This assignment requires you to look in the mirror and give an accurate and detailed description of yourself. My first observation was “wow I need to get some more sleep.” I have the beginnings of bags starting to form under my eyes which is definitely from lack of sleep, but some nights its really hard to get to bed. I can also see all the miscellaneous hairs on my face which I’m going to dispose of once i’m done writing this post. The last Observation I really picked up was random discoloration around my face. I think it is from where there was acne previously, but I never really noticed it until I got up close and personal with that mirror. I think my main priority at the moment is to get more sleep, and with that everything else will be fine.

For this challenge, I had to stare at my face in mirror for one minute and describe it as detailed and as honestly as I could!

Freckles, freckles, and freckles are scattered around everywhere on her heart-shaped face. The tip of her nose, the bottom of her lips, and all about her forehead was littered with constellations and little specks of brown. Sweeping pieces of brown hair with bits of purple shadowed her forehead, obscuring the crater scars of past acne that she hopes will fade eventually. Her bangs weren’t perfectly even, but no one but her would notice. Thick, dark brows that appeared haphazardly maintained arched over her gray-blue eyes. Underneath her stormy eyes, little purple pockets, well, eye-bags impose a “haven’t slept” look on her face even though she very well always chooses sleep over work. Although too young for wrinkles, tiny lines creep put from where she smiles a crunched up and squinty smile, showing straight teeth achieved after years of being a brace-face. Her nose, larger than average, is a tent smack in the middle of her face, sporting a bump that gives her nose a slightly irregular shape.

This assignment puts me at 13 stars! Yay! I tried to be as least narcissistic as possible and to honestly describe my face in an interesting way. The way I wrote this could probably serve as an overly descriptive picture of a character in a book or something.

Your Very Own Face.

Look at your face in the mirror for one minute. Now write a description of yourself and be very detailed. Do you you have a scare on your chin? What does the scare look like? What about moles, freckle’s, wrinkles, and crows feet? What color are your hair and eye’s?  Can you use word pictures to describe your features and face? Be honest about what you see.

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Looking into the mirror, I take the opportunity to look at myself for the for the first time in a long while. It’s not really my forte to stand in front of a mirror and psychoanalyze myself–I don’t like it enough for that.

When I look at the shape of my face, I see a very pale, very sun-shy person. I see high cheekbones armored by thick, puffed-up sinew in skin–encasing the bone and fattening the overall face. My jawline is long, and stops close to the end of my face, taking a slight angle downward and rounding out my chin.

As for what is on the face, the features are relatively well spaced out. My forehead is about a typical size for someone of my age, race and gender. There is a bit of visible bumpiness and protrusion from a soccer-related injury when I was 12, but kicks to the head will do that to you. My eyebrows are thick and dark. The long feathered hairs flirt with each other–dancing and touching, but never committing. My eyes are hazel, with gray hues that saturate them–but that’s not a bad thing. I tend to actually get compliments on my eyes, which is always surprising. On the edge of my left eye, towards my covered ears, is a scar received when I was three. Coffee tables are very dangerous for toddlers. My nose is short, but squat. It billows out towards the edge and becomes rounded and plastic–in other words, it looks very honk-able. Not far below it is my mouth, tied together by that familiar, pronounced ridge of skin between the nostril and the upper lip. My lips are dry and scarred. When i’m nervous or frustrated with myself, I have a tendency to eat away at the surface skin of my bottom lip. Because of this, the skin has shallow teethmarks–imprints of my bucked front teeth from pulling and chewing in anxiety.

My hair is unfortunately parted, the middle bangs are split, despite my best attempts to swoosh them to my sides. However, my hair is a pleasant dark brown color. It is impossible to tame. No matter how hard I brush it, or dry it; no matter how many hairstylists tango with it, the edges of my chin-length bob always stick out–like i’m a 1950s’ housewife, or Jimmy Neutron’s mother.

Lastly, my glasses sport powerful, thick frames that wrap around my eyes like sports-goggles. The dark red frame match the saturation of my hair, and everything tends to blend together and unifying way that brings simplicity to my face. The lens’ are in a constant state of needing to be cleaned. Maybe one day I’ll do it, but I wouldn’t count it. Them being half-dirty has almost become a staple of my personality.

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BEHIND THE SCENES

I chose this particular assignment from the assignment bank because it posed a challenge for me in particular. I don’t like looking in the mirror, and I don’t like looking at my face. I’ve never really cared for how I look, or how other people have seen me in public. The amount of time I spend looking at my self can be counted on my hand. So, I found that a writing assignment that focuses on staring at my face would be both a fun and eye-opening challenge.

I also took the assignment as a way for me to be a bit kinder to myself. Anyone who knows me well can tell that I’m sort of difficult when it comes to myself, and how I feel. I wanted to take this opportunity to not slam myself for a change, and to see the positive sides to my appearance.

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MAKING OF THE ASSIGNMENT

— Got my phone out and put it into selfie-mode.

— Stared at my face for one minute, and looked back to it repeatedly during the assignment.

— Wrote down what I saw (I wrote directly into the textbox of WordPress for this assignment).

That’s really all there was to it! It was a fun, easy assignment that I wouldn’t have qualms with doing again. Thank you for the opportunity!

Have you ever looked at a spy in the face?

Like really looked at them?

Well, I have.

I look at myself in the mirror every day.

I see brown hair, brown eyes, a tiny nose, one eyebrow slightly thicker than the other and bags under my eyes.

I see myself like a normal girl, but I am not. A spy can’t be normal. A spy leads different lives, pretends to be different people, but I am just Maria.

Or am I?

In 1624, artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola, better know as Parmigianino, looked into what was probably a mirror to record his face. Noted as one of the first selfies, little could he have known that the selfie would become such an epicenter of modern culture. What did he see? 

Looking in the mirror, I refuse the idea, notion and self centered-ness of the ‘selfie’. What do I see? 
What I see is the frame of a girl, now a woman, still longing to be something else, something more. Perhaps if people were forced to stop and actually look at what they see, to think about the person in front of them, the notion of the selfie would dissipate. I am not one to stare into the mirror, I rarely will be photographed, and taking a picture of my self, never. 

In a moment we look and dash to put on make-up, fix our hair, but in raw human natural beauty, what does one see? In this very moment, forced stop, what do I see?   

I have often been told that I have very long lashes that sit upon my large eyelids, surrounding large brown eyes. I spent many years lacking eyebrows, after an incident in my 5th grade year left me without, so I have always ignored my eyes. Like many other women in, I look hard to see the details that I like, as I am constantly reminded of the features that I cover, and those that I wish I could change. 

There is a small scar on the top of my forehead, growing older has become a blessing as it has started to disappear with age. Scared from chickenpox when I was 5, the small divot, or hole, used to always be an identifying feature, along with those missing eyebrows. 

Below my big brown eyes; a family trait, the nose. My family heritage is German/ Russian and that should say it all. 

Inside the full lips, what I feel is a wrangled mess of teeth, I hate them. To me teeth are an identification tags for social and economic class, we never were afforded dental and braces. I hate to smile showing my teeth. 

What do I see, do I think that I am beautiful? Yes. I don’t see myself or compare myself to the common notion and the public ideations of beauty. My strange long and large nose, and even the few strings of hair that are growing back to line my brows and cover the once tattooed lines are like nothing you will ever see again. Like a Picasso or Basquiat, a Kahlo or Courbet, what I see is not the physical features, but the life behind the features. 

Beauty is not what one looks like, it’s not what you see, but to me it is the story that is told, the individuality.