thank you very much.
    Like tim says, my daughter spends a lot of time watching herself and talking with herself in the bathroom mirror. And to be honest, who can resist making faces at themselves?
    Back in my milking cow days, I had a voltmeter on a silo but it was between two silos and I couldn’t read it at night.
    But a mirror mounted ‘over there’ and hung just right and angled just right, would bounce a little square of light on to the voltmeter so I could read it. It was kinda fun.

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    2. … and the mirror at your desk probably helps the feng shui (it’s bad feng shui to have your back to the door).

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  11. Husband used to spend a lot of time looking into his eyes in the mirror – says he learned a lot that way. This would be when he lived down on what I call the Hippie Farm, but I do believe he did it at times when they had not been smoking…

    I for one, think it’s curious how some imposter has managed to get inside our mirrors. Nothing to be gained by staying there and trying to figure out who that is.

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    1. Reminds me of William Shatner’s line from Miss Congeniality – “I look in the mirror and wonder who is that old man in my pajamas.”

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    2. Reminds me of the line from Steve Goodman’s This Hotel Room – “A mirror that lies, a mirror that lies – That can’t be me, it’s a mirror that lies.”

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  12. There are only two mirrors in my home. I learned many years ago how to live here without ever having to see myself in them, and I haven’t seen myself in about a decade. Since it is such agony to be photographed, I hate to inflict my camera on others, even though others are not neurotic about it the way I am. I apologize again here for taking pictures of camera-shy baboons. Thanks for forgiving me.

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    1. Well, Steve, if you really must do it, you can take my picture. Of course, I will not take any responsibility if your camera breaks when it tries to record my image.

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        1. I forgot that you took my picture, Steve. Handsome? I think you might have my picture mixed up with one of another person.

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        2. Some folks age well, and some even are better looking in their older years than when they were young. Two men who were beautiful later but goony looking as young men are Abraham Lincoln and Fred Astaire. I couldn’t guess what you looked like as a young man, Jim, but you have a great look now. tim, too.

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  13. Morning all. Excellent topic because just last week I let the mirror make a big change. I was standing in front of the mirror in the work restrooms and looking at my scraggly graying hair and I thought to myself “what earthly good is this straggly gray stuff doing you and what would it hurt the world if you got it cut”. This may not seem like such a big deal to you, but except for trims now and then I haven’t had a haircut in over 20 years. In fact, I stood by my no-haircut stance for a long time. So that night I asked Teenager is she wanted to cut my hair; she was ecstatic. 9 inches and I hate to admit it, but it looks good and I’ve even taken out the curling iron.

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      1. No… we have done the Locks of Love thing before with Teenager but the 9″ of mine was pretty ratty and scraggly, so we decided against it.

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        1. i just wondered if you hung on to it for old times sake or ash canned it. when i cut off my locks i thought id save them but ooking at that mass of split ends and snarls was depressing. mine are long gone. more alive in memory than in a zip loc

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        2. Yeah, it was kind of depressing. In fact, since the cut on Wednesday night I’ve been kinda beating myself up. Such a simple thing as having Teenager whack the hair off made such a nice change. Should have done it years ago.

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        3. now take that lesson and go fix everything else in life hindsight will tell you you should have done years ago once you implement it and allow it to be hindsight. that business of trying to ge to the point where it is hindsight is the trick. coule we have a mirror like the harry potter mirror but have it reflect with whatever it takes to make hindsight possibe

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      2. Human hair spread around the perimeter of thegarden is supposed to deter rabbits – if you can retrieve it and save till spring…

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  14. When I do look in a mirror, it’s almost always to check to see what my hair is up to. I keep it about an inch long, but I have a lot of cowlicks and it will manage to stick up weirdly given any chance. The cheap awful clippers I’ve been using are at least partially to blame, and I hope to replace them before I need another haircut.

    I never have been much of a mirror-gazer, really. I look, think “yep, there’s my face” and continue with whatever train of thought I was on. I’ve always believed the brain is more important than what sits in front of it, anyway, and I never think much about what people look like, it seems kind of rude. Probably helps that I’m as bad remembering faces as I am at names. I am sometimes surprised when I catch a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror, and I think, “Oh, I have put on a bit of weight, I should do something about that,” but that’s not interesting and I forget.

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    1. Several things to like here:
      – what my hair is up to
      – “yep, there’s my face”
      – …but that’s not interesting and I forget

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  15. youth is wasted on the young always comes to mind. look at that body that once housed an addonis like physique. that brow once so free from worry lines and that broad pair of shoulders that carried the weight of the world unflinchingly where ever they neded to go. today i looka at wisdom resignation and hope for continued ability to get up and go without the snooce that used to propel me from bed every morning. i could should and hopefully will get back to it some time soon but…. now everything before is meaningless… we will see if i get to it or continue on the way the man in the mirror has chosen to go. its a sad realazation that if you dont do it differently it may keep going the same direction. i used to tell my dad to get going and work at getting more fit or this might be as good as it gets. how would you like that? if this is the best im ever going to feel i may have to make different plans for three years from day after tomorrow. maybe its time to take down those mirrorslife is kind of short and beating yourself up is a no win proposition

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  16. I have a tractor that didn’t come with any outside mirrors. So looking them up online I found Themirrorguys.com, and I laughed. ‘Mirror Guys’…. of course. They call themselves the #1 tractor mirror source. Dope slap– You need a mirror, you go to the mirror store!

    Related question to the guys: Do you use a mirror when shaving? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Shaving at the sink there is mirror. Shaving in the shower I don’t. Tried the ‘anti-fogging’ shower mirrors but they’re mostly crap.

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    1. you know the trick about wiping a mirror down with a bar of saop so it wont fog. you have to do it everyso often but it works like a charm.
      i use a mirror on my beard because there is a line to follow. when i shaved my head i used to braille it and just feel the stubble as i wnet and kept going til it was gone. a blade lasted like a week before it was toast. beard trim a blade will last a month or more/

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  17. A few years ago I looked in the mirror and my mother looked back. Not sure how she got there.

    For the most part, I have an marvelous ability to see isolated bits of myself as necessary and can avoid the big picture. I’m always taken by surprise if I accidentally spot my reflection or see myself in a photo. I look nothing like I think I do.

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    1. I’ve had the occasional experience of dad looking back at me. Scary! Last time it happened was in a hair salon; very unnerving, especially since he was bald.

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      1. I’m perpetually surprised that hair salons almost always have bad lighting that makes you look ghastly in the mirror. You would think they would make an effort to make you look good to yourself. One thing I really like about the salon I’ve been going to for the past couple of years is that they have relatively good lighting, and you don’t have to cringe at your reflection the whole time you’re in the chair.

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        2. maybe they should have two different lighting modes and an bring you in with the green light that give you racoon eyes and you look like death and then while there when they have you back to it they hit the switch and go to the soft golden indirect light that makes you look so soft and natural. ben lets get the lighting boards in sequence and we have a new concept to go sell the salons. maybe do it with a foot pedal while you fluff the hair with a towel before the final blow dry and tweak

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        3. tim, with all them ideas percolatin’ inside that noggin of yours, it’s a wonder you have any hair at all.

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        5. PJ – the Hair Shoppe on Smith near Annapolis. The chairs are also a little distance away from the mirrors, lending a pleasant blurriness to the mirror image.

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    2. I’ve never seen my parents when looking in a mirror. I did have them in my head for many years telling me that I shouldn’t do things that would offend them. Actually, they were very accepting parents who didn’t have much to say about what I did as an adult even if they didn’t approve.

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      1. i never did either then i remembered thinking that my dad was a guy in a weird body . he was the same size as me but he weighed an extra 40 pounds on me. his legs were a little shorter and his waist was a little bigger and he had those giant fingers . today i wear his ring. its a little tight. my legs got a little shorter and my waist got a little bigger. damn ill bet id fit his old clothes if they were around. if i could only fit into mine. oh yeah im 40 pounds heavier than when i was when i noted the difference too

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    3. 12 years ago for some videos we were shooting, I shaved off my beard. I looked in the mirror and saw my brother. I grew the beard back as son as I could.

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      1. yep i have shaved off mine twice in 40 years too. just prefer to have it on. i know just what i look like without it but dont remember for sure until its gone. then its 3 or 4 weeks to get it back in place.

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  18. #2son (on the autism spectrum) never looks at himself from what I can tell – collar askew, socks tucked into pants, hair every whichway.
    But I’ve decided that he comes by it naturally. I look at myself when I dry my hair and when I brush my teeth but not a lot beyond that. I once got a haircut and realized as I was walking to the car that I hadn’t checked out the result in the stylist’s mirror. Didn’t even review that for which I had just paid. My current stylist must have noticed; she now puts a mirror in my hand so I can observe all sides.

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    1. my stylist was a ldy who did great work but she told me my hair was so easy itr was just a matter of using a #3 blade. once i found that out i agreed that i can do it easily with a number 3 blade on my 19dollar shears that need to be replaced every couple of years. i buy good ones and my kids take them before i ge the second trim with em so ihave learned that the cheapies are the way to go. i kind of braille that too. ill cut it and then feel for the long chunks i missed and go back and re run over that spot until it all blends in to that delightful essence i call my brand

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  23. I’m clearly on a different schedule than the rest of you, making me doubt that anyone would even check on entries this late in the day. A few years ago, I was flown to NYC to be on a national talk show. A few months later, I was mortified at my own appearance as the show ran. I then got creative with my upset at how I looked: I realized that the ONLY person surprised by my appearance was ME; that everyone else has seen me that way already for a very long time. A quirk of mine for as long as I can remember is that I can’t tolerate looking at myself in a mirror unless I’m in a full-faced grin. The same is true in photos – if I’m not smiling, I toss the photo out.

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