Girls in mirrors

The art of trying things on

Words by Sarah Abernethy Illustration by Yoon-Ji Kweon

i.

For the past forty minutes, she has combed through her sticky, sweaty bangs, ensuring that they sit right atop her cheekbones. If she holds her shoulder up just enough to her left ear, you can see her collarbone protrude from its place; angular, skinnier. Even as the sun beating off the glass behind her burns her legs, she knows it all will look better in the picture. It’s the illusion that lasts. Every five minutes she has three seconds to run one foot away from her iPhone and assume position before the screen goes “click!” She will repeat this until she gets the perfect picture. On King Street, passersby see her and snicker—they pretend that what she creates is not what they consume. That she is not a worker bee buzzing back and forth across the sidewalk. Click! Not right. Click! Better. Click! That’ll do.

Not perfect now, but she can make them perfect later.

ii.

The mirror of the studio is lined with the backs of a dozen twelveyear-old girls in white, pancaked tutus. Ducklings in a row, not yet swans. It is dress rehearsal. The recital is tomorrow at 2 pm, and again at 7 pm, just like the professionals do it (that’s what Ellen said). Last week they were sent home with forms to give to their mothers—white flyers, with little printouts of adult women’s faces on them. The adult women are definitively foxy (that’s what Sophia said). The faces show the parents where to put the stage makeup on the girls’ faces. No one gave them to their families, though. Doing your own makeup was the best part of the whole deal.

The sheet demanded pinks only. Strictly no red lips. Mascara on the top lashes, but “never on the bottom lashes girls, that’s too much.”

If you took a camera and zoomed into their faces, you’d see the streaks their fingers left on their foreheads of their mothers’ bronzer that should’ve been left in the bathroom drawer. Backstage, they are awkward and gangly. Sophia loses her left slipper. Marijke gets Cheetos dust all over her white tights. Ellen cries because her father told her he can’t come to the show. But then they nestle up close to one another in the wings. The lights swell, the music plays, they count to seven, and the world begins on the stage.

iii.

You can see lots of things online, but you can also make a lot of things up online. This is a fundamental truth we learn early on. When you don’t get invited to that party, you can make it look like you’re at your very own. There is an art to posting stories with your other friends, who nobody from school knows. Photos of dressed-up outfits but you’re going nowhere important, or somewhere altogether contrived. Snapshots of older boys, alcohol, dancing, the skyline.

Social media strategy has its place just as much in high school hallways as it does in brand marketing.

iv.

She had done everything between the ages of twelve and eighteen that she thought she was supposed to do. She gave soccer a go when her father said it was a good idea, and gymnastics when her coach said she’d be better suited for it. Her mother suggested she settle for tennis. She tried that too. When her older sister started wearing thick lines of black eyeliner, she squished in beside her at the bathroom counter and followed suit. She taught her to roll her skirt up and make a mean face. To scrawl punchy lines on protest signs. Or, she’d pretend she’d never done so when the girls in the hallway would whisper a little too loudly. Those days she was good at wearing whatever it was that they did. Her teachers said debate club, model UN, student council—she said: okay, sure. A boy suggested she ditch her glasses? Maybe he knew best, or maybe she’d finally call him an asshole, just to see how it feels. Sometimes she wonders when she will be old enough to stop trying on, testing out, and playing pretend.

v.

Tippy-toes on the kiddie-stool to see above the countertop. Her eyes absorb every inch of her face in the glass. Awestruck. One day, she could make colours from light; a prism. A refraction, not a reflection.