In gyms, the walls are covered in mirrors from floor to ceiling. It's impossible to escape your reflection. While these reflective surfaces are quite useful for checking our position during squats, adjusting our steps in dance class, or discovering new muscles in development, they don't always provide a true-to-life image. As dishonest as the mirrors in fitting rooms, they distort our appearance, as a video demonstrates.
Gym mirrors, those liars
Gyms are like vast halls of mirrors or those carnival attractions that multiply our reflection to disorient us. Between the assisted machines, numbered dumbbells, kettlebells, and cardio equipment, mirrors act as wallpaper, covering the space from floor to ceiling. Reassuring for some, intimidating for others, they reign supreme in the gyms, like a slap in the face.
The most confident admire their toned physique, while those more self-conscious avoid looking at it and look away to avoid self-pity. Their omnipresence isn't simply a matter of artistic direction. They serve as a guide for executing movements. They allow us to correct our technique and target the right parts of the body to avoid lower back pain after lunges. However, these mirrors, supposedly reflecting our progress and displaying our physique as it is, allow for some subtle alterations. Instead of presenting our bodies authentically, they make us lose a few inches around our waist and give the illusion of having shrunk between workouts.
That's certainly what @ johnnyfaisle 's video highlights. The content creator, who keeps a kind of existential diary, filmed the mirrors in the women's section and repeated the same process in the men's. In the first, his body appears elongated, thin, almost shapeless, as if an Instagram filter had been applied. In the second, he looks more natural to the human eye. "Slimming mirrors should be banned," he fumes.
View this post on Instagram
A silhouette that has nothing to do with the authentic one
Gym mirrors are like fitting room mirrors: they deceive our gaze and make us believe in a silhouette that bears no resemblance to the real us. It's a pure counterfeit, a betrayal, and faced with this false reflection, our confidence crumbles. While men's mirrors are designed with precision and reflect bodies without alteration, women's mirrors are molded by the cult of thinness, shaped by societal dictates. What they show is not our true selves, but a supposedly "improved" version of ourselves.
Far from having the same effect as on Narcissus or Snow White's stepmother, this mirror accustoms us to a body that doesn't belong to us. It amputates a few visible muscles, generous rolls of fat, and shrinks our silhouette like a tumble dryer shrinks our precious cashmere sweaters.
Instead of boosting our self-esteem, it can cause terrible body dysmorphia. In the comments section, regular gym-goers say the optical illusion is even worse on the other side of the women's locker room. "It's a scam." "Filters in real life." "It doesn't help anyone." Online users unanimously condemn this marketing strategy that plays with our confidence.
The benevolent gamble of mirrorless theaters
Under the content creator's video, an internet user suggested removing these illusory mirrors from the walls, and in some gyms, managers didn't wait for a collective outcry to take this initiative. It's even a "body positive" stance in some fitness meccas. Behind the doors of Form Fitness in Brooklyn, there are no mirrors in sight, nor any invitation to self-sabotage or self-criticism. According to the founder of this discreet gym, this intrusive mirror can be particularly difficult to confront.
While Narcissus succumbed to his excessive self-love, for women, the curse is reversed. The more they look at themselves, the less they like themselves. “We naturally go through this process of self-evaluation, which consists of comparing the ‘current self’ to the ‘ideal self,’” he explains. “Since most of us don’t live in the ideal self, there’s a gap between the two, and this gap creates discomfort,” describes Jeff Katula , a sports-oriented researcher at Wake Forest University. We experience perpetual dissatisfaction in front of this mirror, which maps out our insecurities.
Experts in the field, who know muscles better than multiplication tables, recommend filming yourself with your phone instead. Admittedly, the images captured by the device aren't entirely unbiased, but they're more bearable than those of a fraudulent mirror. This way, you can refine your movements without having to endure that confrontation with yourself, or end up with bulging muscles but a deflated ego.
