What would life be like without mirrors?

So you wake up in the morning and go to the bathroom. You look at yourself in the mirror. You're the only one looking at you, so you accept yourself pre-fixing-up. You know what you look like and you know what it will take for you to be presentable to the rest of humanity.

But what if you had no mirror?

What if you woke up every morning and had to guess about how you looked? What if you'd been born, in other words, before mirrors? What if you had no idea what you look like?

I don't know when mirrors were invented. I assume people used to look at themself in the waters of lakes, but any ripple would distort that view, right? Somewhere in history, someone perfected the kind of chemical transfer that made mirrors possible. And what a change that must have wrought in society, in the world!

For the first time -- and wouldn't it be great to know that first time, to experience it? -- a human could see exactly how he or she looked to his or her fellow humans. I'm sure there were some pleasant moments but am just as sure that there were jarring ones. "Mirror mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of them all?" Remember that from Snow White? The point was that the mirror didn't lie.

Now, of course, we can see ourselves on websites we post or on friends' e-photos of us, but still the best representation of us, of you and me, is the mirror. It captures us at our best and at our worst, dressed up or falling down, with non-judgmental accuracy. I have known people who, like vampires, never looked at mirrors. There is something to be said for that if you think about it: those people wanted to think of themselves the way they saw themselves and didn't want any visual contradiction. Or were they fooling themselves, avoiding the awful truth? Either way, they were bypassing an invention we have come to take for granted but that didn't always exist.

Have you ever been camping or otherwise in some place where you didn't have a mirror? What did you do about it? You don't need a mirror to brush your teeth, but do you need one to brush your hair? To put on make-up? To see if your clothes match? What is it you need a mirror for?

I suspect we all need mirrors to see if we look presentable, to tuck in what needs to be tucked in, to suck in what needs to be sucked in, to adjust this or that article of clothing, maybe to dab on a bit more of this or that make-up. But such was not always the case. If you were a princess or a prince a thousand or more years ago -- two thousand? three? -- you would likely have had to trust your servants to tell you if you looked okay. You would not have been able to look yourself in the eye and vote yay or nay. And that's a whole other subject for thought, no?

Nowadays mirrors are everywhere. Pretty ones, ugly ones, fancy ones, exotic ones, small ones, huge ones. Count the mirrors in your own house. You may be surprised. And aren't you a little disconcerted if you go into a clothing store and can't locate a mirror? We're used to seeing ourselves. We get fidgety when we can't.

Our forebears had no time to look at themselves. They were too busy working and fighting for food and land. Now we just buy both because we have jobs they couldn't have imagined.
We have come a long way, and good for us!

But let's not forget that being able to see ourselves as others see us is a curse and a blessing.

Some days I'm with the vampires.